The Story
REWILDING follows Anthony Dejesus, a 27-year-old budding artist and former inmate of Rikers Island, as he leaves New York City for the first time with Jesse Spiegel and Vitek Linhart, two avid rock climbers determined to create a program to take formerly incarcerated men into the wild. Little did they know, their adventure would become a dramatic illustration of the conflicts surrounding race and privilege gripping our nation today.
THE BIG picture
We see a glaring contrast in the intimate personal histories of Anthony and Jesse shared in the film, both examples of a simple yet disturbing aspect of American society: Racial and socio-economic inequality mean a great many, varied disadvantages for those without privilege. It means society treats you differently. It means you don’t have the same job or housing opportunities. It means that you are 20 times more likely to end up in prison. It means that you may fear for your life if a cop stops you on the street. This stark picture is painted in the film: if you have the right skin color and the right socio-economic background, you can make mistakes without them defining your life.
Ultimately, REWILDING offers something novel to the conversation about criminal injustice, race and privlidge. We see characters changing from within, through coming together across racial and socioeconomic lines, not with the goal to change each other into one’s idea of who they think the other should be, but to share experiences and to actually see each other, regardless of the world each party comes from. It inspires the viewer to see the person behind the statistic and witness the transformative power of sharing experiences in the outdoors.