Clemency

Clemency (2019) is a prison drama you can watch online on iFILM. Warden Bernadine Williams has walked dozens of condemned men to the execution chamber. Each one leaves a mark, and those marks have quietly piled into something she can no longer carry.

Alfre Woodard plays Williams almost without words. Everything lives in her face, in the silences, in the way she locks years of other people's deaths somewhere deep inside. The next man on her schedule, Anthony Woods, played by Aldis Hodge, keeps insisting he is innocent and waits for a pardon that may never come. The closer the date, the harder it gets for Bernadine to see a case number instead of a person. A burned-out attorney played by Richard Schiff and a chaplain played by Wendell Pierce orbit the same dread.

Director Chinonye Chukwu frames capital punishment from the side of the people who carry it out. The film made her the first Black woman to win the top prize at Sundance. It is slow, heavy and deeply human, made for viewers ready for a story that offers no easy comfort. Stream Clemency (2019) online on iFILM.