Vanessa McMahon

photo still from EVERLASTING SORROW, LIFE AFTER THE DEATH PENALTY

Everlasting Sorrow, Life After the Death Penalty (France, 2010), by director David Andre won the award for best film dealing with human rights issues by the Amnesty International. After the awards ceremony, it closed the 13th Thessaloniki Film Festival with the screening of Andre’s film to a full theater.

EVERLASTING SORROW is about Death Row murderer Sean Sellers who killed three people at age sixteen and was sentenced to the death penalty in Oklahoma in 1999. A few weeks before Sellers’ death, Andre traveled to Oklahoma to film him on Death Row. Ten years later, Andre returned to Oklahoma to interview Sellers’ family as well as the family of his victims. The film covers over ten years of footage and deals with the question of whether or not the death penalty is an answer for murder or two wrongs making no right.

Filmed in an objective TV journalistic style, the film is gritty and experimental. One could question if it is a film or in fact better suited for TV as a show of powerful TV journalism. Apart from editing, there is only raw footage used and virtually little to none in the way of cinematic makeover. However, it is unarguably a very important subject matter and while the film felt a little on the long side, it is a gripping and a sometimes shocking portrayal of the sad and wasted life of Sean Sellers and a dark side of Oklahoma based Americana.

It is remarkable that the filmmaker depicts footage from over ten years old of Sean Sellers himself and interweaves it with new recently filmed interviews of the families of both the persecuted and his victims. The subject content is raw and un-manipulated, perhaps the filmmaker's intent to be as real and non-subjective about such a seemingly irresolvable conflict as the Death Penalty in the US.

While there were some dry moments in the film, there were also some very arresting ones depicting the truth of a side of American culture the rest of the world only hears about but rarely sees. The scenes that left me teary-eyed were ones with Sean when he was still alive telling the filmmaker a warning to all parents, ‘make sure your child never doubts you love them. Make sure they always know they are loved.’ There can be no doubt that a lack of love, a father who abandoned him and a difficult childhood led to Sean’s teenage rage which caused him to kill his mother and his other two victims.

The other most powerfully moving scene in the film for me was some raw footage of Sean’s father speaking to his son through a video while he awaits his death sentence. In the video, Sean’s father had not spoken to his son since he abandoned him as a baby. The father speaks very shortly and without a hint of love for his son and one can see clearly what led Sean to a state of temporary madness in his youth. It would have been better for Sean to never have known of his father than to know his father consciously rejected him his whole life.

On the whole, EVERLASTING SORROW is a very important film and indeed touches on an issue which needs to be addressed, that of the Death Penalty in America. Let us hope Andre’s film can help change some minds and help push progress in the politics and human rights issue at hand. If the powerful medium of film cannot do that, then I don’t know what can.

Thanks David Andre and congratulations.

Written by, Vanessa McMahon March 21, 2011

David Andre accepts award for Amnesty International Award

David Andre accepts award for Amnesty International Award