On Juneteenth 2025, TIME, the Oscar-nominated documentary that shook audiences to their core, discovered its continuation in a brand new movie, TIME II: Unfinished Enterprise. Directed by Sibil Richardson—recognized broadly as Fox—the follow-up to Garrett Bradley’s acclaimed 2020 work is larger than a sequel. It’s a cinematic marketing campaign, an archive, and a political name to motion.
This new chapter follows Fox and her husband, Robert (Rob) Richardson, as they return to the battleground of Louisiana’s carceral system. Whereas TIME chronicled the household’s 21-year struggle to convey Rob house, TIME II confronts the heartbreak, resistance, and technique that emerge of their mission to free their nephew and co-defendant, nonetheless imprisoned in the identical system that attempted to steal Rob’s life.
Ontario, the couple’s nephew, was arrested alongside Rob throughout the identical incident in 1997. Whereas Rob was granted clemency in 2018 after serving 21 years, Ontario stays incarcerated—serving an excellent longer sentence beneath Louisiana’s notoriously harsh sentencing legal guidelines. His continued imprisonment is on the coronary heart of TIME II: Unfinished Enterprise, which reframes the narrative from private victory to collective accountability. “When Rob got here house from jail, we had no thought how we might be capable to safe [Ontario’s] freedom,” Fox stated. “However we knew it will be imminent.”
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“This movie…we contemplate it a motion,” Fox instructed MadameNoire in an unique interview. “In contrast to many documentaries that you simply see when others are telling our tales, one, this movie is led by the previously incarcerated. It’s my directorial debut. This was a possibility for us to inform our story.”
Freedom Ain’t a Fairytale
Fox and Rob’s story is deeply private. In 1997, monetary devastation pushed the couple to make a determined choice: they robbed a credit score union in an try and recuperate the financial savings misplaced when a enterprise deal collapsed. Rob was sentenced to 61 years, regardless of agreeing to an 18-year plea deal. Fox, newly launched from a brief jail stint herself, picked up a digital camera and started documenting the moments their kids would in any other case should navigate with out their father.
That uncooked footage grew to become the emotional basis for TIME, a undertaking that catapulted their story to international consideration. However Fox was clear in our interview: TIME II was crucial as a result of the struggle wasn’t over.
“When many individuals thought that what had occurred already was sufficient,” she defined, “for me because the director on this undertaking, it was about actually…we owe [audiences] to share how did we get Rob out? How did he come house? How did his liberation come about?”
What the sequel makes plain is that liberation isn’t passive. “Freedom will not be a fairytale, and freedom ain’t free,” Fox emphasised. “It was about actually having the ability to present folks what we did with freedom.”
That understanding grew to become the heartbeat of the movie and the engine behind the couple’s newest mission: the #TimeIIWatch marketing campaign. They set out with a purpose to mobilize a million folks to observe the movie and interact in a brand new motion for freedom.
Louisiana, the Carceral Capital
Within the nationwide dialog about mass incarceration, Louisiana is a far cry from a footnote. It’s a headline.
As of 2022, Louisiana had the very best charge of imprisonment within the U.S., housing greater than 27,000 folks in its state prisons—a 4.7% improve from 2021, and considerably above the nationwide common in keeping with the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Black folks made up almost 32% of the nationwide jail inhabitants, regardless of being solely 13% of the overall inhabitants.
Fox and Rob’s house state is emblematic of the issue. The U.S. could maintain simply 5% of the world’s inhabitants, nevertheless it cages almost 25% of its prisoners in keeping with the Jail Coverage Initiative. Inside that, Black People are incarcerated at almost 5 instances the speed of white People in keeping with The Sentencing Mission.
So when Fox says that TIME II is a name to motion, she means it in each sense. “We garnered an understanding that to be free is to free others,” she stated. “To launch this Marketing campaign for Freedom—this motion, which is greater than only a movie—we put collectively these instruments from our 30 years of being justice concerned.”
By way of their nonprofit, Wealthy Household Ministries, Fox and Rob present participatory protection coaching, empowering households to advocate in courtrooms and communities alike. “We apply a mannequin known as participatory protection,” Fox stated. “That mannequin is one out of 40 hubs throughout the nation doing this work of instructing justice-involved households authorized consciousness as a greatest type of protection.”
Reality-telling as Resistance
There are artistic dangers, after which there are dangers that include telling the reality—particularly while you’re nonetheless beneath surveillance.
“Our danger got here from what we have been exposing,” Fox admitted. “Once you start to be a truth-teller and communicate fact to energy…you set your self in hurt’s manner.”
That hazard will not be summary. Rob continues to be on 40 years of parole. But, each are unapologetic about their storytelling. “We took that and we flipped it and stated, ‘No, I’m gonna function a warning signal,’” Fox stated. “As a logo of what freedom actually means.”
Their filmmaking is about legacy. “I hope that my voice would resonate on to different generations by means of this media that lasts into perpetuity,” Fox instructed MadameNoire. “So at the moment we’re taking a look at 30 years, and one other 30 years, I’ll be 85. That’ll be 60 years of archiving the brand new type of slavery in America by means of one household’s journey.”
