Free Men

Direction: Anne-Frédérique Widman
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 90 minutes

Official Selection of the Film festival and international forum on human rights (FIFDH) in 2018

As part of the exhibition of Kenneth Reams (from 29 August to 29 September 2022), you will have the opportunity to attend the screening of the documentary directed by Anne-Frédérique Widmann on Kenneth Reams, sentenced at the age of 18 to death in the United States for a murder that another confessed to having committed. In confinement for nearly 30 years on death row, Kenneth struggles through art and love to survive loneliness and injustice.

An exclusive debate with Kenneth Reams and Anne-Frédérique Widmann will take place after the screening.

Synopsis

Sentenced to death, Kenneth has survived decades of imprisonment in complete isolation. Love and art have freed him from his chains. He found a purpose in life, when all signs of hope seemed lost. In solitary confinement for the last 25 years, Kenneth has pushed back the walls of his cell to become a painter, a poet, the founder of a non-profit, and an art event organizer – while fighting at the same time for justice. At age 18, Kenneth Reams was convicted for capital murder without firing a bullet. He became the youngest inmate on Arkansas death row. Alongside art, the film shows how love can cross barbed wire and the length of an ocean in Kenneth’s love for Isabelle, a French artist who wants to become his wife. While Arkansas rushes to execute ten inmates in ten days – an absolute American record - the film captures Kenneth’s struggle, with unprecedented access to his daily battle, and raises universal questions - How can we fight injustice? How can we continue to move forward and find a sense of purpose in life? FREE MEN is a film for all those who have thought, one day, of giving up.

The Director

Anne-Frédérique Widmann is an investigative journalist, producer and documentary filmmaker. Hired at the newspaper La Suisse in 1989, she trained in economic journalism and then joined, in 1992, the magazine L’Hebdo for which she carried out surveys and major reports.

Previously, she was notably a correspondent in the United States for European media, co-producer and presenter of the documentary program Temps Present and head of the investigation unit of Swiss National Television and Radio (RTS). With New-York Times editorial cartoonist Chappatte, she co-founded the art & documentation project Windows on Death Row.