what (not) to doc

New to DVD this week:
The State of Texas Vs. Melissa

Director:
Sabrina Van Tassel

World Premiere:
Tribeca 2020 (unscreened)

Select Festivals:
Tallgrass, Raindance, FIPADOC

About:
A mother sentenced to death for killing her own young daughter faces her last appeal.

In 2007, after hours of police interrogation, Melissa Lucio confessed to killing her two-year-old daughter, Mariah. Absent this confession, Texas state prosecutors had no direct evidence linking Lucio to her daughter’s death – no witnesses and no history of violence or abuse. What they did have was a poor woman of color with 14 children and a drug problem, and, facing a public outraged by the recent mishandling of a case involving a murderer, the need to show they were tough on crime. While it would not be surprising if Lucio claimed her confession was coerced under duress of incessant interrogation – a frequent cause for false confessions – the situation is not as clear as it might be in director Sabrina Van Tassel’s telling. There’s also the parallel explanation that Lucio voluntarily provided the false confession to protect one of her other daughters, who apparently hated her younger half-sister and was witnessed hurting her at other times. There’s a record that Lucio’s defense attorney knew about this possibility but suppressed it, but this theory is never conclusively established as Lucio’s reasoning. Instead, it’s one of several issues that Van Tassel brings up, including a crooked DA, the possibility that the medical examiner misread the damage to Mariah’s body and jumped to conclusions of abuse, and the systemic racial biases in the criminal justice system that put Lucio at an immediate disadvantage. That there was likely a miscarriage of justice in Lucio’s case seems clear, but the film’s storytelling remains frustratingly unfocused.

Coming to VOD tomorrow, Friday, January 22:
MY REMBRANDT

Director:
Oeke Hoogendijk

World Premiere:
IDFA 2019

Select Festivals:
Docs Against Gravity, Montclair, Vancouver, GlobeDocs, Docville, Cologne

About:
Profiles of various owners – private and institutional – of works by the Old Master.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to virtual cinemas tomorrow, Friday, January 22:
COMING CLEAN

Director:
Ondi Timoner

World Premiere:
Bentonville 2020

Select Festivals:
Sidewalk, Woodstock, Milwaukee, Denver, BendFilm,

About:
An expansive look at America’s opioid crisis.

Drug addiction has long been a serious issue in the US, but our most recent opioid epidemic can be traced back to the late-1990s, with the rise of prescriptions for pain killers. A confluence of factors, including the greedy machinations of pharmaceutical companies and doctors, as well as a depressive economy leading to an increase in vulnerable individuals, set the stage for skyrocketing abuse, addiction, suffering, and death. With opioids impacting not just marginalized communities, media and politicians paid more attention than they would normally – a larger societal problem – but effective solutions to slow or halt the course of opioid abuse have been slow in coming. Ondi Timoner’s film covers a lot of ground, profiling recovering users as well as several individuals trying to tackle the problem, from politicians to attorneys. As with many projects that attempt to address a huge issue like this, there’s an inclination to feature as many stories as possible to illustrate the complexities of addiction, often leading to a cursory or episodic feel. That said, the film’s focus on forward-thinking efforts in two states, Utah and Colorado, to combat the opioid crisis wisely helps to ground the problem. Timoner succeeds in underscoring the need for industry accountability, regulation, and compassionate treatment over punishment if the country has any hopes of seeing the other side of this epidemic.