Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM, filmed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky as the trial unfolded in West Memphis, Arkansas. Three eight-year-old boys were found dead in a drainage ditch; within weeks, three teenagers — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr. — were charged, largely on the strength of a confession extracted after hours of questioning and a set of circumstantial details that pointed mostly at the fact that the accused wore black and listened to heavy metal.

Berlinger and Sinofsky shot the courtroom proceedings, the families, and the town itself without editorializing — they let the record speak, and the record is troubling enough on its own. The film triggered a national conversation about wrongful conviction, launched the "Free the West Memphis Three" movement, and ultimately inspired two sequels as the legal battle stretched across eighteen years. It is the rare documentary where the viewer can see the injustice happening in real time. Stream Paradise Lost (1996) online on iFILM.