Courtesy of Homestretch Documentary
“This film is extraordinary, Everyone should see this. It’s one of the best and most moving documentaries I’ve ever seen.”
-Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit: An American Legend
Going to prison is rarely good news, unless you are a racehorse not living up to your bloodline. For these outcasts, prison is a lucky reprieve.
Every year, thousands of horses are bred and sold for millions of dollars each in order to supply the massive racing industry. Despite the best pedigrees, training, and care, many young horses fail to meet their owners’ expectations. The magnificent creature is reduced to a red mark in an accounting ledger – a loss not to be sustained.
Typically, poor-earning and end-of-career racehorses meet with two destinies: inhumane slaughterhouse auctions (sold as overseas food), or the punishing two-bit racing circuit (a last effort to squeeze earnings before the slaughterhouse). Thanks to a few progressive politicians and prisons in New York, Oregon, and Kentucky, there is an alternative destiny: Lush, expansive, prison-owned farms, where end-of-term prisoners earn the privilege of caring for these noble animals.
The horses are skittish and single-minded from years of running in circles on demand. The prisoners are jaded urban tough-guys, on whom years of incarceration have taken their toll. But beneath every stereotype lurks a unique individual. The peaceful surroundings help inmates and horses to let go of the past and discover new sides of themselves.
Homestretch documents the fates of losing racehorses, and the lifesaving rehabilitation they can share with prisoners on their way back to society. It captures the inhumane treatment of man and animal, and suggests that the negative effects of mass institutions are reversible.
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