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Redemption Or Retribution: Director Smriti Mundhra On Oscar-Shortlisted Death Row Doc ‘I Am Ready, Warden’
A Texas death penalty case is explore in the Oscar-contending short documentary 'I Am Ready, Warden,' directed by Smriti Mundhra.
I am ready, Warden.” These were the last words of death row inmate John Henry Ramirez shortly before his execution in the Polunsky Unit of the Department of Criminal Justice in Livingston, Texas. From that first conversation, I could sense so much pain, but also so much internal struggle within him because this is a man whose father was killed when he was 14 years old, who’s lived with the trauma his entire life, and is a wound that is continually torn open for him every time John is in the news. So, I think with all three of these films it gives me a chance to explore and question our values as a society and systems that are designed to protect me — and from which I’m very inoculated — whether it’s gun violence like in St. Louis, Superman, or the housing crisis in Shelter or capital punishment [in I Am Ready Warden].
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