Join Mural Arts Philadelphia for a FREE screening of HBO’s stunning 2016 documentary Solitary, followed by a panel discussion with director Kristi Jacobson and Johnny Perez at the Wilma Theater on Tuesday, March 7, from 6–8 p.m. This event is part of Voices, a Mural Arts project supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Solitary (2016) is an unflinching, immersive documentary, featuring intimate interviews that reflect on violent childhood, the dangers of prison life, and the struggles of incarcerated people to maintain sanity in the unrelenting monotony and isolation of confinement. Interwoven with these stories are observations of corrections officers, who describe the toll their stressful jobs can take in a community with few employment opportunities.

Jacobson, the documentarian behind the film, and Perez, a formerly incarcerated individual now working on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, will explore life on both sides of the bars, raising provocative questions about punishment in America today. Bianca van Heydoorn, Director of Educational Initiatives at the Prisoner Reentry Institute at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Baz Dreisinger, author of Incarceration Nations and professor at John Jay College, will co-moderate.