imagine knowing

with absolute certainty

that in 15 minutes

you were going to be murdered

A Scene from Death Row — film poster

Enter the mind, body, and soul of Jasper Novak, an inmate on Indiana's Death Row, in the hour leading up to his execution by lethal injection.

Meticulously researched. Only the execution process as it actually occurs, and Novak's subjective experience of the seconds as they unfold.

SUPPORT THE FILM

A Scene from Death Row is fiscally sponsored by From the Heart Productions, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that has supported independent filmmakers for over 30 years.

Director's Statement — Morgen Ludwig

These days, it is increasingly easy to engage with complex moral issues like capital punishment from a distant, purely theoretical position. We can read about a crime committed thousands of miles away, and in an instant justify the opinion that the perpetrator deserves to die, all while filling out the morning's crossword puzzle. With this film, I aim to challenge that notion, and force people to confront a facet of their ethics which they would otherwise have left untouched.

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Literary Context

"You may lead a soldier out and set him facing the cannon in battle and fire at him and he'll still hope; but read a sentence of certain death over that same soldier, and he will go out of his mind or burst into tears."

The Idiot — Fyodor Dostoevsky

"But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared?"

Reflections on the Guillotine — Albert Camus

Attached

Director
Morgen Ludwig
Lead Actor
Joshua Datánt Villarreal
Producers
Owen Klee
Amanda Kasmira Cryer
Co-Producer
Carole Joyce
Associate Producer
Marcello Cacioppo
Line Producer
Maxwell Kagan
Cinematographer
Oliver Kompst
1st Assistant Director
David Woods