Afterward, we sat at our kitchen tables, exploring ideas, words, and memories — and the complex emotions around them. As we created the script and drew more than 10,000 frames, our family and friends carved out time to contribute, helping to convey their feelings of growing isolation amid our broken justice system. While this film built community through its creation, there is an undeniable emptiness that exists in each frame. One that can never truly touch the void etched into you as you hear a buzzer abruptly halt a conversation with someone you love while he’s in jail, and the line slowly cuts out.

So this film is a result of our shared interest in conveying what is happening to our community. Early on, it screened at local venues throughout Durham, and helped to contribute to larger activist movements — and was even used in the sentencing statements for Destini’s brother’s trial. It is a tragically American story: what happens when someone enters our prison system, through the eyes of those he leaves behind. Because walls of incarceration extend beyond prison. They exist in our homes, our communities and the spaces in between.