Represent Justice Announces the 2026 Ambassador Showcase

On July 23rd, the 2026 cohort of the Represent Justice Ambassador Program will gather in Los Angeles for their Ambassador Showcase, an invite-only event celebrating the culmination of their storytelling training and the premiere of their justice-centered films.

The evening marks a powerful milestone for this year’s Ambassadors: Angie Frias, Cesar Garcia, Julius Irving, Courtenie Jackson, Todd Jones, Marcus Kelley, Leigh Scott, Starling Thomas, Kenneth Webb, and Cecilia Zavala. Each filmmaker entered the program with a story rooted in lived experience, community, and a clear vision for change. After a year of training, production, editing, and impact campaign development, they will premiere films that ask what healing can look like when people are met with care instead of punishment, what freedom requires after incarceration, and what becomes possible when communities build new systems of safety for themselves.

The showcase will bring together the 2026 Ambassadors alongside friends, family, the Represent Justice team, movement partners, funders, and leaders across entertainment, philanthropy, and social impact for an intimate first look at the films before their public release.

This year’s slate moves audiences through a deeply human and urgent arc. The films explore reentry, surveillance, mental health crisis response, prison labor, criminal records, Black motherhood, childhood trauma, art, accountability, and community-based healing. Together, they challenge audiences to sit with the real consequences of punishment while imagining futures rooted in dignity, care, and repair.

Learn More About The Films:

What Grace Leaves Behind

This film by Cecilia Zavala tells a story about reentry, peer support, redemption, and the programs that help people rebuild their lives with dignity.

Rewritten

In Los Angeles, justice-impacted youth at the Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory rewrite their stories through art, mentorship, and community - until a police detention at their graduation showcase reveals how difficult it is to escape the labels society still places on them.

Stopcopticon

This film by Cesar Garcia reimagines technology as a tool for protection, visibility, and community power rather than surveillance and punishment.

Shackled in Freedom

This film by Courtenie Jackson is a documentary exposing how criminal records continue to limit employment, opportunity, and full freedom long after incarceration ends.

The Silent (R)evolution: Freedom from the Inside Out

This film by Julius Irving follows how one man’s experience of confinement became a space for reflection, healing, brotherhood, and

The Weaver

This film by Kenneth Webb is a dreamlike story of a recently released artist confronting trauma, memory, and violence while choosing creation over destruction.

Uncarcerated

This film by Leigh Scott challenges audiences to imagine emergency response systems that meet mental health crises with compassion instead of incarceration.

No Exception to the Promise

This film by Marcus Kelley is a documentary confronting how exception clauses in the U.S. and Michigan Constitutions have allowed slavery and exploitation to continue through prison labor.

Born Captive

This film by Starling Thomas is a spiritually grounded and deeply affecting film about Black motherhood, state violence, ancestral memory, and resistance.

Loud Silence

This film by Todd Jones is an intimate reflection on childhood sexual abuse, masculinity, trauma, incarceration, mental health, and the power of reclaiming one’s voice.

The showcase also marks the next chapter of the Ambassador Program for this cohort. Each filmmaker will move on to lead their impact campaigns, bringing their stories to communities far and wide. Beginning in late August, Represent Justice will publicly release the films in a four-part rollout.

The 2026 cohort represents six of the nation’s top 20 states with the highest incarceration rates: California, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, and Oklahoma. Their films reflect the realities of communities that have carried the weight of mass incarceration and the leadership of people closest to the solutions.

For Represent Justice, the showcase is not only a premiere. It is a moment of transition. These films now move from production into public life, where they will become tools for conversation, organizing, advocacy, and cultural change.

To get an exclusive first look at the 2026 Ambassador films before they are publicly released, sign up below.