PROS

+ Much needed documentary. Mostly well made.

+ Great courage of the producers and especially protagonists.

NEUTRAL

o Generally a good concept, but it was sometimes a bit too creative and too improvised. Lots of good approaches which seem to have worked for those men, but it is questionable if it works for others to drive back to a crime scene, and if that could not eventually cause more trauma (or even serious police incidents) for the hundreds or thousands of victims amongst the viewers. They should have added a warning to not imitate such approaches.

I found it also troubling that the victims changed roles in this documentary, especially when knowing that many real victims become in real life real perpetrators. Not that there would be any risk with those men, but it could be a risk for victims who see this. Yes, the producer's approach is to shift mental perspectives and to help them through that role reversal, but I never heard of role reversal as a therapeutic approach.

CONS

• Lots of excessive swearing. Yes, Mike is authentic and it hurts to see men hurting still after 4 decades. But it is also sad that not one character seems to have found salvation in JESUS CHRIST, to have recognized the evil perversion of the true church through the Roman Catholic State Church after 313 AD.

"Procession" presents a radical new concept regarding the reasoning to craft a story: to create something, not about people, but for them. Greene offers cinema as a medium of therapy, a tool of processing, to 6 survivors of sexual assault at the hands of the catholic church with each crafting a short film about how they wanted their stories to be told and seen. In the wrong hands, such a delicate matter could have been a disaster but instead, Greene illustrates a devastating portrait of men who never quite healed. Men who are still fighting from sunrise to sundown to release the anchor that keeps them entrenched in their pasts. Greene achieves this feat through a number of avenues. First, is his intelligent and restrained decision to focus shots on how these events have racked the bodies of the survivors, second, was the score by Keegan Dewitt and Dabney Morris, which provides a lot of heavy lifting to the emotional gravity of the film, third, was how incredibly well-edited the short-films are with the rest of the documentary; side note, this can especially be felt in the final 10 incredibly moving minutes of the documentary. However, where Procession begins to falter is with the short-films presented by the survivors, which although clearly therapeutic, isn't the most effective cinematic tool due to their inexperienced quality. Many times they will take you out of the documentary altogether but on the other hand, the project wouldn't be possible without the shorts so it's a catch-22. All in all, Greene has made a riveting documentary that even with its short-comings is still incredibly effective but more importantly, and perhaps impressively, has made the lives of 6 men all the better for it.

This documentary tells the stories of a group of men that survived sexual abused when they were children. Although we could have heard about this topic a lot, this movie tries to focus on the power of telling (filming) our own stories as therapy: maybe they aren't actors or screenwriters but you can see their pain in each scene that is represented.

While clearly pointing out the crimes of the Catholic Church, I specially liked how respectful (and beautiful) the narration of the film was.