California’s oldest prison is gearing up to host an entirely new cast of characters, including some Hollywood stars.
San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, where a $239 million overhaul is underway, will open its imposing doors on October 23-24 for hundreds of guests for its second annual showcase of currently and formerly incarcerated filmmakers. Actors Jesse Williams and Clarence Maclin, along with other artists and entertainment influencers, are slated to serve on an industry jury to judge short films alongside a panel of inmates, who will assess feature-length submissions.
The San Quentin Film Festival, the first of its kind held inside a prison, will highlight 35 official selections, including narrative and documentary shorts like Chasing Redemption, Coming Home and Inmates With Talent. Organizers told Newsweek they expect another riveting exhibition of budding artists determined to obliterate barriers.
“What I’m most excited about is the work that the men inside are doing,” SQFF co-producer Brian Asey Gonsoulin said. “I was kind of blown away last year by what they were doing.”
Gonsoulin, 58, served 13 years at the notorious prison prior to his release in early 2024. While behind bars, he had been a mainstay at the San Quentin Media Center, where he co-produced an award-winning documentary short, Friendly Signs, written and directed by Rahsaan Thomas, who was also freed from San Quentin last year and launched the film festival with playwright and longtime volunteer Cori Thomas.
“When you’re incarcerated and you have an opportunity to really focus on something bigger than you, it gives you purpose,” Gonsoulin explained. “For a lot of the guys who are inside, this is giving them purpose. Some of them probably have never had an opportunity like this, and might not ever get another opportunity like this, right?”
Gonsoulin knows redemption well. He spent a total of 26 years in prison after being convicted of kidnapping and rape and receiving an 83-year-to-life sentence but now takes pride as a filmmaker witnessing the “next generation” of artists transform themselves, much like the ongoing renovation at the facility formerly known as San Quentin State Prison.
“It’s going to be powerful,” he said. “What I’m really most excited about is the men inside having this opportunity to have life-changing work be put out into society.”
Governor Gavin Newsom announced in March 2023 that San Quentin, which previously housed California’s death row, would be revamped from a maximum-security prison into a facility designed to foster rehabilitation and education. The new complex, featuring classrooms for coding instruction and media production as part of a campus-like atmosphere, is slated to be unveiled in January.
State officials are working to incorporate programs and best practices at San Quentin from correctional facilities in countries like Norway, which boasts one of the lowest recidivism rates worldwide. Research also shows that every $1 spent on prison education and rehabilitation efforts saves more than $4 on the cost of reincarceration, according to the Department of Justice.
“In California, we know that that rigorous rehabilitation is the only way to reduce recidivism and increase community safety,” Newsom spokeswoman Diana Crofts-Pelayo told Newsweek in a statement. “And rehabilitation works best when we provide opportunities for individuals to better themselves. The same goes for our public safety institutions and there’s no better example than San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. We are working every day to meaningfully improve public safety by enhancing rehabilitative opportunities to the incarcerated population.”
More than 60 submissions were received for the two-day festival, organizers said. The short film category will be judged by a panel of actors, writers and producers, including Williams and Maclin, as well as Vanessa Williams, Esai Morales, Gbenga Akinnagbe and Nnamdi Asomugha.
That industry jury will also evaluate an expanded screenplay and documentary pitch competition, which received 31 submissions from incarcerated writers in state prisons from Mississippi to California.
Maclin, who costarred in Sing Sing, a 2023 film about his incarceration at the maximum-security prison in New York, joined the festival last year for its opening night screening. Maclin’s fellow cast member, Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velasquez, is also scheduled to attend the opening night screening of The Sing Sing Chronicles, a documentary about his exoneration of a 1998 murder conviction just two weeks before the 2024 festival.
Cofounder Cori Thomas said the festival offers a platform for the “transformational impact” of programs such as those offered at the San Quentin Media Center.
“It is an opportunity for residents who have participated in these training programs — from journalists to podcasters to the filmmakers who are training and working there — to share their creative work and contribute to changing the cultural narrative,” Thomas told Newsweek in a statement. “To date, the recidivism rate of returning citizens who were part of the Media Center program prior to release, is zero.”
Gonsoulin, meanwhile, said festivalgoers should “leave their expectations at home,” predicting that many will leave the 2,500-inmate facility with a vastly reimagined perspective.
“Once you come into the prison, it’s a whole different atmosphere,” he said. “I haven’t met a person who came inside of San Quentin who didn’t leave thinking differently.”
The filmmakers should be universally accepted as talented creators who made egregious mistakes, people who are admittedly still trying to “figure it out,” Gonsoulin said.
“It’s giving them purpose,” he told Newsweek. “They can see — they might’ve been messing up before, but now they want to act right because they want to be a part of this.”
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