Prisoners’ Justice Film Festival brings stories of resistance, healing, and liberation to screens across London
The Prisoners’ Justice Film Festival (PJFF) has a historic legacy in London, running from 2012-2016. This year, our organizing collective finally brought it back, screening five films in the first week of August as a lead up to International Prisoners’ Justice Day on August 10.
On that date in 1974, Eddie Nalon died by suicide at the Millhaven Maximum Security Prison near Kingston, Ontario, after being repeatedly subjected to solitary confinement — a practice which has been called a form of torture by the UN. One year later, prisoners at Millhaven stopped all work and went on a hunger strike in Nalon’s honour; in the decades since, August 10th has grown to become an internationally-recognized day of action for the rights of the incarcerated.
The fight for prisoners’ rights and prison abolition intersects with all concerns about injustice. Prisons are where the state will send you if your protesting disrupts the status quo too much, and they are also where you will be sent when all other resources have been stripped and you no longer have the support of your community.
During the first iteration of PJFF, from 2012-2016, we tried to illustrate the clear through-line between prisoners’ rights and other social justice issues. Some of the topics we looked at during that time were regarding Indigenous land defenders, environmental rights, gender equality, and the rise of islamaphobia as it corresponds with the police state. While we are still drawing those connections, this year the conversations we had were focused on London’s plan to build a new police training facility, and looking at alternatives to policing so that we can live in a world where our solutions to complex social issues are not putting people into cages.
If we want to see a healthy society, we must look to restorative methods rather than punitive measures, and dismantle the ethos of carcerality entirely. These concerns have been especially heightened in the past year, as governments enact increasingly draconian laws and policies aimed at curtailing freedom of expression while further militarizing the police. In the wake of these changes, we need to start thinking collectively about how to push back against the police state.
At all levels of government in Canada, we have seen a rise in excessive and cruel legal measures to crackdown on those who fight for a just world.
Bill C-9, which expands the scope of hate crime legislation and is a veiled attempt to quash the pro-Palestinian movement, was passed by the Liberal government in early June. When Israeli companies use the cover of Canadian synagogues to sell property in the West Bank, they are actively violating the Fourth Geneva Convention and continuing the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians; as groups like Independent Jewish Voices have made clear, opposing this has nothing to do with religious freedom. Limits on the ability to protest will bleed into other movements, making it harder to speak out against resource extraction, in support of Indigenous sovereignty, or for any number of other issues — including the legal right to strike.
Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford is sinking billions of dollars into a “Safer Ontario” initiative that will see 1,325 new prison beds constructed at a price of over $3 billion, along with the promise of clearing encampments and reducing the ability to obtain bail. Despite this massive pricetag, even the promised expansions would do little to reduce chronic over-crowding in the prison system: Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre (EMDC), for example, is routinely 400 to 500 people over capacity, and it is just one facility out of dozens facing similar issues across Ontario. Maintaining and staffing these jails is also a huge burden on taxpayers, when there are much cheaper housing first approaches that don’t cost $22 million per cell.
Locally, over the past several years we have also witnessed city council give ever-expanding powers to the London Police Service. In 2024, city council granted police a bloated $672 million budget — a staggering 25% increase over previous years — despite social work professionals and community leaders pleading with them to reallocate funding to services that actually help the community. This pattern is now continuing, as the police are set to receive a new training facility in the south end of the city costing $200+ million for construction alone, and requiring even more funding to maintain operations in subsequent years. This is all to better train police in brutalizing the citizens of London, over issues as petty as teenagers lighting fireworks during Sunfest. When the tools at their disposal are riot gear and light armoured vehicles, every community issue becomes an excuse to trample human rights.
The five PJFF screenings that took place between August 1 and 8 intended to explore a broad range of issues related to prisoners’ rights and the expanding police state: from lessons learned in previous fights against police militarization, to the ways particular communities are targeted under present carceral models, to possibilities for a transformative future that would do away with the inhumane prison system entirely.
Aug 1 – Defending the Atlanta Forest (2022)
The film festival started off with the screening of a short documentary on the “Stop Cop City” movement in Atlanta, screened on August 1st at the regional office of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (244 Pall Mall St.). In Defending the Atlanta Forest: Behind the Movement to Stop Cop City (2022), we saw how a coalition of groups with diverse tactics came together in the community fight against the development of a police training facility — one very similar to the $187 million facility approved by city council for construction in the south end of London last year.
Barry Jacklin, who has been leading protests against the London Police Services, shared his traumatic experiences of police harm after calling emergency services during the death of his partner, Kevin Byerley. Jacklin has written an open letter to the City of London about his treatment that has gone unanswered.
