The Witmans
2013 · 15m · USA
Directed by Joe Lee, Gregory Timmons, Nikolas Diener
Genres: crime, documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Fifteen years after their teenage son Zachary was convicted of murdering his younger brother, Ron and Sue Witman make their weekly drive across Pennsylvania to visit him in prison. The film stays with the parents' enduring grief and unshaken belief in his innocence rather than re-litigating the crime.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects true crime to be about the crime—this one deliberately doesn't care, which is either a radical act or a waste of the form's voyeuristic potential, and honestly I'm still not sure which, which means it worked.
The formal restraint here is almost architectural: by refusing the machinery of investigation and verdict, the directors locate themselves in a tradition of grief cinema that stretches from Chantal Akerman's durational work to contemporary documentary's turn inward, making the weekly drive itself a meditation on time and endurance.
That choice to stay in the car, to let the repetition and the silence do the emotional work instead of cutting to case files or courtroom moments—that's the entire film, and it's devastating because it's earned through constraint rather than spectacle.
Reviews
This isn't a true-crime expose of a shocking murder case. Rather, it's a story focusing on the people left in the wake of a terrible tragedy.
Attention, 'Serial' Fans, You Must Watch This Short Documentary