A Hard Straight

"Goro Toshima's "A Hard Straight" offers an up-close look at the temptations and frustrations faced by three parolees as they grapple with challenges of life in the outside world after long prison terms. The film imposes arresting dramatic structure on day-to-day struggles of its characters, and remains scrupulously even-handed while questioning how much each ex-convict is responsible for his or her own plight."
–Joe Leydon
Variety

MORE ABOUT THE FILM

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A gang member, a mother, and a small-time dealer. They served their sentences, they're on parole. Now they're about to discover that walking out the prison gates is just the beginning.

A Hard Straight is a documentary about doing time on the outside. A Hard Straight tells the story of what it is really like for a person to make the radical transition from prison life to society. The film interweaves the stories of two men and one woman as they begin to construct new lives on the outside. We see them from the ecstatic moment of their first taste of freedom, to the inevitable frustrations, joys, and banality of life outside of prison. And finally, we see the people in either a successfully established life on the outside or a return to prison.

For the 500,000 men and women each year who are released from prison, there are many unknowns: What will you have to do to survive after walking out with $200 gate money? How does an extended stay in a world defined by violence and subjugation affect your ability to live your own life? And what sort of resources, both within the community and yourself, will you need to have to make it on the outside?

A Hard Straight is an powerful, intimate, and enlightenting film that sheds light on the profound experience of doing time and trying to go straight.

Appropriate for:
College/University

74 minutes • DVD
74 minutes • VHS

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74 min./ DVD

Institutions (Colleges/Universities)

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74 min./ VHS

Institutions (Colleges/Universities)

Community Groups/ Public Libraries/ High Schools

Rental