One Minute to Nine

D: Tommy Davis

During the one minute Wendy Maldonado has to embrace her children before she signs herself in for a 10-year prison sentence, she remains calm and dry-faced. Her husband, Aaron, is dead; she caved his head in with a wrench. And now, with a dead father and an incarcerated mother, Wendy’s three sons (minus the oldest son who’s serving time for helping his mother with the murder) are safer than they have ever been. Tommy Davis’ documentary is a testament to the silver-lining theory if ever there were one. Despite years of abuse and torture, the family seems fine, and we wait with them for five days before Wendy has to leave them for 10 years. Davis splices old family footage with Wendy’s haunting 911 call, but for most of the film, Wendy and the boys candidly share their daily torture experienced at the hands of Aaron, and they do so with smiles and giggles, because he can’t hurt them again.

Saturday, March 15, 4:30pm, ACC

This article appears in March 14 • 2008.

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