Lost in Mississippi

In this provocative documentary filmmakers Jim Chambers and Hal Hisey investigate why between 1988 and 1993 no less than 47 people committed suicide in a prison in the American state of Mississippi. As the majority of the victims was black, the filmmakers suspected that they may not all have committed their deed voluntarily. In other words: would lynching still be an everyday occurrence in a region where the Ku Klux Klan controlled public life a few decades before? Without a script or any clear-cut plan both filmmakers went to Mississippi, where they interviewed lawyers, government officials, civilians and witnesses. Soon it became painfully clear that, since the civil rights movement had ended racial segregation thirty years before, not much had really changed here. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)