The film examines the 1975 groundbreaking case of Joan Little who was one of the first women in U.S history to be acquitted for using deadly force to resist sexual assault. Little was a Black incarcerated woman who killed a white guard who was trying to rape her.
Status
Development
About the Filmmakers
Director
Yoruba Richen
Director Yoruba Richen is a Peabody award-winning documentary filmmaker who was recently awarded the Trailblazer award by Black Public Media. Her latest film about reparations, The Cost of Inheritance, premiered on PBS earlier this year. Her previous film, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, the first feature documentary about the pioneering activist, was honored by the Television Academy and won a Gracie Award. Other recent work includes the Emmy-nominated films [American Reckoning](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/american-reckoning/?) (PBS Frontline), How It Feels to Be Free, The Sit In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show, and Green Book: Guide to Freedom. Her film, The Killing of Breonna Taylor won an NAACP Image Award, and her previous films, The New Black and Promised Land won multiple festival awards before airing on PBS’s Independent Lens and P.O.V. Yoruba is a past Guggenheim and Fulbright fellow and won the Creative Promise Award at Tribeca All Access. She was a Sundance Producers Fellow and Women’s Fellow and recipient of the Chicken & Egg Breakthrough Filmmaker’s Award. Yoruba is the Founding Director of the Documentary Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
Producer
Christalyn Hampton
Christalyn Hampton is an award-winning producer and casting director. Her most recent achievements include The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Peacock/Soledad O’Brien Productions) earned her a Peabody, Gracie, and Television Academy Honors; field producing the Atlanta segment for the NAACP-nominated series Through Our Eyes: Homefront on HBO MAX, a feature documentary Rise and Rebuild: A Tale of Three Cities (One Story Up and Tribeca Studios), and Maxine Baby: The Tyler Perry Story (Amazon Prime). She was an associate producer for Rada Films’ American Promise. Recently, she teamed with the renowned filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir for the four-part docuseries, Born in Synanon for Paramount +. She also co-directed a documentary short with Ms. Gandbhir that will premiere in 2024, making her directorial debut.