26th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival

Program

Amidst the redwood trees on the California-Oregon border sits one of the most infamous prisons in US history - Pelican Bay. For decades, it held mostly Black and Brown men alone in tiny cells for indefinite periods based on questionable evidence. Then one day in 2013, 30,000 prisoners went on hunger strike. THE STRIKE weaves together, thread-by-thread, 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. Grounded in testimonies from the hunger strikers themselves, the film details how the protest was conceived from a whisper inside the halls of Pelican Bay to a colossal feat across California prisons. With unprecedented access to state prison officials and never-before-seen footage from inside Pelican Bay, THE STRIKE reveals the panic that gripped the highest echelons of state government.