The Sentence

Cindy Shank, a mother of three, is serving fifteen years in federal prison over a tangential connection to a drug operation in Michigan years earlier. The sentence is what it is because mandatory minimum law leaves the judge no discretion. The documentary was made by Cindy’s brother Rudy Valdez, who filmed the family over ten years, so the camera is both inside the house and fond of the people in it. The real subject is not the sentence but what the sentence does to everyone around it; as the children grow, their mother’s absence stays in the frame. Cindy was granted clemency in the final months of the Obama administration. It premiered at Sundance on 20 January 2018, won the audience award there and went out on HBO.