The story of the bond that forms between Justin Singleton, a convicted felon serving life without parole for murder, and Derek Moss, a young father offered a chance at early release through a pioneering re-entry program at the notorious state penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana. While incarcerated, Justin has become an inmate pastor and vocational mentor, teaching men like Derek valuable trade skills while at the same time guiding them to avoid paths that will lead back to prison. For Derek, Justin becomes a father figure, passing on the wisdom that might help another man remain free, while he himself is condemned to die in prison.

But when Derek returns home, he finds that he can’t escape his past, as both his life and Justin’s take unexpected turns that neither could have foreseen.

Filmed over seven years, with rare access inside America’s largest maximum-security prison, LEAVING ANGOLA is a story about finding family and uncovering one’s true potential in an unlikely place, of finding hope in a place once designed to extinguish it, and an exploration of the possibilities and limits of change in the state with the highest rate of incarceration in America.