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Ritual of Care: Screening My Film Inside a Women’s Prison
San Quentin Film Festival Presents: CCWF 2026. Photo by Javier Jimenez/SQFF. I was told to wear black. Black is the safe choice. But today, I take a page from formerly incarcerated Sing Sing star Clarence Maclin, who was wearing a galaxy-themed graphic tee when I met him at the 2025 San Quentin Film Festival. My shirt is patterned vividly with dinosaurs and aliens in space. I am embracing my inner child, honoring that goofy kid who made movies in his tiny bedroom just east of East LA.
This is my second time visiting prison, my first visiting a women’s prison, and I am on edge. Not because of the twenty-foot barbed-wire fences, or the watchful gaze of the prison guards, or the way I was just shuttled through two security checkpoints like cattle. I am on edge because I am here, in Chowchilla at the Central California Women’s Facility—where I am to screen my documentary short, Oscar’s Return, in front of 300 incarcerated women.
The San Quentin Film Festival puts incarcerated filmmakers and audiences in the same room as industry heavyweights. Today’s event was a curated program, the festival’s first foray outside of San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, and its first-ever event inside a women’s prison. Mudbound director Dee Rees sat on the women-in-film panel moderated by CCWF Journalism Guild member Lakisa “Kiki” Crowder. Emmy-winner W. Kamau Bell was set to moderate mine. The jury—drawn from the festival’s industry network, built in part from co-founder Cori Thomas’s years at Tribeca—included Minari producer Christina Oh, writer-director Christine Swanson, and Song Sung Blue cinematographer Amy Vincent. Jesse Vasquez, executive director of the Pollen Initiative and a formerly incarcerated journalist, coordinated weekly between SQFF’s inside and outside teams, with support from CCWF Warden Anissa De La Cruz and Public Information Officer Lt. Monique Williams, to make the day’s programming possible. The festival also included a screenplay and documentary pitch competition open exclusively to incarcerated writers. I was screening in the award-winning shorts program; Oscar’s Return had won last year’s jury award for Best Documentary Short.
None of that prepares you for the actual experience of being here. The red carpet and the razor wire. The jurors and the COs. On the wall of the visitation room, a sign reads: Our mission is to ensure public safety and successful reentry. After putting on my name tag, I shake hands with several of the incarcerated organizers. Kiley greets me with a strong smile. Others, unaccustomed to my free-world movements, seem uncertain about my offer for connection. As I walk onto the green, the harsh sun singes my skin and the dry Central Valley wind stings my eyes. I wonder what could grow here. But past the pageantry of surveillance is a rose garden, meticulously maintained. And just beyond, in front of a backdrop of barbed wire, is a playground. Beauty within the inhospitable.
Oscar had served 25 years on a life sentence he began as a juvenile. I met him through my work in the reentry space—I was volunteering with API RISE, an organization working at the intersection of immigration and incarceration. We ended up in the same meditation group for formerly incarcerated people, led by Venerable De Hong, a monk who runs trauma-informed mindfulness meditation programs inside prisons. When I met him, Oscar had spent more of his life inside than out. Returning to Los Angeles, he told me, felt like being an immigrant in his own city. The first time I watched him train a dog, I understood: he was learning to trust the world again. The dog barks, afraid. He snaps his fingers to get its attention, offers a treat, gently, waits—tries again, then again. Eventually the dog stills, letting him put on the leash. After two years of sitting together, Oscar and I made an agreement that the camera would witness his life lovingly and without judgment, like someone who had simply decided to stay. This is what I wish I would have had in high school, when my sister was arrested, and my world caved in: a compassionate witness. So we follow him as he trains dogs, passes out business cards, gets turned away by a family member he approached for help—a free man who always carries his past. If the film is patient enough, it stops being mine. It belongs to the people on screen, and eventually, to the room that receives it. I made the film for people like the women in this room—incarcerated like Oscar was, many of them soon to reenter society, as Oscar did. But I had no idea if it would do right by them. Were they going to feel seen?
Earlier in the day, a powerful gospel choir had electrified the room. The incarcerated jurors and organizers beamed with pride as their photos were taken on the red carpet. They had organized it themselves—sign-up sheets posted in each housing unit, seats limited to spread the opportunity as wide as possible across the facility. Prior to my film, a narrative short, So, Boom, screened to the room’s hooting, hollering, and laughter. My composer, Josh, who sat next to me, described the festival as the most spirited pep rally he’d ever been to. Oscar, also there with me, shuffled in his seat in anticipation. I knew these women would hold nothing back.
I held my breath as my film screened. The reactions were immediate. A woman behind me said the film was going to make her cry. Another, speaking of the dog in the film, said, “Aw, you will always have your best friend, won’t you?” The applause was spirited, and these women were not the type to clap out of charity. During the Q&A, a woman stood up and talked about CCWF’s dog training program, and said Oscar gave her hope of finding work when she paroles. Her first dog was adopted by a family who still sends her pictures and updates.
I looked around the room, feeling the impulse to make small talk, a connection. But soon, a break for lunch was announced. The incarcerated women were summoned. Minutes before, 300 women in blue had filled the room. Now the gymnasium held about 200 outside guests: industry executives, nonprofit organizers, government officials—mostly in black, but with a smattering of color. Without the women in blue, the room felt hollow.
After the women-in-film panel, Christine Swanson pulled me aside. “You’re leaking,” she said. She could tell I was down—uncertain about sustainable pathways in our industry amid the rise of AI, depressed about a development deal that had gone south. Then, she said, “These women are in here. And we are not.” It was tough love, and I was grateful for it. She was right. But her words stirred something else in me: are these women a distant, banished class—people we visit so we can feel better about our own circumstances?
The exchange stayed with me. Slipping through the cracks is not an abstraction to me. My sister could have been one of these women. Who had failed my sister? Who had failed these women? Before those handcuffs were placed on my sister, her school could not hold her. Our immigrant parents could not hold her. Our community could not hold her. Years later, the system’s weight would show.
Chowchilla is now synonymous with CCWF, but before the land became a prison in 1990, before farmers extracted it for profit as agricultural land, before colonizers carved it into parcels, it belonged to the Yokuts, a people who mourned their dead through an elaborate ceremony. They called themselves chaushila, meaning brave.
From somewhere in the section where the women in blue sat, someone sneezed. A whole row lit up with bless you’s, layered and overlapping, said with a vigor that surprised me. Here was something the institution couldn’t suppress: the reflex of care. Today was filled with headcounts and buzzers, COs’ watchful stares, dress-coded segregation. In the face of ritualized violence, these women had built their own rituals of care through tiny gestures.
The festival was drawing to a close. Krysten Webber, the winner of the Narrative Pitch Competition, came to speak with Oscar when I was within earshot. She told him that she had friends who had been released, but that freedom was not what they were promised. They were struggling to find community on the outside, just like Oscar had. She didn’t have to say the rest: that reentry would be difficult, that perhaps she would be better off in here. At least in prison, she has community. At least in prison, she is an award-winning writer. I think about the sign: Our mission is to ensure public safety and successful reentry.
I tell her congratulations. She says, matter-of-factly, that her writing wasn’t even that good. I wanted to tell her that the jury saw it differently. People who read scripts for a living had chosen hers. I wanted to tell her what Cori had told me: “The work is the work”—that anything made within these walls deserves to be the same conversation as anything made outside them. But by then, a line has already formed. The women in blue moving toward the door.
“I have to go,” Krysten says. She shoots us a look like she’s said goodbye many times before. And she disappears into the mass of women in blue.
The line empties. She is gone.
Some names have been changed to protect privacy.
