The House I Live In (2012 film)

The House I Live In
Directed by	Eugene Jarecki
Produced by	Eugene Jarecki Melinda Shopsin
Written by	Eugene Jarecki
Starring	Nannie Jeter David Simon
Music by	Robert Miller
Cinematography	Sam Cullman Derek Hallquist
Release dates	October 5, 2012 (2012-10-05)
Running time	108 minutes
Country	United States International[1]
Language	English

The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a 2012 documentary film about the War on Drugs in the United States.

Participants

• Michelle Alexander (civil rights litigator and the author of "The New Jim Crow")
• Shanequa Benitez (resident of Cromwell Towers housing project in Yonkers, New York)
• The Honorable Mark W. Bennett (U.S. District Court Judge in Sioux City, Iowa)
• Charles Bowden (journalist covering drug war-caused violence on the Mexico-U.S. border)
• Mike Carpenter (Chief of Security at the Lexington Corrections Center in Lexington, Oklahoma)
• Marshal Larry Cearley (Police Officer in the village of Magdalena, New Mexico)
• Eric Franklin (Warden of the Lexington Corrections Center in Lexington, Oklahoma)
• Maurice Haltiwanger (sentenced to 20 years for crack cocaine distribution)
• Dr. Carl Hart^[2] (Professor of Clinical Neuroscience, Columbia University)
• Nannie Jeter (resident of New Haven, Connecticut)
• Anthony Johnson (former small-time drug dealer in Yonkers, New York)
• Dr. Gabor Maté (Hungarian-born physician specializing in the treatment of addiction - has been working in Vancouver, Canada for several decades)
• Mark Mauer^[3] (Director, The Sentencing Project)
• Richard Lawrence Miller^[4] (American historian and expert on the history of U.S. drug laws)
• Charles Ogletree (Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a former academic advisor to Barack and Michelle Obama)
• Kevin Ott (serving life without parole on drug charges, Lexington Correctional Center, Lexington, Oklahoma)
• Susan Randall^[5] (Private investigator in Vermont - formerly a journalist/producer for National Public Radio, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Vermont Public Radio, and a researcher and associate producer for the A&E series Biography)
• David Simon (creator of The Wire on HBO)
• Julie Stewart (President and founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums aka FAMM)
• Dennis Whidbee (former drug dealer, and the father of Anthony Johnson)
• Officer Fabio Zuena (Police Officer in the city of Providence, Rhode Island)
• David Kennedy (Professor of Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City)

Reception

The documentary has been well received. Among the review aggregators, Rotten Tomatoes gave it 95% based on 55 reviews^[6] and Metacritic gave it 77/100 based on 24 reviews.^[7] Roger Ebert says The House I Live In "makes a shattering case against the War on Drugs."^[8] Peter Bradshaw reviewed the film for The Guardian and summed it up as an "angry and personal attack on America's war on drugs [that] contends it is a grotesquely wasteful public-works scheme".^[9]

Awards

• January 2012: Won the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.
• April 2014: Won a Peabody Award.^[10]

See also

• List of American films of 2012
• Prison–industrial complex

References

External links

• Official website
• The House I Live In at the Internet Movie Database
• National Public Radio Interview with Eugene Jarecki
• National Public Radio Article
• Appelo, Tim (January 29, 2012). "Sundance 2012: Grand Jury Prizewinner Eugene Jarecki on Drug War Doc, 'The House I Live In' (Q&A)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved January 14, 2013. 
• Higgins, Bill (October 12, 2012). "Brad Pitt Promotes 'The House I Live In' at Los Angeles Screening". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved January 14, 2013. 
• Barnes, Henry (November 22, 2012). "The House I Live In director Eugene Jarecki on the war on drugs: 'Everybody is a victim' - video". The Guardian. Retrieved January 14, 2013.