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In the United States, more than 2,500 individuals are serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes they committed when they were 17 years old or younger. A powerful new documentary, “Lost for Life,” tells the stories of these individuals, their families and the families of the victims. The film is the result of writer-director-producer Joshua Rofé’s intensive efforts over four years.
The film is being distributed by SnagFilms, Indiewire’s parent company. Produced by Ted Leonsis, Rick Allen, Mark Jonathan Harris, Peter Landesman and executive producers Scott Budnick and Ari Silber, “Lost for Life” highlights four stories of homicide and the resulting life sentences for the teenage offenders.
“At a time when TV is too often filled with manufactured ‘reality’, LMN is showing real leadership and corporate citizenship by dedicating a key programming slot to a film on a complex and challenging topic,” said Allen, CEO of SnagFilms. “‘Lost for Life’ is gritty and intense. We know from its success for the BBC in the UK that TV audiences will be drawn into this experience in a manner that few documentaries can accomplish, and we thank LMN for making that possible in the US.”
Veteran documentary filmmaker Harris, who claimed Oscars for “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport” and “The Redwoods,” collaborated with Rofé as a mentor on the project. In fact, the two worked so well together, they are now in production on their next documentary, “Swift Current,” about the impact of sexual abuse.
“I would not have ended up with the film we ended up with if not for Mark pretty much showing me how to be a director,” Rofé told Indiewire.
Leonsis said, “I fell in love with Josh; his passion for this story and the innate tension I felt around ‘could I forgive these children if they had slain my loved ones?’ We talk about forgiveness and redemption often in society, but this film really called the question to me, and it dealt with such a big and sensitive and hidden issue as well: Why are we as a country so populated with so many children sentenced to life without parole? Who are they? Should they be released and forgiven? When? Why?”
Leonsis said the project is a “true example of ‘Filmanthropy’ –shining the light on a tough subject and activating discourse and change.”
READ MORE: Watch Exclusive “Lost for Life” Trailer
Indiewire recently spoke with Harris and Rofé about how the project developed and how their collaboration led to the final product. Below is an edited version of our conversation.
How did you both become associated with this project and whose idea was it from the start?
Then I got the film to a place where I had about twenty minutes worth of what I would call an extended trailer. And through Peter Landesman, who was producing the film from the beginning, we reached out to Ted Leonsis (co-founder of SnagFilms) and then I met with Rick Allen (CEO of SnagFilms). You know, cut to — Ted and Rick came on board. They said, ‘We want to help you. We want to make this film.’ It was amazing. I literally had twenty minutes of footage and had distribution before even having a cut of the film or an editor on board or anything.
But what it did was… Look. I didn’t go to college. I didn’t go to film school. It gave me a tremendous amount of experience in this sort of three-and-half, four year period to learn, more than anything, just how to see something through to completion, regardless of what the outcome is.
And then I made a narrative short film in the jungle in Trinidad that a great producer named Alex Orlovsky produced and it was the first time filmmaking and transmitting an idea through the lens started to seem to make sense. And when I was in Trinidad, I met all these people in this village that we were shooting. That film is called the “The Smallest River in Almirante” and I just thought, these people are more interesting than anything that I can personally cook up. And so my heart and mind were open to documentary.
So then when I met that judge it just felt like, ‘This is what I need to do. I need to make a documentary about this.’ The ‘this’ became the issue of juvenile life without parole and these people who are met along the way, serving their sentence and whose lives have been affected by the sentence. Our editor, Jason Rosenfield, who’s a great editor, won a few Emmys — total veteran — did an “American Undercover” series on HBO a few years ago — we were in the editing room for a good seven months and we had so many characters and storylines and there was no real clear narrative thread and we were banging our heads against the wall and we were lost, frankly. We had gotten the cut to a point where things started to seem to make a little sense but we needed somebody who could come in with a fresh eye and help us assess what we had. And through a friend of Jason’s, an editor called Kate Amend, who is Mark’s editor, we got together with Mark and hit it off and he basically told us that we were closer than we thought we were to having the documentary be what it could be. Then the three of us just… We hammered away for about two months and we had the film.
The task was to make the film work. It wasn’t about whose suggestion was better. It wasn’t a question of ego, although all of us have egos. It was a task-orientated operation. How do we make this film work? And when you get into that kind of situation, it’s very — The film tells you whether it’s working or not, and everyone is open, “Let’s try this. Okay, this works. No, it doesn’t work.” It’s not a question of whose idea it is. It’s a question of whether it works on screen or not. The proof is always right there on the screen.
Watch an exclusive clip from “Lost for Life” below:
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