Creator Conversations: Lynn Dow

Each year, iWomanTV partners with New York Women in Film and Television for their Annual Online Shorts Festival, a festival with a mission to highlight female filmmakers and female-led films. iWoman runs an audience choice award contest throughout the festival, where the top three most watched films during the festival’s run receive a cash prize. This year, the second place winner is Lynn Dow, the writer, director, and producer of Compassionate Release. She sat down with iWoman TV founder & CEO Cathleen Trigg-Jones for an episode of our Creator Conversations series.

The film’s title comes from an actual government program that exists in our current criminal justice system. Compassionate Release is a prison program where prisoners have the chance to be released early if they are suffering from a terminal illness or are elderly and close to death. Lynn Dow had experienced this in her own life, when her uncle was released through the program due to a terminal illness. Her uncle passed a month after his release, sparking inspiration in Dow to use her talents to shed a light on prison conditions. 

While her inspiration came from her uncle, the characters she created in the film are twin sisters to a single mom, each following very different paths in life. One is a Princeton grad, the other has been incarcerated after taking the fall for her boyfriend. Throughout the film, they struggle to understand each other and the choices they’ve made. Dow was able to draw upon her relationships with her own sisters to write a truthful and heart wrenching story about family. 

Dow credits the experience of making Compassionate Release with turning her into a real filmmaker. Dow wanted the story to not only feel authentic, but look authentic too. She took a chance and sent her script out in hopes of getting funding and support to create her vision at a real prison. It worked. She found that when you are passionate about your work, other people will be passionate about it too. Being able to film in the real environment of a prison brought new life, and meaning, to an already impactful story.

Dow continues to use her voice to tell important stories. Her first feature length film, Bull Street, has seen success at film festivals and received rave reviews. Dow both wrote and directed the film, which stars Emmy award-winning actor Loretta Divine and Golden Globe nominated actor Amy Madigan. 

Dow’s Audience Choice Award winning film, Compassionate Release, is still available to watch on watch.iwoman.tv. You can view her full interview with Cathleen Trigg-Jones there as well.