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The Reentry Project. Xiara's Song
Like many girls her age, seven-year-old Xiara likes to make up songs,
eat ice cream and play with her best friend. A real "daddy's girl,"
she's pretty and independent, and dreams of being a superstar one day.
And like ten million other American children, Xiara is the child of
a prison inmate.Xiara's Song explores the world of a young girl struggling to
stay connected to her incarcerated father, Harold.
Xiara idolizes Harold - who is serving a ten-year federal prison sentence
after a third-strike weapons possession conviction - from afar. But
her mother tries desperately to keep her daughter from following him
down the brutal and self-destructive path that led to his incarceration.
Combining modern-day footage with family home movies, Xiara's Song
finds the sadness, joy, anger, love, loneliness and fear in the haunted
eyes of a precocious seven-year-old coming to grips with the fact that
her father won't be free until she's 17.
While Xiara's Song does not romanticize Harold, who has been
in and out of jail for her entire life, it does reveal the gentle side
of this handsome, charming rapper who finds inspiration in his deep
love for his daughter. Harold and Xiara's relationship is played out
over monitored phone lines and supervised monthly visits, expressed
through the songs they write and sing for one another.
"Xiara is a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit and
the transcendent power of familial love," says producer and director
Liz Garbus. "At the same time, she is a painful reminder of the
millions of unintended victims of America's spiraling incarceration
rates."
Producer and director Liz Garbus is an Oscar ®-nominated, Emmy
®-winning filmmaker who has produced documentaries for HBO, Lifetime,
A&E, Court TV, The Learning Channel, MTV and Oxygen. Her credits
include the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner "The Farm: Angola,
USA," "The Execution of Wanda Jean" for HBO, "The
Nazi Officer's Wife" and "Girlhood."
Producer Rory Kennedy has produced and directed award-winning documentaries
for HBO, Lifetime, A&E, Court TV, Oxygen and The Learning Channel,
covering such topics as the global AIDS crisis, human rights, domestic
abuse, poverty, and drug addiction. Her HBO credits include the AFI
Best Documentary winner "American Hollow," the Emmy ®-nominated
series "Pandemic: Facing AIDS," "A Boy's Life" and,
most recently, "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable."
Garbus and Kennedy are the co-founders of independent documentary production
company Moxie Firecracker Films. Xiara's Song is directed by
Liz Garbus; produced by Liz Garbus and Rory Kennedy; line producer;
Julie Gaither; cinematographers, Daniel B. Gold and Don Lenzer; editor,
Eric Seuel Davies. For CINEMAX Reel Life: supervising producer, Lisa
Heller; executive producer, Sheila Nevins.
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