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- Andrea Altheimer walked out of prison in March 2019, having served nearly 21 years of a 40-year sentence that King County (Washington State) Prosecutors ruled "shocking and excessive." Less than a week later, Altheimer was working with local at-risk teenagers and young women, trying to help them avoid the path that derailed her life nearly two decades prior. "Out Of The Fire," shadows Andrea in the months following her release as she takes on a mentorship role in the lives of more than a dozen kids. This includes young Chris'tionna who at 15-years-old is facing criminal charges, is pregnant, and with the odds stacked against her fighting to find balance and direction in her life. Circumstances eerily familiar to Andrea. Their relationship is at the core this short film that tells their story, and that of local non-profit Community Passageways, a Seattle-based felony diversion program that works to break the all too familiar cycle of Mass Incarceration impacting their community. As filmmakers, so much of the success of documentary is dictated by auspicious timing and circumstance, and in short engendering the confidence required in our subjects to tell a genuine story. Put simply, without having spent close to a year shadowing Dominique Davis (Community Passageways), we would not have had the intimate access to either Andrea or Chris'tionna. Both of whom demonstrated a humbling display of grace and strength in the face of unthinkable injustice and struggle, and in turn allowing us the public to bear witness.
