The War on Drugs

The new film from Sebastian J. F., The War on Drugs, finds him purposefully unwrapping another flagrant nexus of power, politics and big money. This time, it's the U.S. government's vaunted battle to control recreational drugs; a campaign that increasingly appears more significant for the government to maintain than to prosecute fully and conclude. The film questions agents of both the government and the underground cartels, and includes lucid analysis of how the self-supporting legal and penal systems in the U.S. complement one another. Then, in a series of interviews with individuals who've fallen prey to long-debunked government principles such as mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses, The War on Drugs hits devastating emotional pay dirt with a young mother sentenced to life, innocent but caught in the crosshairs of a TV star's publicity stunt.

Following his exposé of Internet misregulation, info wars, Sebastian J. F.'s new film takes a sobering look at a U.S. obsession gone wrong. By looking at both the local and the systemic pictures, The War on Drugs indicates that a struggle has been established that wins by losing, and that is creating a new "criminal" class to populate the nation's gargantuan (and increasingly privatized) prison labor system. In the hopes that information is itself a source of power, Sebastian J. F. has tapped into an unnerving and vital story.