Alone (2017)

Shortlisted by the Academy for Oscar consideration in the best documentary short category

Alone tells the story of a 20-something black girl in Louisiana, who is in love with a prisoner apparently serving a ten year sentence and intends to marry him. I say apparently, because this black and white short is frustratingly vague about details. It's mainly composed of close-ups and voice overs of the girl pining and musing in dream like reveries.

Winner of the Short Film Jury Award in non-fiction at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, the documentary directed by Garrett Bradley follows Alone Watts, who becomes a single mother overnight when her partner is jailed. Shot in black and white, the film offers a “critical way of talking about love and the universal importance of love for all people,” Bradley told TheWrap.

Investigation into the layers of mass incarceration and its shaping of the modern black American family is seen through the eyes of a single mother in New Orleans, Louisiana.

This short documentary is produced in collaboration with the Sundance Institute Short Documentary Fund supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Garrett Bradley is a director and editor, known for Below Dreams (2014), Op-Docs (2011) and The Earth is Humming (2018).

Directed by Garrett Bradley