The IF Project

Director: Kathlyn Horan

Winner of Lena Sharpe Award for Persistence of Vision and Special Jury Award at 2016 Seattle International Film Festival

This extremely powerful film is about Seattle’s IF Project, an innovative program aimed at assisting incarcerated women to confront the circumstances that led to their imprisonment and to begin the process of turning their lives around.

Women are the fastest growing segment of the prison population, increasing at nearly double the rate of men since 1985. In 2008, Seattle police officer Kim Bogucki went to the Washington Corrections Center for Women, planning to seek the permission of incarcerated mothers to work with their daughters in a Girl Scouts Beyond Bars troop.

Bogucki ended up creating a writing workshop for the moms, posing this critical question: “If there was something someone could have said or done that would have changed the path that led you here, what would it have been?” The IF Project is an eye-opening exploration of the struggles – as well as the personal victories – of the women whose lives Officer Bogucki touched.

Released in 2019
90 minutes
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