Jacinta
An intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma, JACINTA follows a young woman in and out of prison as she attempts to break free from an inherited cycle of addiction, incarceration, and crime.
2020 | Running Time: 1 Hour 45 minutes | Rating: TV-MA
Filmed for over three years, JACINTA begins at the Maine Correctional Center where Jacinta, 26, and her mother Rosemary, 46, are incarcerated together, both recovering from drug addiction. As a child, Jacinta became entangled in her mother’s world of drugs and crime and has followed her in and out of the system since she was a teenager. This time, as Jacinta is released from prison, she hopes to maintain her sobriety and reconnect with her own daughter, Caylynn, 10, who lives with her paternal grandparents. Despite her desire to rebuild her life for her daughter, Jacinta continually struggles against the forces that first led to her addiction. With unparalleled access and a gripping vérité approach, director Jessica Earnshaw paints a deeply intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma over generations.
Jessica Earnshaw, Director
Jessica Earnshaw is a documentary photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on criminal justice, familial relationships and women. Her photography has appeared in National Geographic, The Marshall Project, Mother Jones Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, amongst others. She is a graduate of the International Center of Photography’s photojournalism program (New York, New York), and later worked as a junior photo editor at TIME Magazine. Her first feature film, JACINTA, won the Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Award at the Tribeca Film Festival 2020. She was recently selected for Doc NYC’s 40 under 40 list.
International Documentary Association Awards
Nominated for Two: Best Feature Documentary and Best Director, 2021
Real Screen Awards
Nominated for Non-Fiction Category: Social Issues and Current Affairs, 2023
“A searingly honest portrait of kinship and addiction.”
“A hard-hitting and heartbreaking documentary”
“Reveals the extent to which people can surprise us — especially people we’ve written off as just another sad statistic, as another victim of America’s ongoing and relentless opioid epidemic.”
— The Hollywood Reporter, Jordan Mintzer
