| Crime After Crime | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Yoav Potash |
| Starring | Deborah Peagler Joshua Safran Nadia Costa |
Release dates |
|
| Country | United States |
Crime After Crime is a 2011 award-winning documentary film directed by Yoav Potash about the case of Deborah Peagler, an incarcerated victim of domestic violence whose case was taken up by pro bono attorneys through The California Habeas Project.
Crime After Crime tells the dramatic story of the legal battle to free Debbie Peagler, an incarcerated survivor of domestic violence. She was wrongly convicted of the murder of her abusive boyfriend and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Her story takes an unexpected turn two decades later when two rookie land-use attorneys step forward to take her case. Through their perseverance, they bring to light long-lost witnesses, new testimonies from the men who committed the murder, and proof of perjured evidence. Their investigation ultimately attracts global attention to victims of wrongful incarceration and abuse and becomes a matter of life and death once more.
Potash produced Crime After Crime over a five-and-a-half-year span, gaining unprecedented access to film in a maximum-security California prison, despite strict rules that barred members of the media from filming interviews with specific inmates. The filmmaker managed to bring his cameras into the prison by becoming the "legal videographer" for Debbie Peagler, and by producing an entirely separate documentary about the rehabilitative and employment programs available to inmates at the prison. [1] Potash wrote about these activities and his motivations for making the film in articles published by The Wall Street Journal [2] and TheWrap. [3]
During production, Potash filmed the music group Arrested Development as they visited Debbie Peagler in prison and sang with Peagler and the inmate gospel choir that she led. Their visit was meant to support Peagler's legal battle for her freedom, and call attention to the plight of other victims of abuse and wrongful incarceration. The band's performance of the Solomon Burke song "None of Are Free," with Peagler and the choir accompanying Arrested Development, is excerpted in the film and played in its entirety over the end credits. [4]
The film was funded by the Sundance Documentary Film Program, the San Francisco Foundation, the Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film at the Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Pacific Pioneer Fund, the Bay Area Video Coalition, the Women in Film Foundation Film Finishing Fund supported by Netflix, the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay, and Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco. [5]
The film was picked up by the Oprah Winfrey Network for broadcast and home video distribution. [6] OWN gave the film a national television primetime premiere in November 2011. PBS NewsHour also broadcast a nine-minute excerpt of the film as part of its Economist Film Project, [7] as a collaboration with The Economist . The film streamed for two years on Netflix and now streams here on Amazon Prime.
"Crime After Crime" earned strong praise from critics and audiences alike. On Amazon Prime, the film earned a 5-star average rating from user reviews, and the streaming service describes the film as "one of the most compelling and highly awarded documentaries of all time." The film received a 91% positive approval score on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 32 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. [8] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". [9] It also holds a rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars on Netflix, generated from an average from 104,747 user ratings. [10]
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011, and went on to earn a total of 25 major honors [11] including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, The National Board of Review's Freedom of Expression Award, and The Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism.
The film was a New York Times Critics' Pick. In her review of Crime After Crime, The New York Times film critic Jeanette Catsoulis called the film a "wrenching documentary" and wrote that its portrayal of Debbie Peagler "makes it difficult to leave the theater with dry eyes and an untouched heart." She added that filmmaker Yoav Potash's "moral outrage is magnificent, swelling from hushed to howling without the help of narration or posturing from the unfailingly dignified Ms. Peagler or her quietly dedicated lawyers." [12]
The Washington Post listed the film as an Editors' Pick. The Post's film critic Stephanie Merry began her review with: "Some movies prove so eye-opening that a viewer may feel the urge to recount the story, start to finish, to friends and acquaintances. Crime After Crime is that kind of film. The shocking, emotional documentary follows an abused, incarcerated woman whose quest for freedom meets a never-ending series of outlandish obstacles." [13]
New York Magazine also listed the film as a Critics' Pick, calling the film "riveting and devastating", and describing it as a story about "a great miscarriage of justice — but also one of heroic legal perseverance, with a surprisingly colorful cast of characters." [14]
The Los Angeles Times listed the documentary as "a must-see film" [15] and The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "a tremendously moving story, strong in social commitment and deftly woven out of years of footage." [16] Upon its Sundance Film Festival premiere, The Salt Lake Tribune called the film "a riveting examination of justice denied through political manipulation and prosecutorial callousness." [17]
Among the first honors bestowed upon the film were the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Film and Digital Media, presented by the Council on Foundations, and the Pursuit of Justice Award, presented by the California Women's Law Center.
In May 2011, the film won both the Audience Award for Best Documentary and the Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature at the 54th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, the first of several festivals to give the film multiple awards. [18]
Arrested Development is an American hip hop group, that was formed in Atlanta in 1988. It was founded by Speech and Headliner as a positive, Afrocentric alternative to the gangsta rap popular in the late 1980s. Baba Oje and frontman Speech met at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee when they were both students.
