A Declaration Of Love

Curtis McCarty, our character, has been arrested. The police caught him in a dark outskirt of the town and put an end to his reconnection with the world of the living. Curtis spent years of his freedom as an alien, landing in a hostile world. His story is so powerful and brutally extreme that we insist it must be told. Curtis was only 22 when he was sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit and spent 22 years in prison, 19 of them on death row, buried alive below ground in a concrete room with no windows, waiting to be executed, in Oklahoma State Penitentiary. He was exonerated in 2007 and set free. After his release, he was diagnosed with a severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Without any help or support, his life fell apart, leading him to live as a homeless and drug user, a way of living that drove him back to jail. In fact, Curtis was charged with drug possession for personal use and sentenced to 10 years, the maximum penalty available. He is now 55, facing a new and long unjust conviction. “Trying Hard To Breathe” aims to give voice to a man who is being cruelly persecuted by a perverse legal system, digging into his deepest and most hidden emotions. The film is a visual journey through Curtis’s glance and his sense of displacement towards a world where he doesn’t belong anymore. “Trying Hard To Breathe” is a singular way of addressing the barbarity of the death penalty and also a chance to explore a crucial question: what does “freedom” mean in a society that refuses a person like Curtis despite all he went through?