A happy ending for An Unreal Dream

I had the pleasure and privilege to briefly chat with Michael Morton -- the subject of Al Reinert's documentary An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story -- when the stirring film about his wrongful murder conviction and 25-years-later exoneration had its world premiere last March at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin. And I will tell you now what I told him then: He is a far better -- and much, much more forgiving -- man than I could ever be. Seriously.

You can read more about his extraordinary story in my Variety review here, and my CultureMap interview with Al Reinert -- the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker (For All Mankind) and Hollywood scriptwriter (Apollo 13) -- here.

An Unreal Dream will be presented by the Houston Cinema Arts Festival at 7 pm Sunday at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. And it'll air Dec. 5 on CNN. Take my advice: See this movie.

An Unreal Dream: The sequel

Looks like there really is a kinda-sorta happy ending to An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story, which I reviewed for Variety at SXSW.

Reel life at SXSW: The Network and An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story

Two of my favorite films at SXSW this year were nonfiction features. An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story -- from Al Reinert, director of the Oscar-nominated For All Mankind -- is an illuminating and infuriating account of a luckless Texan who spent 25 years behind bars after being falsely convicted -- thanks, apparently, to prosecutorial misconduct -- for the murder of his wife. You can read my Variety review of this one here.

Meanwhile, off in Afghanistan, director Eva Orner -- producer of the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side -- examines the power of television to reflect and effect change in a society during an epochal period of transition in The Network. You can my review of that one here.