67% of ex-prisoners return within three years. This is why.
North Philadelphia, PA – Kev, El and Andy are three men united by one struggle: they are trying to defy gravity. As part of the 700,000 prisoners released into society every year, they find themselves faced with a chilling outlook: 67% of ex-offenders re-offend within three years. What explains this invisible force that keeps former inmates in a seemingly unending cycle of incarceration? Filmed on the street over the course of two years, Pull of Gravity is an intimate portrait of these three men that confronts head-on the gritty details of lives cut short by poverty and drugs, where dealing is seen as the only route to economic prosperity, where using offers an escape from powerlessness, and where prison is too often the next stop. The film’s unfiltered lense captures its subjects as they lay bare their stories, fears, and tentative dreams.
Direction
Two years embedded on the streets builds extraordinary trust.
Editing
Unfiltered vérité style lets subjects speak for themselves.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
North Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood was America's largest open-air drug market during filming, making this ground-zero reporting on the opioid crisis.
The title refers to criminologists' 'pull of gravity' theory — that returning to familiar environments statistically overwhelms individual willpower, making recidivism nearly inevitable without geographic displacement.
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