For 30 years, soft-spoken chef Jimmy Lee Hill has run a highly regarded culinary training program out of a prison in Coldwater, Mich., offering incarcerated men a renewed sense of purpose through the craft of fine dining while demonstrating the life-changing potential that trust and compassion can offer the incarcerated. As we watch the prison’s bountiful garden cycle through Michigan’s four seasons, we follow Hill and three of his students — a juvenile lifer imprisoned for decades, a hotshot cook with a serious opioid addiction, and a swaggering former drug dealer on parole — as they struggle to adapt to different stages of incarceration, re-entry and redemption using food as a catalyst for positive change.

I was lead producer on this film — offering creative feedback, managing budgets, planning the distribution strategy and overseeing fundraising efforts. The film world premiered at DOC NYC in 2022 and hosted Michigan premiere at Freep Film Festival in Spring 2023. We are actively implementing our impact campaign to raise awareness about the issues facing incarcerated people - both while in prison and upon re-entry.