RAZOR WIRE RODEO

Synopsis

On June 16 1995, Jerry Brown, 18, killed a man for a small bag of marijuana. He was sentenced to life without parole and sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, America's most infamous and largest maximum-security prison. Most of its 5000 inmates are serving sentences so long that they are going to die there.

Now Jerry Brown is the star of a brutal and controversial event: The Angola Prison Rodeo. Each Sunday in October, volunteer inmates battle bulls without training. This event allows them to enjoy a few seconds of fame in front of a crowd of 10 000 people and make some money. For Burl Cain, Angola's warden, the rodeo is a massive moneymaker that funds his major program: the moral and religious rehabilitation of inmates that have no hope of ever walking free.

Through the prism of Jerry Brown, "Razor Wire Rodeo" tells the unflinching story of men, whose lives have been defined by violence and crushed by the pitiless corrections practices in Louisiana. The film investigates the flaws in one of the most severe criminal justice system in the world, where justice and politics are inextricably linked.

Jerry Brown believes the fame achieved with each rodeo, will help him to get out of Angola one day. But in Louisiana, where only two clemencies have been granted in the last ten years, his battle against the bull is merely symbolic of a fight lost a long time ago. A fight to grasp unreachable freedom.