Baby Doe
Nearly 30 years after Gail abandoned her newborn son in the woods and returned to her conservative Christian life, the police came and arrested her for infanticide. From Tribeca-winning documentarian Jessica Earnshaw (Hulu’s “Jacinta”).
Director Jessica Earnshaw scheduled to attend.
Tickets
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Tuesday, May 20, 2025
- Limited Availability
- On Standby
- Matinee
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
- Limited Availability
- On Standby
- Matinee
In 1993, Geauga County, Ohio was rocked by the discovery of an infant corpse, abandoned in a trash bag on the side of the road. 26 years later, DNA evidence finally led local authorities to the baby’s mother and alleged killer: Gail Eastwood-Ritchey, a faithful wife, mother of three grown children, and a devout Christian. Despite her insistence that her baby was stillborn, Gail found herself facing life in prison for the murder of her own child. Through director Jessica Earnshaw’s compassionate yet discerning lens, Baby Doe follows Gail and her family from the purgatory of her house arrest to the final verdict. “I can’t rationalize these two Gail Ritcheys,” one judge says to a tense courtroom full of Gail’s supporters and detractors. “I won’t even try.” And the brilliance of Baby Doe is that it never asks you to. It neither grants forgiveness nor brands Gail irredeemable. Earnshaw masterfully paints an uncomfortably intimate portrait of an American family in a very American crisis and widens its lens to deftly level criticism against sensationalism in true crime coverage, the justice system’s ignorance toward trauma and mental illness, and, most of all, the true villain at play: Evangelical Purity Culture, a mindset so harmful and insidious that it could a make modern-day Abraham of the good girl next door.
- Director: Jessica Earnshaw
- Country: USA
- Year: 2025
- Running Time: 100 min.
- Producer: Holly Meehl Chapman
- Cinematographers: Jessica Earnshaw, Emily Thomas
- Editors: George O’Donnell, Leah Boatright
- Music: Gil Talmi
- Website: Official Film Website
- Filmography: Jacinta (2020)
- Language: English
- Format: DCP
- International Sales: Visit Films