“How Social Change Happens From Below”: Lucas Guilkey and JoeBill Muñoz Discuss ‘The Strike’

The story of solitary confinement is impossibly cruel—a collection of enduring deprivations that add up to a horror that can never be fully captured by mere stats. To describe it is to consider a place ensnared by windowless brick, with scarred and rutted walls depicting agitation, unease, and in some cases, the mania of a previous occupant. It’s another world, meticulously crafted to intensify the feeling of not being of this world. But while the practice comprises a ghastly visual mosaic of mistreatment, at best, there are still institutional symbols of resilience, as exemplified by the longest prison hunger strike in California history.

When Pelican Bay State Prison opened in 1989 as a supermax facility, it was designed to house the most dangerous incarcerated individuals, many of whom had been caught up in the War on Drugs and the Three-Strikes law. The facility aimed to reduce tensions between prison factions by isolating those deemed troublesome, often labeling them as gang members based on questionable criteria such as political interests in the Black Panthers or ties to Chicano culture. This resulted in their long-term, sometimes decades-long confinement in the Security Housing Unit (SHU).

Named after the only constitutional recourse incarcerated individuals can take against unjust treatment, The Strike weaves together the story of the July 2013 hunger strike through the firsthand accounts of Pelican Bay veterans—some of whom endured solitary confinement for 20, even over 30 years—alongside the family members who played a crucial role in organizing a protest that transformed into a worldwide movement. 

Documentary spoke with first-time directors Lucas Guilkey and JoeBill Muñoz, IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund grantees, about how their evolving understanding of solitary confinement shaped their direction and about the broader impact of the human stories behind the Pelican Bay hunger strike. With IDA’s support, their film is set to have a theatrical tour this fall, starting at DCTV on October 1. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

DOCUMENTARY: For both of you, can you talk about your understanding of solitary confinement before working on this documentary? How did your perspectives evolve as you delved into the Pelican Bay State Prison strike and its broader implications?

LUCAS GUILKEY: I didn’t know much about solitary confinement at first personally, but I was already involved in racial justice and community organizing in Oakland. My journey began with volunteering to make social media content for hunger strikes at Pelican Bay. Through this work, I met the families of the hunger strikers and some people recently released from the SHU. Hearing their stories and witnessing the powerful moments they shared made me realize that this needed to be told as a feature-length documentary.

California itself has this stereotype of being a progressive place, but at that time, hunger strikes were also happening in Guantanamo Bay and Palestine, showing how little we knew about the harsh realities of solitary confinement. Even the families didn’t fully understand what their loved ones were going through, as prisoners were trying to protect them from the grim truth. It felt like a veil was being lifted as we learned more about the harsh conditions.

JOEBILL MUÑOZ: Yeah, for me, I already had knowledge of incarceration and prisons because I grew up visiting prisons as a kid. I was from a community impacted by mass incarceration, but solitary confinement, specifically—especially the long-term, indefinite kind—was new. I grew up in Texas, with its own criminal justice system, but Pelican Bay surprised me. It was one of the first supermax prisons, designed for solitary confinement, and became a model for others, even in Latin America. 

As we dug into the story more, I was shocked to learn how solitary confinement had been codified over time. It had become this administrative process where people were spending decades in solitary without any real legal recourse. That blew my mind, just the scale of it. You know, how many people it affected, how long it lasted, and the long-term effects it had on these individuals. Through Lucas’s connections with families, we reached the men inside. After the hunger strike, starting in 2017, they began being released, and that’s when we started filming.

D: It’s clear that this wasn’t told from a distance for both of you. I’d like to know how your close involvements shaped your intentions and the narrative direction you wanted to take with The Strike.

LG: We wanted to do several things with the film. On one level, we wanted it to be an intimate, personal story. We wanted to be inside the minds and experiences of these individuals. At the same time, though, we wanted to tell the larger, collective story—how people come together to challenge these massive structures in society. So, we were constantly trying to strike that balance between the personal and the collective.

It’s a story about how social change happens from below, you know? And our key interviews, like with Jack Morris, for example, were very in-depth. We sat down with him for about nine hours, spread over multiple days, after having many informal discussions beforehand. We were focused on prioritizing the well-being of the men we were talking to. We didn’t want to re-traumatize anyone but instead, give them a platform to share their stories in their own time and on their terms.