Jadelynn Zhang from Emory University in Atlanta joined after the screening as a guest speaker, providing a retrospective analysis of the Stop Cop City campaign in Atlanta and information on the expansion of similar cop cities across Turtle Island since 2020. Thousands mobilized during the Stop Cop City movement to prevent the construction of the $109 million facility on 381 acres of land, much of which was pristine forest. However, the movement was violently repressed, with 61 protestors being arrested and charged under Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) conspiracy laws, and a forest defender known as Tortuguita murdered during a police raid on the forest encampment. Zhang highlighted some of the internal issues that the movement encountered, and emphasized the need for a diversity of tactics in the unified struggle, from democratic engagement to direct action.
Aug 4 – Conviction (2019)
Conviction (2019), screened Tuesday August 4th at Honey Dip (621 Dundas St.), examined the experiences of a group of women — the fastest-growing prison population worldwide — at a correctional facility in Nova Scotia. The film explores recidivism: the idea that upon release, incarcerated folks quickly return to prison because their circumstances have not changed, or are worse (i.e. still unhoused, no access to employment, etc.), and asks the women at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility to imagine an alternative system that does not resort to punishment for attempting to survive the white, capitalist patriarchy, but instead offers proactive spaces for community support and healing.
The film also touches on the lack of health care and reproductive rights of those incarcerated. One of the inmates in the film is pregnant and expresses health concerns but she is ignored, and as a result gives birth to a stillborn baby. Canadian-based research affirms that while prisoners technically have a right to birth control and abortions, the provincial and federal governments cannot provide documentation that these options are actually accessible by inmates — and in fact they are especially inaccessible to Indigenous women. And while we know that about four per cent of women enter jails and prisons pregnant, our governments do not provide data on how many miscarriages or abortions occur in these institutions. There were no studies conducted on the outcomes of the Mother-Child Program (where babies can live incarcerated with their mom after pregnancy) until advocates for prisoners’ rights published the lack of evaluation and outcomes. It is a stark reminder that those of us outside of the prison system need to fight to hold our governments accountable to prisoners’ basic rights.
Aug 6 – A Healing River (2004)
On August 6, we screened A Healing River (2004) at Innovation Works, a film focused on the idea of restorative justice, especially in helping to understand and prevent the cycles of trauma that drive many youth into the prison system. Cathie Douglas and Larry Moore, the creators of production company Heartspeak Productions, spent years working in restorative justice programs and bringing films like A Healing River to the public for greater awareness of alternative models to the carceral system. The film uses the metaphor of a “Healing River” for restorative justice where many smaller tributaries flow into one, strong current. As Dave Gustafson, co-director of Community Justice Initiatives, says in the film, “Our interest is not a downstream amalgam like the muddy Fraser River, so much as it is to follow those tributaries to their headwaters: what’s the bedrock that gives it force, and gives it motivation, and guides it?”
During the discussion after the film, we started off with an exercise listing attributes that would make a “healing river”: respect, connection, shared responsibility. Concepts that seemed to be missing from how our legal system operates. As Harold Gatensby, an elder from the community, argued: “That’s what those youth need now. They need family. They need unconditional love. And they need support for when they fall down and make mistakes—like we all did—to get back up and keep on going.”
The film is presented as an invitation to explore restorative justice through the lenses of psychology and community care. The main idea is that crime is caused by trauma and a lack of support, and that punishment causes further trauma to victims, perpetrators, and their communities. Attendees were invited to think about what values and concepts they would include in their definition of justice, and about how they can be leaders in their communities and in their own healing as people who have been harmed and caused harm to others. The hope is that by building strong and supportive communities, we can all take part in healing past hurts and preventing future harm.
The discussion after this film was among the most wide-ranging and fruitful of the whole festival. While there were city council candidates at most of the screenings, this one brought out the greatest attendance from prospective candidates, and consequently the most discussion about the upcoming municipal election. While municipal politics is not the only thing that can stop the construction of the new police training facility, it is a good flexion point where we can draw attention to this disastrous decision if the city chooses to go through with it.
We also heard from community members who had varying degrees of experience with the carceral system, and how it has impacted them and their loved ones. As the conversation went on, a clearer picture of the services that have been lost over the past few years emerged — in large part due to the expanded police budget — and we took stock of the important services still clinging to life in the face of the austerity mindset in Council chambers.
This election is a good opportunity to send a clear message to council. We need councillors who are willing to stand up for social services and provide adequate funding to programs that will actually benefit those in need rather than further persecute those who are already suffering.
Aug 7 – Circles (1997)
In 1981 a judge in the Yukon, Barry Stuart, worked with Harold Gatensby to implement the first “circle sentencing” program in Canada, an Indigenous concept of restorative justice which focuses on healing of both victims and offenders through extended discussion with their broader community. Circles (1997), screened at the PSAC regional office, documents the challenges faced by the First Nations people in the Yukon—many of whom were residential school survivors subsequently trapped in cycles of abuse due to a lack of resources to heal their trauma—as well as the successes of the circle court. Understanding how the offender’s circumstances have led to their behaviour is a key part in navigating the healing process, something our current justice model does not do. Our current model not only neglects the effects that residential schools had on Indigenous communities, it extends it through policing and the prison system. Indigenous children were taken from their homes and forced into institutions during the infamous “60s scoop”; today, they are taken through child protective services.
