Criminal
Featuring the music and lyrics of Tony Award winners Stew Stewart and Heidi Rodewald (“Passing Strange”) the animation of Cinema Eye winner Thomas Curtis (“Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project”) and the direction of Emmy winner Robe Imbriano (“Soul of a Nation”), Criminal is an animated musical documentary short film that confronts the injustice of people held at the Harris County Jail in Houston, Texas. The vast majority are there because they don’t have enough cash to pay their way out before trial. Because they are poor, thousands are held for months or even shipped to jails out of state when they are supposed to be presumed innocent.
Directors Spotlight
Robe Imbriano
Director
Robe Imbriano is an Emmy Award-winning showrunner. He was the showrunner of the Hulu series, Killing County, with Colin Kaepernick. He co-created the Netflix documentary series Amend, starring Will Smith and featuring Mahershala Ali, Samuel L. Jackson, Sherrilyn Ifill, Bryan Stevenson and a distinguished group of scholars, participants and actors to tell the story of the 14th Amendment and America’s struggle with equality. He was a showrunner of the launch of Soul of a Nation, the very first major broadcast network series about Black life in America, nominated for 11 Emmy Awards in its very first season. Imbriano has written and produced for everyone from Diane Sawyer and Peter Jennings to Bill Moyers and Oprah Winfrey, winning numerous honors along the way. He created a series of first-person pieces featuring the voices of America’s economically and socially marginalized for ABC News in prime time. He is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School where he is also Director of the Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights.
- Runtime
- 19 minutes
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Director
- Robe Imbriano
- Animator
- Thomas Curtis
- Executive Producer
- Dominique Bravo, Reggie Williams, Stew Stewart, Thomas Curtis
- Music
- Stew Stewart & Heidi Rodewald
- Producer
- Robe Imbriano, Heidi Rodewald
- Premiere
- United States