MARCH FORTH (Tribeca 2026) – Review by Leslie Combemale
Two documentaries, both centered on incarcerated individuals, have been the highlight of Tribeca 2026 for me. One is Jail Time Records, the other is March Forth, which, like Jail Time Records, is also helmed by a male/female documentarian duo. Emmy Award-winning director Robe Imbriano partnered with Emmy-nominated director Valerie Hong to tell the story of Reginald Dwayne Betts, who was sent to an adult prison at 16 years old for armed carjacking. After serving 8 years, much of it in a maximum security prison, Betts went on to become an award-winning poet, a graduate of Yale Law School, an acclaimed author and activist, and a MacArthur Genius Award winner.
Through interviews with Betts and his friends and family, animated sequences, poetry by Betts, and scenes from Betts’s one-man Off Broadway play “A Performance of Felon: An American Washi Tale”, the life of a complicated and inspired man emerges. Betts is an extremely insightful, purpose-driven human, one who does not, by any means, downplay his own mistakes. As he puts it, “you hang on to an idea for a second too long, and it becomes your life”. We hear, not only from Betts himself, but also the friend who was his literal partner in crime, as well as his mother, and other friends and former or current inmates who have been part of Betts’s life. During his time in solitary confinement, he began writing poetry, finding his voice through the new name Shahid, which means witness. He also started studying the law, finding clerical errors that shaved months and sometimes years off the sentences of fellow inmates. He was released on March 4th, a day he took literally. He called it “both a date and a command”.
After prison, he worked to become a lawyer, attending University of Maryland before finding his way into Yale Law School. Being admitted to a state bar was a huge challenge, since his time in prison kept getting flagged, but ultimately he found employment. Meanwhile, he was writing books, raising a family, and starting a non-profit called Freedom Reads. With the belief that “freedom begins with a book”, Freedom Reads got curated collections of books into prison libraries, There has also been an off-Broadway one-man play, a McArthur Fellowship, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, a divorce, and the joy of falling in love again.
The reason March Forth is so compulsively watchable is the way Imbriano and Hong organize our understanding of Betts, his life arc (so far), personal growth, and challenges. Actor Brian Tyree Henry is tapped to voice elements of the poet’s story, which is broken up into short chapters that make his choices and emotional truths clear, but that at the same time reveal the challenges of being incarcerated. Some of that is shown through animation, which makes palatable what might, for audiences, be too intense or hard to watch, but is essential to Betts’s life.
It’s Betts himself that is key to the film’s success as biography and tale of transformation. He is someone who has dramatic issues of low self esteem. At one point he references his crime, asking whether “one night put a permanent question of whether I could love myself”. Apparently, former inmates are twice as likely to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
There are so many moments when he is raw and authentic as he is interviewed, but it’s never hard to watch him. About where he is now, he says, “nothing grows without weeping, not even joy”. In March Forth, one man’s experience, which has been neither easy nor simple, reveals the power of perception and the value of hard work to become who we want to be.
Betts is living proof that we can get where we want to go even from the darkest places. It is a reminder that embracing freedom, whatever that means to each of us, and showing compassion to ourselves and those in despair, is our job as human beings.
5 out of 5 stars.
