One of the most acclaimed docs from this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, dream/killer, is being released in NY today and in LA next Friday, Dec 11th. Fans of the podcast Serial and HBO’s The Jinx, this film is right up your alley, I highly recommend you seek it out!
In the fall of 2005, 19-year-old Ryan Ferguson was convicted of murder and sentenced to 40-years in prison based on someone else’s dream. Over the next ten years while Ryan languished in prison, his father Bill engaged in a tireless crusade to find justice. dream/killer tells the story of this extraordinary father’s journey to free his son.
When Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt was brutally murdered in the newspaper’s parking lot, the crime went unsolved for two years, leaving the affluent college town desperate to bring home justice. At the time, it was the only unsolved murder in the city. A break in the case lead police to Chuck Erickson, who confessed to the crime, implicated Ferguson as an accomplice and left America with one of the country’s most outrageous miscarriages of justice.
The documentary uses archival footage from when Ryan was first arrested, interviews with him in prison, and court hearings that reveal the strengths and the flaws of the American judicial system. The arguments of the ruthless prosecutor and Ryan’s brilliant defense attorney are also depicted to show how easily the system is influenced. Interspersed with footage from the Ferguson family archive, dream/killer looks at the personal consequences of a wrongful conviction.
dream/killer – OFFICIAL TRAILER (2015) from Bloom Project on Vimeo.
You can check out my original review and listen to my exclusive interview with Ryan and Bill in the link below. This is one extraordinary story and family.
Review/Interview with ‘Dream/Killer’ subject Ryan and Bill Ferguson
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