Sing Sing is a story of the transformative power of art

In the United States, the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) programme exists to create a space for humanity and compassion within maximum and medium-security "correctional facilities" across the country. To live in prison is to forego all of your humanness and accept dehumanisation as common practice. This is the world within which the story of Sing Sing happens. It is a story of a group of prisoners setting up stage plays through the RTA programme as a means to escape the cruelty that permeates their lives, find joy, and realise the healing that comes through art.

The narrative of Sing Sing follows the growing friendship between Divine G and Clarence 'Divine Eye' Maclin. At the start of the story, Divine G (played by Colman Domingo) has already established himself as a confident and collected member of the RTA, working on his own drama while acting alongside his fellow members. This already established dynamic is the space in which Divine Eye breaks in, with his rugged attitude and hunched shoulders. It is clear that Divine Eye is shaped by the soulless prison — a system that has nothing to offer but misery and false promises hidden behind layers of bureaucracy. It also becomes exceedingly clear that the film is ultimately about transformation through community and art.

Aching and inspiring, much of what the story offers feels grounded in reality and not just because it's a well-written tale, but because the stories are drawn from the lived experiences of the real-life Divine G — who also takes charge of playing his younger version in the movie. The film doesn't just showcase a fictionalised version of the lives of these incarcerated people; it brings them in and allows them to shine. By the time the credits start rolling, the gut-punch realisation that most of the characters present were actually played by their real-life counterparts hits as a moment of emotional catharsis. 

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It's hard to tell just how much of the movie was fictionalised and how much was completely rooted in reality. But that only goes to show how carefully, and tenderly, the film was written. The screenplay, done by Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley, is best described as something sublime. Kwedar, who was also a founding member of the RTA programme, seems to know the ins and outs of how to best depict this tale as he takes up the role of director — weaving moments of quietude in between larger story beats, allowing these characters to become human beings in the eyes of the audience.

More than just an inspiring tale, Sing Sing works on multiple levels as a filmmaking achievement. Its cinematography, grainy and warm, creates a visual language for the film seeped in emotional maturity. The music, too, is fantastic, albeit sparsely used, with an original song playing out near the end of the film that is perhaps one of the best original songs made for a movie in all of 2024.

But it's not the individual aspects that make this film work. Like a stage play, the result is greater than the mere sum of its parts. Emotionally devastating, and never really shying away from depicting vulnerability as something essential for humans to be humans, Sing Sing's very existence is celebratory and, yet, born out of a tremendous amount of pain.