Directors/ Producers: JoeBill Muñoz, Lucas Guilkey
Description:
A story of a generation of California men who endured decades of solitary confinement and, against all odds, launched the largest hunger strike in U.S. history. Amidst the redwood trees on the California-Oregon border sits one of the most infamous prisons in US history. Pelican Bay is a supermax prison opened in 1989 and designed specifically for mass-scale solitary confinement. For decades, it held men alone in tiny cells indefinitely. Then one day in 2013, 30,000 prisoners went on hunger strike. The Strike weaves together a half century of personal and criminal justice history into a single, compelling narrative around the drama of the 2013 hunger strike to end indefinite isolation. Told through the stories of the men who survived this practice, the film details how the protest was conceived from a whisper inside the halls of Pelican Bay to a colossal feat across California prisons.
Biography:
JoeBill Muñoz recently produced several television series for Left/Right Media and The New York Times. His most recent film, Maletero, was commissioned by ITVS and premiered on PBS. As a producer, he’s worked on The Circus (Showtime), The New York Times Presents (Hulu), and The Grab, a feature documentary directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite in collaboration with Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting. His independent work has been supported by the Sundance Documentary Fund, Firelight Media, ITVS, SFFILM, the Reva and David Logan Foundation, and others.
Lucas Guilkey recently served as story producer on Aftershock, a feature documentary about the US maternal health crisis that premiered at Sundance in 2022 and is streaming on Hulu/Disney+. His directorial debut, What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong?, a short documentary about the coverup of a young man’s death in county jail, won best documentary at the BAFTA Student Film Awards and was nominated for best documentary short at the Social Impact Media Awards.
