Tehachapi
JR / France / 2023 / 93 min
The hardest core of inmates in a maximum security prison in California participate in a life-changing photography project with French art star and Oscar-nominated director JR.
California Correctional Institution, better known as Tehachapi, is a maximum security prison in Southern California. Here, inmates are serving life sentences and everyday life behind bars is marked by gang conflicts and ethnic segregation. But one day, French street artist and Oscar-nominated film director JR (‘Faces Places’) knocks on the prison gate and invites the inmates to take part in a major art project. Together, they will install a giant photo collage of portraits of themselves in the prison yard. For three years, we follow JR using his camera, a bucket of glue and gigantic sheets of paper to draw the tough and often deeply traumatised men out of their shells and into a collective community across gangs and ethnic identities. That the effect is quite incredible is demonstrated in an unforgettable scene where a former white supremacist has his swastika lasered off his face by a Jewish specialist.