The Feature

Synopsis

Peg Rives, serving time for killing a state senator during a drug-fueled fight, awaits determination from a parole board about an early release. But the board wants to see evidence of support on the outside. Who can Peg call on? Her friends are dead or imprisoned. She lost touch with her daughter, Dorian, in the chaos of serial foster placements. But now, as a parole hearing looms, Peg reaches out to Dorian through a family reconciliation program. It begins online. But when Peg logs on for the first meeting, Dorian refuses to turn on her camera or mic, only “chatting” to communicate. Peg submits to this odd arrangement. It’s a start. But the meeting blows up when Peg asks Dorian to write a letter supporting her release.

They both retreat to their separate worlds. Dorian, shaken by this encounter, unravels. Never a warm mother, she detaches even more from her children. At work, she is suspended when she lashes out at her students. Finally, when her husband leaves, taking the children, she heads to the prison to have it out with the woman responsible for this mess. In the meeting, Peg and Dorian pound each other with conflicting versions of the past. In this process, Dorian uncovers memories of the night her mother killed the senator that are at odds with what was presented at trial. Could it be that Peg was incarcerated unjustly and did Dorian’s silence enable this?

There are the people and this is the battlefield we have chosen to depict in ORDER MY STEPS.