Sundance 2026 Review: FRANK & LOUIS, Poignant, Sensitive Exploration of Redemption Through Caregiving

In the United States, the carceral system currently holds more than 1.8M men and women, some permanently (i.e., life without the possibility of parole), and more than any other country in the world, including China. The penal system has always emphasized retributive punishment over long-term rehabilitation, often, but not always, leaving ex-inmates wholly unprepared for reintegration into society. 

 

One clear example, however, of rehabilitation taking precedence over punishment involves long-term inmates acting as caregivers for inmates suffering from cognitive or neurological impairments (Alzheimer’s and dementia as two examples). It's intended to create a mutually beneficial bond between caregiver and impaired inmate. And it's not just an idea. It's real, pioneered in the California state penal system, and adopted by other states. 

 

Written and directed by Swiss-Italian filmmaker Petra Volpe (Late Shift, Golden Years, The Divine Order), Frank & Louis takes an unhurried, detail-rich approach to incarcerated caregivers and the cognitively impaired inmates, letting dialogue, camerawork, and performances lead the audience on the other side of the screen into the inner and outer lives of men typically forgotten or even discarded by society. Volpe would — and does — argue otherwise, often with a nuanced, nonjudgmental eye toward the subjects of her film. 

 

For Frank (Kingsley Ben-Adir), an inmate serving a life sentence at a state penitentiary, becoming a caregiver serves a function, and it isn’t altruism: Frank hopes becoming a caregiver will make him a better candidate for parole. Once assigned an inmate suffering from early-onset dementia, Louis (Rob Morgan), Frank finds caring for Louis a daunting, sometimes even impossible, task. By turns paranoid, frustrated, and angry at his deteriorating condition, the once-feared Louis has shrunken into a shell of his former self.

 

In small, halting, sometimes circular steps, Frank begins to win Louis over. Frank learns that patience, compassion, and empathy aren’t abstract concepts, but practical ones he has to practice each and every day. As Louis slowly fades away, sinking into half-remembered memories about a daughter he barely knew before his incarceration for murder decades earlier, Frank just as slowly learns to live in the moment, listening attentively and responding without judgment, all easier said than done.

 

As Frank’s parole hearing approaches, so does his optimism that he’ll reenter the world as a free man. But defeat or at least delay seems more likely. Given the opportunity to attend and respond to Frank’s claims of rehabilitation, the victim’s daughter, still anguished by the loss of her father, delivers an eloquently devastating rejoinder to Frank’s pleas for an early release.

 

That, in turn, sets up an equally devastating third/final act as Frank faces both the continuing, possibly permanent consequences of his actions decades earlier and the just as permanent changes in his personality and outlook on the future. In caring for Louis, in treating Louis with respect, dignity, and decency, Frank finds, if not redemption, then something approaching redemption, a new or renewed purpose, a necessity for long-term rehabilitation and later, reintegration into society.