My Life Inside
Friday, 1:00 pm, Regal Downtown #4
Director: Lucía Gajá
Cinematographer: Erika Licea Orozco
Running Time: 122 min
In My Life Inside (Mi vida dentro), Mexican documentarian Lucía Gajá looks at the American judicial system from a foreign point of view.
Rosa Jimenez is an undocumented worker on trial for murder in Austin, Texas. She crossed the border at age 17 and made a new life for herself in the U.S.; she married, had children, and got a job as a nanny. One horrible day in 2003, one of the children she was responsible for asphyxiated to death on a wad of paper towels. Rosa was charged with his murder.
My Life Inside intercuts actual footage of the trial and initial interrogation with interviews of Rosa’s family, witnesses, alien advocates, and Rosa herself, from her jail cell, as she awaits trial. Heartbreakingly, long before any official determination of guilt or innocence, Rose loses many of her own rights; not just the loss of all personal freedom, but all access to her children, including the baby who is born to her in jail. What emerges is the picture of a justice system stacked against foreigners who do not know their rights, cannot speak English, don’t understand certain customs, and are victims of blatant racism, which presumes guilt rather than innocence.
This provocative film, which won Special Mention for Best Documentary at the Lima Latin American Film Festival, shows that Rosa’s greatest adversary in court is the prejudice Americans feel toward illegal Mexicans, despite the facts of the case, which argue for her innocence. The 23-year-old woman faces counts that add up to 174 years in a Texas prison.