Carandiru is a 2003 drama film directed by Héctor Babenco. It is based on the book Estação Carandiru by Dr. Drauzio Varella, a physician and AIDS specialist, who is portrayed in the film by Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos.
Jeffrey Leib Nettler Zimbalist is an American filmmaker. He has been Academy Award shortlisted, has won a Peabody, a DuPont, 5 Emmy Awards with 17 Emmy nominations. He is the owner of film and television production company All Rise Films.
After Innocence is a 2005 American documentary film about men who were exonerated from death row by DNA evidence. Directed by Jessica Sanders, the film won the Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
Ondi Doane Timoner is an American filmmaker and the founder and chief executive officer of Interloper Films, a production company located in Pasadena, California.
Bryan Fogel is an American film director, producer, author, playwright, speaker and human rights activist, best known for the 2017 documentary Icarus, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018.
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe is a documentary film about the late American civil rights attorney William Kunstler directed by daughters Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler that premiered at the 25th Sundance Film Festival in January 2009.
Deborah Denise Peagler was a battered woman who was in prison from 1983 to 2009 for her involvement in the murder of Oliver Wilson, the man who abused her, forced her into prostitution, and molested her daughters. She was also known as "Tripp", and as Debbie, Debie, or Debi.
Elizabeth Freya Garbus is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are The Farm: Angola, USA,Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,Bobby Fischer Against the World,Love, Marilyn,What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Becoming Cousteau. She is co-founder and co-director of the New York City-based documentary film production company Story Syndicate.
Jonathan David Stack is an American documentary filmmaker. He is also a co-founder of World Vasectomy Day.
The Farm: Angola, USA is a 1998 award-winning documentary set in the notorious and largest American maximum-security prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. Loosely based on articles published in Life Sentences, drawn from the prison magazine, The Angolite, the film was directed and produced by Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus. Wilbert Rideau, a life prisoner who had been editor of the magazine since 1975, also participated in direction and was credited on the film.
Into the Abyss is a 2011 documentary film written and directed by Werner Herzog. It is about capital punishment, and focuses on a triple homicide that occurred in Montgomery County, Texas, in 2001. In the film, Herzog interviews the two young men convicted of the crime, Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, as well as family members and acquaintances of the victims and criminals, and individuals who have taken part in executions in Texas. The primary focus of the film is not the details of the case or the question of Michael and Jason's guilt or innocence, and, although Herzog's voice can be heard as he conducts the interviews, there is a minimal amount of narration, and he never appears onscreen, unlike in many of his films.
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front is a 2011 American documentary film by filmmaker Marshall Curry. It tells the story of activist Daniel G. McGowan of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), from his first arson attacks in 1996 to his 2005 arrest by the Department of Justice. The film also examines the ethics of the ELF and the nature of eco-terrorism.
Yoav Potash is an American writer and filmmaker whose works include the documentaries Crime After Crime and Food Stamped.
Joshua Safran is a nationally recognized champion for women's rights whose advocacy was featured in the award-winning documentary Crime After Crime. He is the author of the memoir Free Spirit: Growing Up On the Road and Off the Grid.
Howard Barish is president and CEO of Kandoo Films, an Oscar nominated, Emmy award-winning entertainment company known for its producing partnership with Ava DuVernay. Barish and Kandoo's most recognized project to date, 13th, is a 2016 American documentary from Netflix directed by DuVernay. Centered on race in the United States criminal justice system, the critically lauded film is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed slavery. It argues that slavery is being effectively perpetuated through mass incarceration.
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an American documentary filmmaker. She was the director, along with her husband, Jimmy Chin, for the film Free Solo, which won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film profiled Alex Honnold and his free solo climb of El Capitan in June 2017. Their first scripted film venture was Nyad, a biopic chronicling Diana Nyad's quest to be the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida.
Icarus is a 2017 American documentary film by Bryan Fogel. It was an initial attempt by Fogel to expose the inadequacy of existing policies and procedures to catch athletes who use banned performance-enhancing substances. But later, the project shifted its focus after pressures related to the World Anti-Doping Agency's investigation of doping in Russia led Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory and one of Fogel's primary advisors, to flee Russia and become a whistleblower.
Amanda Lipitz is an American director and producer of films and Broadway shows, including the documentary STEP. She's also a former voice actress, best known for voicing Zoey in the English localization of the Japanese anime series Mew Mew Power.
Malqueridas is a 2023 Chilean-German documentary film directed by Tana Gilbert, at her feature film debut. It premiered at the 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival.
{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)