In reality of course, the city is not a gangland war zone, but a suburb like many others, a world of “residential neighborhoods, and strip malls.” In this way, the film's setting perfectly compliments its subject: Wash, a man once deemed too dangerous to ever be allowed freedom, walks streets just as inaccurately portrayed as too dangerous to wander.

The emotional core of the short, a conversation between Wash and his adult daughters, proved just as challenging to film as it is to watch. He's long shared his emotions with his family through his art, embedding his paintings with his innermost thoughts and feelings in the hope that one day his children or grandchildren would decipher them. Words can come less easily – before filming, he’d never discussed with his daughters what it was like for them to grow up with their father in prison.

"We lived this life together, me inside and them outside. They’re supporting me, and I’m supporting them as best I could from where I was,” Wash says. "But that face-to-face patio conversation made me go back through time and remember all of the faces of all of the men in prison.”

In the scene, Wash cries quietly as his daughters describe the grinding normality of life with their father, brothers and uncles imprisoned. It was impossible for those behind the camera not to be affected. “It was extremely powerful,” Marisa remembers. “All of us had tears in our eyes.”