Miami Film Festival 2024 Red Carpet Interview - Sing Sing director Greg Kwedar and producer Monique Walton
Playing at the 41st Miami Film Festival at the Coral Gables Art Cinema was the critically acclaimed film Sing Sing, co-written and directed by Greg Kwedar and produced by Monique Walton, Clint Bentley, and Kwedar. Kwedar was also presented with The Impact Award at the festival.
Based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing maximum security prison, the film centres on a group of inmates involved in the creation of theatrical stage shows through the program. The film stars stars professional actors Colman Domingo and Paul Raci, alongside many real-life formerly incarcerated men who were themselves alumni of the program during their incarceration, including Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin and Sean San José.
The film premiered in the Special Presentations program at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.[4] The film is scheduled to be released by A24 in the United States in July 2024.
In the film, a small group of prisoners inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility, one of the world's most infamous maximum security prisons, attempt to stage their own original production, "Breakin' The Mummy's Code."
Blackfilmandtv.com spoke with director Greg Kwedar and producer Monique Walton on the red carpet on the making of the film.
How did the film come about?
Greg Kwedar: We've been working on this movie for over 8 years. The project first came about, I had been producing a short documentary inside of a maximum security prison in Kansas. It was my first time ever behind the walls. And on the tour of the facility I passed by a cell and there was a young man raising a rescue dog inside. And it just completely upended all of my expectations that whatever I thought about prison coming into it. Largely built upon the movies that I had seen. I just saw this healing that was happening in both directions between this man and this animal. And I was just desperate to learn who was doing things differently in prison. I got on Google that night, looked up that same question, came across this program in New York, this theater program Rehabilitation Through the Arts. I was taken really from that moment on. And it's been a process that's been about inviting people in that have actually real lived experience from the alumni of this program. Really shaping the story with us to actually becoming a volunteer teacher inside the prison program. And then at making the film, centering a lot of our cast, the majority of our cast, actually are alumni of this program as well.
How did you get involved?
Monique Walton: Well, I met Greg in Austin through the Austin Film Society. We had both been there for about the same amount of time, but we never met. So we intersected and then he told me about this story. And I was just really taken by it and felt that the way that they wanted to make it in collaboration with the community was so powerful. So I joined kind of late in the development process, relatively, because they were already six years in by the time I joined before we went into production. I just felt like it was the right way to tell the story was with true collaborative process with the community.
How did you go about getting Colman as your lead?
Greg Kwedar: Well, about six years into the development, we had a breakthrough and really how we were going to focus on the story. There's a lot of ways you could have told it. But once we had this revelation that the core of this movie should be the story of a friendship, a real life friendship between these two men that we had known for years, Divine I and Divine G. I had this moment where I wrote down in 15 minutes how that new story would unfold. And at the end of that, in my journal, I wrote, Colman Domingo is Divine G. And I manifested it in my notebook. And a few months later, we happened to be on Zoom with him. He had read the article that the movie was based on. And we told him about the next six years of development. And at the end of it, he was just like, you know, at this point in my career, I'm realizing that there are some projects that are seeking you to teach you something and you don't know what it is. You just know that it's trying to. And I'm saying yes to those now. So I've got three weeks open in July. And I was like, we'll take it.
When you think about the guys outside of Colman, these guys, there are incarcerated, formerly incarcerated. I don't know how many of them have acted on film.
Was that a challenge?
Monique Walton: I mean, they hadn't acted. A lot of them hadn't acted on film, but they had acted in theater. So I think that it was really the challenge was just, bringing what their skills that they had to the screen. And I think Greg did an amazing job of inviting them into that space and inviting them to find their way on a film set. And Colman also did an amazing job of bridging that, bridging those skills between theater and film and how the acting styles can differ.
What do you want audiences to get from seeing this movie?
Greg Kwedar: Oh, there's so many things I think you could take away from it. I think that if you, you know, allow yourself, I think, along with that allowing yourself, I would say, permission to feel something. And to give yourself to all of the emotions that it's tapping inside you that maybe you've been holding on to really tightly. And that you can do it in a theater alongside someone else and realize you're sort of part of a broader community than maybe even realized. And I think I want people to see the human potential behind the walls that could come out into our world and make our communities more vibrant, beautiful, and transformative.
This movie has played at Toronto, it's played at other festivals, it's not out fully yet to the public. But so far, from just traveling through the festival circuit, and even through the production of this, what have you learned skillset-wise that may help you out, both of you, on projects further down the road?
Monique Walton: What have I learned on this film? I mean, I think the main thing I learned is that vulnerability can be a real superpower. And I think that that is something that I'm bringing to all aspects of my life, not just in filmmaking. So, yeah, that would be the most powerful thing I learned.
Greg Kwedar: I think a lot of filmmakers feel a need to, like, hold really tightly onto their ideas and their script and their project and their process. But when you open up your hands and you invite your community into the process and give people space to bring forth all of themselves and all of their ideas, and you let go of the fear of something being taken from you, you can receive so, so much more. And the movie will show that.