Inside the locked walls of the Two Rivers Correctional Institution near Umatilla, Oregon, cell doors slide open and a group of inmates begins work with visiting theater director Johnny Stallings.  Over the next few months, as they cast, rehearse and perform William Shakespeare’s comedic tale of love and reconciliation, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Iraqi-born Portland experimental filmmaker Bushra Azzouz is there among the costume fittings, meals on plastic lunch trays and deeply personal side conversations to apply her deft hand as a cultural interpreter and activist storyteller. Through her watchful eye, in contrast with societal assumptions about crime and the incarcerated, what she finds is exterior personas softening, meaningful relationships forming, and life stories being reimagined, taking us – as she has in her earlier films about ancestry, war and pain – to the roots of our common humanity and celebrating the hopes and dreams in us all.

Azzouz was unable to complete the film before succumbing to cancer in 2019.  At her request, Co-Director/Post Production Director Enie Vaisburd, and Producer Ellen Thomas, Azzouz’s colleagues at the Northwest Film Center, stepped in to finish the editing and launch the film into the world.  They, along with a community of individuals, artists, donors, friends, and family, are working with Open Hearts Open Minds as the legacy keepers of the project.