Free Angela and All Political Prisoners

Released Apr 5, 2013

1 hr. 41 min.

Documentary

List

93%

15 Reviews

Tomatometer

73%

500+ Ratings

Audience Score

College professor Angela Davis' social activism implicates her in a botched kidnapping that ends with four people dead and her name on the FBI's most-wanted list.

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Khloe

Satan is an actress in this movie I think her last name is Smith.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

05/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Great documentary. I show it to my students and they really enjoy it and engage with it.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/16/23

Full Review

yash b

A first rate documentary. I was captivated by this story from start to finish. I learned a lot and was very interested by this film.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

It seems so extremely long ago since there was a revolutionary US movement to the left. The member maybe most known over the world was Angela Davis, communist, for a short while philosophy teacher at UCLA and charged for murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. This documentary is like a thriller. Davis returns from philosophy studies in Germany, is fired from UCLA by its board there Governor Ronald Reagan is a member, dedicates herself to prisoners' rights, falls in love with one of them. Than comes the disaster. That prisoner is involved in a court drama, there a judge is murdered and jury members injured and some of the guns are owned by Davis. The reasons for her buying guns are the threats she has received and she showed her ID when buying them. That's the main point for the defence. Davis, the university philosophy teacher is by definition not stupid. She wouldn't get the guns that way if she was part of a terrorist conspiration. Well-made movie about what can absolutely not be called present history. Although it was only 40 years ago.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/22/23

Full Review

Audience Member

A good telling of Angela Davis' story of persecution, prosecution, and salvation which only dips its toe into her ideas. Perhaps because we're still a lot more comfortable with her as a pin up girl than as a purveyor of ideas? I think the minute or so used for a pot shot at Richard Nixon near the end would have been better used revisiting the farmer who posted Ms. Davis' bail. He got a couple of minutes of interesting screen time, then disappeared from the story.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

01/12/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Interesting documentary about Angela Davis and her affiliation with the Communist Party and Black Panthers. She was on the FBI's ten most wanted list after Marin County Judge Harold Haley murder. The movie shows interviews with Davis where she downplays her role in the murder. Very interesting.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/26/23

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Shola Lynch

Director

Angela Davis

Self

Jay-Z

Executive Producer

James Lassiter

Executive Producer

Jada Pinkett Smith

Executive Producer

Will Smith

Executive Producer

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Randall Jenson

Bitch Media

The film moves with riveting momentum.

Jan 15, 2021

Full Review

John Anderson

Variety

Fugitive, radical, communist and philosopher Angela Davis was the lefty hipster's pin-up girl and the right-winger's Afro-ed nightmare, and her authority and charisma are on full display in Free Angela & All Political Prisoners.

Apr 5, 2013

Full Review

Ann Hornaday

Washington Post

"Free Angela and All Political Prisoners" may seem to take place in a distant past, but it resonates with improbable timeliness.

Rated: 2.5/4

Apr 5, 2013

Full Review

Nora Lee Mandel

Maven's Nest

Fascinating eye-opener that not only brings history alive, but reverberates into today's controversies over guns, government surveillance, racial profiling, and media frenzy.

Rated: 9/10

Jan 1, 2016

Full Review

Michael Dequina

TheMovieReport.com

An all too sobering reminder of how, in the purported land of the free, any voices deemed radical and hence dangerous can lead the powers that be to find any remote angle to silence them by whatever force and means they deem necessary.

Rated: 3.5/4

Apr 22, 2013

Full Review

Cynthia Fuchs

PopMatters

History and media.

Apr 11, 2013

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Synopsis

College professor Angela Davis' social activism implicates her in a botched kidnapping that ends with four people dead and her name on the FBI's most-wanted list.

Director: Shola Lynch
Executive Producer: Jay-Z, James Lassiter, Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith
Screenwriter: Sidra Smith
Distributor: Code Black
Production Co: Roc Nation, Realside Productions, Overbrook Entertainment, De Films en Aiguille
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Apr 5, 2013, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Aug 20, 2013

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