Cindy Valdez’s boyfriend sold drugs. She did not – nor did she buy them – but because they were living together, she was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, unable to watch her three daughters grow up.
Her brother Rudy began filming all the moments she couldn’t see in person and the result is a film that calls into question not only her sentence, but those of many others whose only connection to crime was being the girlfriend.
The Sentence will premiere on HBO on October 15th following an Oscar® qualifying theatrical run beginning October 12th.
The Sentence
A Documentary by Rudy Valdez
**WINNER: Sundance 2018 Audience Award: U.S. Documentary**
**WINNER: 2018 Traverse City Film Festival Roger Ebert Prize For Best Film By A First Time Filmmaker**
**2018 Locarno International Film Festival Official Selection**
“THE SENTENCE is poised to do for unjust sentencing what AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH did for climate change. If Al Gore was the hero Americans at Sundance and beyond needed in 2005 — a welcoming, professorial face to associate with the fight against environmental catastrophe — Shank and her daughters offer the criminal justice equivalent, giving a human access point to what many experts describe as a sociological disaster.”
– Steven Zeitchik, The Washington Post
Synopsis:
Drawing from hundreds of hours of footage, filmmaker Rudy Valdez shows the aftermath of his sister Cindy’s 15-year sentence for conspiracy charges related to crimes committed by her deceased ex-boyfriend—something known, in legal terms, as “the girlfriend problem.” Valdez’s method of coping with this tragedy is to film his sister’s family for her, both the everyday details and the milestones—moments Cindy herself can no longer share in. But in the midst of this nightmare, Valdez finds his voice as both a filmmaker and activist, and he and his family begin to fight for Cindy’s release during the last months of the Obama administration’s clemency initiative. Whether their attempts will allow Cindy to break free of her draconian sentence becomes the aching question at the core of this deeply personal portrait of a family in crisis.
TRT: 85 min.
Country: USA
Language: English
HBO WILL AIR THE SENTENCE ON OCTOBER 15 PRECEDED BY AN OSCAR QUALIFYING THEATRICAL RUN BEGINNING OCTOBER 12