During the discussion that followed, we remarked on how the current punitive justice model continues to disproportionately affect minority groups. A system that neglects the healing that communities need after crime, and leads those we deem ‘troublesome’ to enter the revolving door of prison rather than giving them the tools to heal. The implementation of sentencing circles was of course a large section of this discussion, where we acknowledged how it effectively tackles community healing (including the victim, the offender, and the close relationships of the involved parties), and how it allows all affected members to collaborate on a solution that is beneficial for the community as a whole. Also discussed were the limitations sentencing circles would have, specifically in larger, less well-knit communities. While this is likely a symptom of a larger problem (lack of strong community), together we still explored and envisioned both current and imagined systems that could achieve the outcomes of sentencing circles. The most valuable part of this discourse was envisioning a better future to work towards, rather than focusing only on the negative effects of the current system.
Aug 8 – The Palestine Laboratory (2025)
The house was packed for the final film of PJFF 2026 at Filter Cafe (206 Piccadilly St.) where we were screening The Palestine Laboratory (2025), an adaptation of the 2023 book by Anthony Loewenstein. This film examines daily lives of Palestinians living in an occupied apartheid state, where military and surveillance technologies are tested regularly. For decades the Gaza strip has been referred to as the world’s largest open-air prison by various human rights groups, and both Gaza and the West Bank have been testing grounds for military technologies that Israeli companies then market around the globe as “battle-tested”. In The Palestine Laboratory, we see the horrific consequences of these “real-world” operations through the eyes of Palestinians surviving Israel’s genocide in Gaza throughout 2024.
Over the past three years we have witnessed our protests against Israel’s live-streamed war crimes being increasingly ignored and subverted. Since the 2025 “ceasefire”, the plight of Palestinians in Gaza has largely fallen off the radar of mainstream news outlets; compounding this external media dismissal are the targeted killings of at least 230 journalists in Gaza, an intentional move by the Israeli government to suppress documentation of their crimes. Yet the killing continues, and further aggression mounts in the West Bank as Israeli settler violence goes unchecked. Meanwhile, Canadian militarism is on the rise, and cities across Canada and the United States are building police training facilities that will purchase and utilize the tactics and technology tested ont the Palestinian people. An example of this is the use of Flock cameras in the United States, technology that was first developed to monitor Palestinian movement. It is clear that we must pay attention to the struggles that are happening globally so that we may act presciently to the struggles that will be coming for us all.
After the film, Salma Usama, the Vice President of the Canadian Palestinian Social Association (CPSA) of London, provided her reflections on the film’s content and its significance to our local community. Usama is a Palestinian refugee who came to London when she was six, after fleeing the July 2006 war in Lebanon with her family. She is an adamant supporter of human rights and the struggle for a free Palestine. She reiterated the film’s key focus on the significance of Palestine as a testing ground for Israeli military and surveillance technologies, and highlighted Canadian connections to this usage.
The week after the screening of The Palestine Laboratory, Arms Embargo Forest City participated in a national day of action as part of the larger Arms Embargo Now campaign, intended to put pressure on ABT and other secondary component suppliers to drop their connections with Elbit and help secure a full two-way arms embargo: no weapons or military components to Israel, and none purchased from them. The attendees brought a letter to employees who stood outside watching, urging them to confront their employer over their unethical corporate relationships and find better ways their products could be used. In this way, resisting the encroachment of militarization and surveillance in Canada — facilitated by companies like Elbit — can be achieved through solidarity with workers, who are the most well-positioned to advocate against these threats.
Aug 10 – Prisoners’ Justice Day at EMDC with Atlohsa
On August 10th, International Prisoners’ Justice Day, Dennis Whiteye from Atlohsa Family Healing Services led a ceremony to honour those victims of the prison system. Attendees of the PJFF were welcomed to participate in this ceremony and witness the growth and healing of five men who connected with their Indigenous spiritual practice and overcame the difficult societal conditions that led them into EMDC. There were around 40 of us gathered that day, many of whom were family, friends, and community from Atlohsa who came to support the men in their lives who had done time. It was a testament to how community support is what restores a community. It was a beautiful ceremony where we smudged, witnessed testimony, enjoyed a glass of fresh strawberry juice, and connected with folks whose lives were directly affected by the dangerous practices of incarceration.
The Long Road to Freedom
“None of us are free until we’re all free” isn’t just a quote, it’s what we need to build the future on. We need to imagine a future with no incarceration. We need to imagine ways to deal with crime and crises in our own lives and in those of our communities, without police involvement. We need to imagine ways to have our needs met, and ensure all our neighbours have their needs met, too. That is and has always been the only path to peace, dignity, and freedom.
There have been many brilliant abolitionists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries who have written about or practiced alternatives to our modern carceral system.
The future is abolitionist, and the future starts today—with all of us.
