Video: Inside, The Valley Sings

Trapped in the never-ending horror of solitary confinement, three prisoners in the United States seek comfort and escape in the boundless landscapes of their own imaginations.

Running time: 15 minutes

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Director’s Statement

Right now, all across the United States, there’s a hidden world made up of 6×9 cells – where individuals are forced to endure near total isolation from anywhere from a few weeks to a few decades.

Cinema, for me, is an empathy machine. It allows us to step outside of our own perspective and to experience the world through someone else’s eyes, even if only for a moment or two.

Right from the very beginning, my goal with this film was simple: to give a voice to this largely voiceless population. To give audiences a glimpse into life in this sunken, subterranean world.

I first began researching this project in the early months of 2020. Over the next two years, I conducted dozens of conversations with survivors of solitary confinement. Despite significant differences in many of their accounts, quite a number of these survivors told me something surprising: they explained that the border between reality and fantasy – between the inner world and the outer world – begins to shift during prolonged isolation.

That, in order to survive the harrowing reality of their daily existence, they began to construct elaborate, sensory-rich worlds in their own imaginations.

‘’These fantasies’’ – as our interview subject, Frank De Palma, explains in the film – ‘’were as real to me as your life is to you.’’

Although I’d seen other films about the horrors of solitary confinement, this was something I’d never seen explored before. I realized there was something deeply tragic – but also beautifully human – about this surprising revelation.

By exploring this unique perspective and phenomenon, my hope is that audiences will understand what survivors have been telling us for years: that solitary confinement is a form of torture, pure and simple. That, regardless of an individual’s guilt or innocence, we all share a common humanity – we all possess our own individual hopes, dreams and desires for a better life. 

And any justice system that claims to be grounded in the dignity and rights of the individual must recognize this.

– Nathan Fagan, Director

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