Jacinta

Like the mother who gave birth to her at 17, Jacinta struggles with addiction. Perhaps it’s no accident that they wind up doing time together. Given extraordinarily intimate access over a period of three-and-a-half years, filmmaker Jessica Earnshaw turns her unblinking camera on Jacinta, her mother, her father, her brothers, her grandparents and the daughter she gave birth to at 16 — revealing deep codependency and multiple layers of trauma. This film poses the vexing question: Can the patterns of addiction and prison, rehab, relapse and perpetual disappointment — handed down from one generation to the next — be broken? These are chaotic lives where unconditional love is frequently rendered but is of limited utility to heal.