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I Am Ready, Warden |
Smriti Mundhra is unusual among this year’s crop of Oscar short film hopefuls in that she’s been here before. In 2021, her St Louis Superman made the nominations list. This time around, it’s another documentary: I Am Ready, Warden. This tells the story of death row prisoner John Henry Ramirez, who stabbed Pablo Castro to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 2004. before being captured, Ramirez spent four years on the run in Mexico. Now he says that he’s a changed man, his perspectives reshaped by religion, and people close to him believe it. The trouble is, he can’t erase the pain that his actions caused.
When I met Smriti to discuss the film, she was accompanied by producer Maya Gnyp, who confessed that the film’s success still hasn’t fully sunk in.
“Even at this point, I still have moments,” she says. “I was talking to a friend last night and I feel like it still hasn't really sunk in yet. I'm not sure. This was a hard film to make. It was a hard film to edit. It took a long time as well. We premièred in February 2024, at a Montana film festival called Big Sky, which is a very filmmaker focused sort of festival. It was great to première there with our community as well. And then there was a little bit of a lull. We didn't really do a lot of festivals. It wasn't really the season for it – it was at that point when things are a little bit quiet.
“As a filmmaker, you don't really know what the future holds for the film. But then over the last few months, towards the end of last year, we were able to get to some more film festivals. We got some very lovely awards and jury statements, which gave us some momentum that we really needed. And we're now here and we're very thankful for everyone that supported us on the journey.”
There are already a lot of stories out there around the death penalty, so what was it that drew them to this particular one?
“We really wanted to make a film about capital punishment, but not from an innocence perspective,” says Smriti. “I think we've seen a lot of that and I think those films are very worthy. Oftentimes they can change the course of legal outcomes and people's lives, which is incredible. But we don't often see the idea of capital punishment examined through the perspective of somebody who has admitted to committing the crime. And really the question becomes it's less about guilt or innocence and it's more about what we believe in.
“What are our values as a society and do we actually believe in the ideas of forgiveness and redemption, or don't we? That's really why we wanted to specifically focus on a case that wasn't innocent, the case of a person who had committed the crime but who changed his life and was a different person from when he committed the crime, and see if that impacted the way people viewed him.”
From a practical point of view, it’s very difficult to take on a story like that when one of course has no idea how it’s going to develop. With that in mind, to what extent was the film made in the edit?
“There was one aspect that was helpful and then other aspects that were really challenging,” she says. “The helpful aspect was that there was a linear arc. There was a linear timeline we could build from. When we decided to centre the film around John, he had a date of execution, and we knew there was a ticking clock that we were counting down to – but at that point, that's all we knew.
“I had been talking to Aaron Castro, who's the son of John’s victim, but he hadn't agreed to participate in the film. We didn't know that the district attorney was going to try to overturn John's execution. We didn't even know that John had a son, at that point.
“I think that's one of the beautiful things about documentary and what we love about it so much, and that's becoming harder and harder to do, honestly. But we were very lucky that we had MTV Documentary Films, and especially our executive producer, Sheila Nevins, who really encouraged us to stay the course and just let things unfold. We were very lucky that we had the space to do that. But this whole film was a process of discovery. We pulled at one thread and then more things and more things and more things came to be known. We got access to more plot twists. All of that started happening. So you know, everything was unexpected.”
There are some very intense moments in the film which presented both practical and ethical challenges for the filmmakers.
“I think one of the areas where that was the most delicate balance was our relationship with Israel, John’s son, who was a young person,” says Smriti. “Maya was the main person to build that relationship with Israel.”
Maya nods. “Yeah, so that was obviously the big day within our production schedule. We knew that we'd needed one cast camera to be filming with Aaron, and Smriti was filming with Aaron. He lived in Austin at that time and the execution was happening in Livingston. And John didn't want Israel in the death chamber. He selected people. But he was there to say goodbye on the day and then to receive the final phone call as well.
“At that stage, we had gotten to know Israel quite well because we'd been filming for a few days with him. Throughout that moment, he really got to know us. We really got to know him to the point where I think he really valued our support and our presence there and felt really comfortable with every one of our crew. I think that speaks volumes about sort of how you build your crews within documentary as well, especially around very intimate subject matter.”
“He really bonded with our cinematographer, Rafael Roy, because he was intrigued by the camera,” adds Smriti. “He was a teenage boy, he was intrigued by everything. Rafi spent like half a day with Israel just like showing him how the camera worked, and they talked about comic books, and it was a very emotionally potent, traumatic time, those few days in Israel's life. Rafi was so kind to him, it just gave him a feeling of normalcy when he was in the room.
“And May. Just generally, everyone who spent any time with Maya will say this about her, that she brings such a feeling of peace and calm wherever she is, which is not easy considering she carries the entire production on her shoulders. She has to make sure everything is running on time, all the equipment's working, the meals are there on time, you know, that we're getting the footage that we need. She carries so much responsibility, but she brings so much calm and so much nurturing feeling to production. So I think the two of them bringing that energy to Israel, that's how we were able to be in that room when he had that final phone call, be so close with him physically when he was talking to his father for the last time, and get that moment. It was just their presence, and he felt very comfortable with them.”
Of all the people in the film, the one who seems least certain about his own feelings is Aaron.
“ Yeah,” she says. “I mentioned before that Aaron initially had said he didn't want to participate in the film. He reached out to me. I'd reached out to everyone in the Castro family when we started making the film and said ‘Look, I would love to earn your participation. At the very least, we'd love to hear your perspective.’ And Aaron responded and said ‘Look, I don't want to be in your film, but I want you to know what I've been going through for the last 20 years of my life. There are certain things you should know as you make this film.’ Because I think he was afraid we were going to make something that was going to present John as a hero, you know, without taking into account the pain that he had caused.
“So Aaron and I, we talked that first time when he reached out, and then we just got into a routine of talking two, three times a week every week after that. I think he found me someone he could talk to, but also he could process a lot of his complex feelings without feeling judged. And he did have very complex feelings. That was something I noticed from the very beginning. He always seemed torn between the desire for justice and this sort of pulling towards forgiveness. He has a very big heart. He's a very, very empathetic person. And I could tell that there was this tension within him in every conversation we had.
“I think it was just those months of building that rapport and building that trust and making sure he understood that he wasn't going to be judged, no matter how he reacted or what he felt or what he said – neither by me in the room nor in the way that he was portrayed in the film. That allowed him to be able to process all of that on camera without feeling like he had to portray himself in a certain way. It was all very raw and unfiltered.”