DOC - Black Butterflies
Documentary Feature
Title: Black Butterflies
TRT: 1: 45
Project Status: In Production
Logline
After beating the federal government on appeal, one woman pulls back the curtain on the conspiracy law machine designed to erase Black women from their families and proves the outcome was decided before she ever walked into that courtroom.
Synopsis
Black Butterflies is a first-person feature documentary narrated by its protagonist, Starling Thomas — one of only two percent of federal defendants to beat the government on appeal. After serving two years in federal prison on a conspiracy charge, Starling connects her story to three other women caught in the same trap: Keeda Haynes, indicted at 22 after trusting a man she loved; Lia St. James, pulled into her stepfather's Medicare fraud conspiracy at 19; and Tynice Hall — each targeted by a system that exploits the gap between what these women actually knew and what the government claimed they knew.
Structured around the four stages of a butterfly's life cycle — egg, larva, chrysalis, butterfly — the film weaves sit-down testimony, vérité footage Starling captured while fighting her own case, an FBI agent's confession from inside the machine, original poetry, and reenactments into a cinematic argument that the federal criminal legal system, operating through conspiracy law, plea coercion, and racial targeting, is designed to remove Black women from their families and communities. Threading through every act is a spiritual testimony: church footage of a pastor prophesying over Starling's life thirty days before trial, her own prayer footage two days before the appeal ruling, and the phone call that proved the faith was answered. This is not a film about what these women did. It is a film about what was done to them, what they survived, and what followed them out the door.
Team
Starling Thomas- Writer, Director, Producer // Jerod Couch - Codirector- producer/// Jammarrio Washington - DP/ Producer
Seeking
Post Production Producer/ Investors
Project Website
Contact
Starling Thomas
starling@soulturemedia.com