This year’s documentary sensation is Time, now streaming on Amazon Prime, a film that announces the arrival of Garrett Bradley as an accomplished filmmaker. Telling the decades spanning story of Fox Rich, an entrepreneur and abolitionist who spent almost 20 years fighting for the release of her husband Rob Rich out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola. He has been given a 60 year sentence for a robbery they both committed in a moment of desperation. Talk about punishment that doesn’t fit the crime.

The film’s 2020 journey of accolades started at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where Bradley won the Best Director award in the Documentary feature competition. Since then it has played the Toronto and New York film festivals. And it is absolutely my favorite film of 2020.

The film is a mix of Fox’s video diaries that she recorded over the years with insight into the last couple of years of her family’s story shot by Bradley. That was not the original concept. After ending the shoot Fox gave Bradley a treasure of archival footage that she had shot through the years. Bradley changed direction and incorporated Fox’s footage. Recently I had the chance to speak to the Riches and Bradley over zoom and I started the conversation at this juncture asking Fox why she gave Bradley her video diaries.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity... 

Fox Rich: Garrett was so in tune, so in love with what she was putting together, that I knew in my spirit that this is going to be something amazing. I just knew that it was going to be something that we would be so pleased with because her heart was so attached to the project.

Murtada Elfadl: Garret, how did you find the balance between your artistic hope for the film and honoring the subject and their family. Was there tension there?

Garett Bradley: Luckily there wasn't tension there. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that I had the opportunity to work with Fox briefly on a short film that I did called Alone. And she got to see how I worked and how the film went out into the world. I think that established a level of trust between us. I like to think that the films that I make are a reflection of the people I'm working with. I never saw Fox or her family or anybody that I'm working with as subjects. I'm not looking at their life experience as access. There are certain terminologies that I personally really want to remove from the vocabulary, because they take away what we ultimately are doing, which is energy work as filmmakers, especially as documentarians when we're working with people. So I felt really grateful that there wasn't any conflict in terms of the direction there because I think there was a lot of transparency and a lot of trust.

Murtada Elfadl: Fox and Rob, can you tell me about the first time you saw the film and what you felt?

Fox Rich: Tears, tears, tears, and more tears. It was horrible the way that I broke down. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what Garrett was putting together, I had just given her my videos that I had never watched before, stockpiled over 20 years. My response after the film was over was I can't believe there was so much of me in there.

Garrett Bradley

What about you, Rob?

Rob Rich: It was amazing and at the same time, it was painful. It was painful because of the fact that I had to go back and see what I had actually missed over such a long period of time. But overall, I would have to say that the film was therapeutic. I've had an opportunity now to probably see it maybe about 20 times, every time I walk away feeling just a little bit lighter as a result of having witnessed it yet again.

So I’m assuming you think the film really told your story well? 

Rob Rich: If I didn't know any better, I would say that Garrett has been there the whole time. Taking the old archival footage that Fox had documented over all that time and for them to never really cross notes in terms of how to incorporate it all together and to see that she was able to create a seamless line across that. It was absolutely amazing. Garrett is a genius.

One of the things that really struck me is that this is a story of injustice. But also, we don't see Black suffering on screen like we see in other films. There is this note of hope and resilience throughout the film. Can you talk about that?  

Garett Bradley: Yeah, thank you. I think that as an artist, as a filmmaker, there are different ways for us to say the same thing. And I think that a lot of the trauma and the violence that we live in, in America serves a very important role. But my personal kind of leaning is on the opposite side of the spectrum. I think with the same intention, which is to spur emotion, to get people to want to be proactive and involved in things. I feel very firmly that love and beauty are just as inspiring as anything else. And that love and beauty are also forms of resistance. And so it was a conscious choice on my part. And one that I think could serve as a coming home to and an honoring to those that are most directly affected. That in many ways the violence and the trauma when it's repeated, although it is important. I don't feel that that's for us. I think those are things that we already know, there are for people who don't know. I wanted this to be for everybody, you know?

Fox Rich, then and now in a shot from the film

And that shows in the film. I wanted to ask you about this final montage; the last few minutes in the film. It's really very moving. And it gets the audience to a place of catharsis. It also to me was a fantastic way of rendering the concept of time cinematically. Can you talk about that?

Garett Bradley: I think that one of the things that was really important for myself and Gabe Rhodes, the film's editor, was when we're talking about incarceration, from this perspective of love. Some of what is afforded to us then is that we're not bound by logical chronology or linearity of how the story unfolds. It gives us the opportunity then to experience the story in this reality as the family truly did. Which is that our history, our memories, the things that we've experienced all exists in us in the present time that there is kind of no past, present or future. They all kind of collide and exist within themselves. I wanted the film to feel that same way. And I think the end is sort of maybe to a certain extent the most literal part of the whole film, but hopefully speaking to those same ideas.

Murtada Elfadl: It's also very moving. Thank you so much for your time and good luck with the film.