A new ani­mat­ed film, The Last 40 Miles, will fol­low a death row inmate on his final jour­ney from the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, to the death cham­ber in Huntsville. The film uses three forms of ani­ma­tion to tell the inmate’s sto­ry, from his trag­ic child­hood to the moment he is being escort­ed to the lethal injec­tion cham­ber. The script was writ­ten by free­lance jour­nal­ist Alex Hannaford and is based on inter­views he con­duct­ed with death row inmates for news sto­ries. Hannaford described why he used the metaphor of the trip to the death cham­ber: ​“It struck me a long time ago that this was the last thing these men see as they’re escort­ed from death row in Livingston to the death cham­ber at the Walls Unit in Huntsville. One of the last things they see is that big Texas sun ris­ing over a vast lake. It’s quite breath­tak­ing.” A trail­er for the short film can be viewed here.

(S. Smith, ​“VIDEO: The Trip to Huntsville, Animated,” Texas Monthly, December 2012; DPIC post­ed, Mar. 8, 2013). See Death Row. Find more infor­ma­tion about The Last 40 Miles here.

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