JAIL TIME RECORDS Documentary

JAIL TIME RECORDS

Screening to be followed by a conversation with co-director, producer, cinematographer and editor Dione Roach.

This winner of Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival mixes verité documentary with raucous music videos as co-directors Dione Roach and Steve Happi escort viewers inside New Bell Prison in Cameroon, where 6,000 inmates occupy an open-air space intended for 800. Amidst the crush of male bodies, social hierarchies and black-market economies have formed and metastasized. But the beating heart of the prison is a recording studio at its center, where inmates can produce songs and publish them to the outside world. Thumping beats match outsized personalities as the film follows three musicians closely: Empereur, Transporteur and Stone. These are not typical protagonists. Despite their charisma and talent, these are men capable of extreme violence. There is redemption in the music, but the film does not sanitize their characters. Executive produced by Taika Waititi and Rita Ora, Roach and Happi’s form-pushing debut is a boisterous, non-judgmental testament to the therapeutic and liberating power of music under even the harshest conditions. –Travis Weedon

After meeting inside the Central Prison of Douala in 2018, Dione Roach and Steve Happi co-founded Jail Time Records and have been working as the artistic directors of the project ever since.

Tim Weyers
Artists Equity
tim@artistsequity.com

MEMBERS & PASSHOLDERS

Screenings

October 23, 8:45 p.m.

Chinese 5

Details

Country: Cameroon, USA

Year: 2026

Directors: Dione Roach, Steve Happi

Producers: Dione Roach, Steve Happi, Giacomo Stucchi-Prinetti, Tabs Breese

Executive Producers: Taika Waititi, Rita Ora, Garrett Basch, Caitlin Alba-Rothstein, Gillian Brown

Directors of Photography: Dione Roach, Uberto Rapisardi, Steve Happi

Editors: Jocelyne Chaput, Marie Helene Dozo, Dione Roach, Elliot Maintigneux, Pierpaolo Filomeno

Music: Steve Happi

Cast/Featuring: Belgie Ludrovic Abantsia, Hamadou Daibou, Josue Aristide Ticky Moulende, Dilan Nyamsi

Running Time (minutes): 94

Languages: French, English

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

AFI FEST
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.