JM: We really wanted people to feel the journey. You know, you can tell someone, “Jack Morris spent 30 years in solitary confinement,” and it's a shocking statistic, right? But as filmmakers, we had to ask ourselves: how do we convey what that felt like? What was the experience like?

As Lucas mentioned, we were also trying to do so many other things—talking about collective resistance, the history of how this system was built, and what happened when they tried to pull off this protest. But at the heart of it, their personal stories were always the most important thing. Everything was told from their point of view. But it was definitely a challenge.

D: How do you even approach someone who’s been through so much in the SHU? How do you get them to open up about such dark experiences from a place of trust?

LG: My previous contacts with family members during the hunger strike built a lot of trust. So you talk to one person, you hear their stories, and then they refer you to another person. People want to share their experiences. Part of being in solitary confinement is feeling erased from society. You're not just locked away in a concrete fortress, tucked away near the Oregon border in the redwood forest. It's like being stripped of your voice. In reclaiming that voice, these folks were saying, “Hey, we’re still human.” That’s what our interviews were about—giving them that platform.

JM: Exactly, they really wanted to be heard. Spending 20 or more years in solitary confinement is shocking and hard to grasp for those who haven’t experienced it. Many of these men, now in their 60s or 70s, are coming home after decades, meeting family they’ve never known. They were excited to finally share their stories and reclaim their humanity, not just dwell on the despair.

I remember one specific moment. It was at a film festival, and one of the protagonists brought a family member, a younger person in their 20s or 30s. Afterward, that individual came up to me and said, “I’ve heard my uncle tell all these stories about Pelican Bay and solitary confinement, but I never really understood until I saw the movie.” It was like they hadn’t fully absorbed what their uncle went through. Sitting down and listening to it made everything click. So, I think it was about timing too—it felt right on both sides.

D: Right, and part of the challenge with this subject matter is getting people to listen to these stories. There’s this barrier where people have been conditioned to feel little remorse for those they think deserve solitary confinement. When you were talking to these guys, were there any moments that captured the spirit of who they were, beyond the crimes they were supposedly being punished for?

JM: The wedding scene at the end was truly magical. Jack, a gifted storyteller, poured his emotions into his vows, revealing how much he’s overcome. It was a powerful moment showing that solitary confinement, though part of his past, doesn’t define him. Now, he’s advocating against it while embracing a joyful new chapter with his wife, Dolores. They’re going to Hawaii, Europe, doing all these beautiful things. But at the wedding, in his vows, you could see how much it meant to him—how much Dolores means to him. It was like the perfect culmination of his journey, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

LG: One story that stands out is Paul Redd’s parties in San Quentin in the 1970s before mass solitary confinement became prevalent. We even found archival footage of a soul party he organized in the prison yard, a rare moment of joy before he faced decades in solitary. This moment reflects a side of him rarely shown.

Another powerful detail is how inmates used their limited resources creatively. For instance, Ernesto Lira befriended a spider in solitary confinement, and others found solace in small signs of life, like a flower in the yard. Many became talented artists, creating intricate drawings with minimal materials, while others turned to scholarship and law. These stories highlight the resilience and creativity that thrived even under harsh conditions.

D: Befriending a spider is both beautiful and tragic given the context. In saying that, solitary confinement and the well-being of inmates rarely surface in major political debates for example. Why is it still so hard to generate empathy for policy change in parts of America when it comes to fair treatment in prisons?

LG: It comes down to stigma. Society dehumanizes people labeled "criminal" or "felon," making it easier to subject them to structural violence. Since the mid-90s, California has banned media access to prisoners, silencing their voices. We struggle with complexity, focusing on non-violent offenders but ignoring those convicted of violent crimes. Many come from deep trauma, and there’s a growing push for restorative justice. Politically, scapegoating "criminals" is easier. We need to address structural issues, not just tweak policy. 

At the end of our project, we got to visit Pelican Bay, and seeing it mostly empty made me think about Alcatraz. What if Pelican Bay became a museum? What if the whole carceral system became something archaic? Something we look back on and ask, “How did we ever treat people like that?”

Noel Ransome is a Toronto-based culture writer and critic with bylines in VICE, Shondaland, Vanity Fair, Complex, and more. In addition to interviewing cultural icons like LeVar Burton, Barry Jenkins, and Danai Gurira, he served as the national entertainment reporter for the Canadian Press, Canada’s equivalent of the Associated Press, regularly covering major events such as the Toronto Film Festival, the Grammys, and the Emmys.