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 greater 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 combat 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 underneath 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 concept how we’d be capable to safe [Ontario’s] freedom,” Fox mentioned. “However we knew it will be imminent.”
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“This movie…we think about it a motion,” Fox advised 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 to 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 digicam and started documenting the moments their youngsters would in any other case should navigate with out their father.
That uncooked footage grew to become the emotional basis for TIME, a mission that catapulted their story to world consideration. However Fox was clear in our interview: TIME II was essential as a result of the combat wasn’t over.
“When many individuals thought that what had occurred already was sufficient,” she defined, “for me because the director on this mission, 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 just isn’t a fairytale, and freedom ain’t free,” Fox emphasised. “It was about actually with the ability to present individuals 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 aim to mobilize a million individuals to observe the movie and have interaction 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 price of imprisonment within the U.S., housing greater than 27,000 individuals in its state prisons—a 4.7% enhance from 2021, and considerably above the nationwide common in accordance with the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Black individuals made up practically 32% of the nationwide jail inhabitants, regardless of being solely 13% of the final inhabitants.
Fox and Rob’s house state is emblematic of the issue. The U.S. might maintain simply 5% of the world’s inhabitants, however it cages practically 25% of its prisoners in accordance with the Jail Coverage Initiative. Inside that, Black Individuals are incarcerated at practically 5 instances the speed of white Individuals in accordance with The Sentencing Undertaking.
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 mentioned. “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 referred to as participatory protection,” Fox mentioned. “That mannequin is one out of 40 hubs throughout the nation doing this work of educating justice-involved households authorized consciousness as a greatest type of protection.”
Fact-telling as Resistance
There are artistic dangers, after which there are dangers that include telling the reality—particularly whenever you’re nonetheless underneath surveillance.
“Our danger got here from what we had been exposing,” Fox admitted. “While you start to be a truth-teller and converse reality to energy…you set your self in hurt’s approach.”
That hazard just isn’t summary. Rob remains to be on 40 years of parole. But, each are unapologetic about their storytelling. “We took that and we flipped it and mentioned, ‘No, I’m gonna function a warning signal,’” Fox mentioned. “As a logo of what freedom actually means.”
Their filmmaking is about legacy. “I hope that my voice would resonate on to different generations via this media that lasts into perpetuity,” Fox advised MadameNoire. “So right this 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 via one household’s journey.”