In 1995, filmmaker Steve James returns to Pomona, a beautiful rural hamlet in Southern Illinois to reconnect with Stevie Fielding, for whom James once served as an advocate Big Brother. He finds that the once difficult, awkward child has become – ten years later – an angry and troubled young man. Part way through filming, Stevie is arrested and charged with a serious crime. He confesses to the crime and then later recants. The filmmaker himself is drawn into the film as he tries to sort out his own feelings, past and present, about Stevie and how to deal with him in the wake of his arrest. What was to be a modest profile of Stevie, turns into an intimate four and a half year chronicle of a dysfunctional family's struggle to heal.
Stevie is a Kartemquin Films production in association with SenArt Films.
144 minutes
More buzz about Death House Door
June 23, 2009
Haven't quite made up your mind about that At the Death House Door DVD purchase? You can check out more reviews at The Daily Page and Austin 360. Or read this blog post from Lispeery about Stevie, another Kartemquin release from Director Steve James.
- Director
- Steve James
- Producers
- Steve James
- Adam D. Singer
- Gordon Quinn
- Executive Producers
- Robert May
- Gordon Quinn
"Brave…courageous and powerful…Stevie doesn't have the neat, almost poetic ending of Hoop Dreams, because sometimes life doesn't turn out that way. The movie is deeply sorrowful and impossible to forget."
—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Toronto Film Festival – Official Selection
Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival – Grand Jury Joris Ivens Prize
Sundance Film Festival, 2003 – Excellence in Cinematography Award (Documentary)
Sundance Film Festival, 2003 – Nominee, Grand Jury Prize