Just before the All Saints Eve, on 1st November, we bring again the theme of death, now with two approaches to capital punishment.

“Into the Abyss” is a documentary by German director Werner Herzog about two men sentenced to death for triple murder in the state of Texas, USA. Talking with the prisoners, their relatives and the relatives of the victims, Herzog traces a portray of the remote America and the absurd ways in which people kill and are killed in a country where guns are part of everyday life.

In “The Green Mile” little we get to know about the stories of the inmates and the crimes they committed. Now in a fictionalised account, we are presented with the point of view of the prison guards, who have the mission to attend to the last days of those condemned to death and to execute them.

The theme of the supernatural, or the miraculous, is inserted into this movie in a somewhat strange way, but it enables the raise of two of the most heated issues in the debates on the capital punishment: the possibility of repentance and the hypothesis of innocence.

(Curatorship of Sérgio Pereira)