"When they see us" Ava DuVernay tells the story of Central Park Five: NPR

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay says she receives about twenty tweets every day from people asking her to make a film based on their story. But this #wishfulthinking tweet from Raymond Santana caught his attention:

Santana was one of five teenagers arrested for the assault and rape of a white woman in 1989 in Central Park, New York. The boys were pushed into false confessions and sentenced. All the time served. A murderer who was already serving a life sentence later confessed to the rape.

DuVernay remembers everything that happened: "I was a teenager on the west coast, while they were teenagers on the east coast …", she says. "It meant a lot to be asked by them."

His Netflix miniseries When they see us will be released on Friday. A 2012 documentary titled Central Park Five also explores the wrongful conviction, but DuVernay says "there was more story to tell."

"It's been expensive," she says. "It's a famous case that has allowed me to question all the different parts of the criminal justice system." She sees this miniseries as an "accompaniment piece" to her documentary 13th, which draws a line of demarcation between slavery and mass incarceration.

Although DuVernay explores the criminal justice system as a whole, When they see us also zooms in to show how incarceration fractures individual families.

"When you incarcerate a person, you incarcerate his family, his future, his community," says DuVernay. "In the many cases in which we incarcerate people, we incarcerate a generation of people (…). It's something we have to look at, knowing what it is – not just looking at it and saying, "It's a shame. & # 39; "

Highlights of the interview

On the sorrow of having lost a family member in prison

Many of us, most of us, have lost someone in our lives and we know what it does, you know, at the time of the loss, the first week the first months, the first year of the loss and two years and three years – and that starts to change. It's still there, but it's starting to change over time because there's a distance between that person's presence – that person's physical presence – in your life. So it's this idea of ​​separation, but a presence that never allows grief to turn into anything else – except, you know, a deep absence that is inevitable.

On the portrait of the fear of boys

Many people say, "How can you say something that is not true?" Okay, I'm a black or brown child in a closed room with white men who are figures of authority who have weapons on their belts and badges and are terrifying. … They were scared. They were told lies and they did what they thought they should do to get them out of the room, not knowing enough about their rights to know what they were doing, it was put them in a cell. … [The] the movement, the framing and the composition of the camera – all this was meant to put you in the hearts of boys as their adrenaline began to escape the terror of where they were.

If New York City or the prosecution have acknowledged the existence of wrongdoing

The city never apologized, they settled. No one on the prosecution side has ever excused himself. They remained faithful to the fact that even though the real man came out and said: I did it, I did it alone. Even if all the material evidence emanating from him was matched to the victim and it was actually him, and he alone, these people still refuse to acknowledge that they – without having made any mistake – lied. Menti.

If she undertakes to "change minds"

My goal was to tell the stories of men and certainly to highlight the greatest injustices within the system. … But my goal is to change no one's mind. … I want to honor men, honor their experience. I want to show black and brown people themselves within the system that they are fully human. The purpose of my work is not … trying to convince anyone of anything but to honor what is.

On the projection of the film with Central Park Five

I had the honor of sitting behind them while they were watching the movie. … we worked on it together. I have worked very closely with them for four years. Sitting behind them and watching them look at each other, look at each other, look at each other, in this epic five-hour epic … about the injustice inflicted upon them was deeply moving for them, deeply moving for me. … [It was] just a very intimate, personal and emotional moment that goes beyond anything I've ever experienced as a filmmaker. … I do not know what can happen. My goal was to tell their stories – and all I needed was to get the "right done" from them, tears in their eyes.

If men are at peace

No amount of money can bring back your childhood, your youth, your family structure lost or irremediably damaged. … everything was affected by that. … There are so many things you can not recover. So no, I think they are far from peace.

NPR contacted former Attorney Linda Fairstein, described by Felicity Huffman in When they see us, for comment.

She told NPR that her lawyers had sent the producers of the series documents and videos related to the investigation, and that she would agree to talk to them only after reviewing the documents. Fairstein said she had never heard from producers after that.

She also described the description of her as "grossly" inaccurate and stated that the film was a "fictional dramatization of events".

Victoria Whitley-Berry and Ashley Brown produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Beth Novey has adapted it for the Web.