Screening - The Trial

This door was intended only for you. And now... I'm going to close it.

Several years ago, I received a Penn alert (messages from Penn Police to students and others concerning potential safety issues) about an ~17-year-old kid accused of murder who had escaped from police custody at the Penn Hospital. To the extent I thought about it, my initial reaction was something along the lines of I hope they catch this dangerous convict. But he wasn't, strictly speaking, a convict: upon further investigation, I discovered that the kid had been held for around three years pending a trial that still hadn't happened.

Based upon Kafka's novel of the same name, The Trial tells the story of Josef, a bureaucrat forced to face a comically obtuse legal system. Police show up at Josef's door and tell him that he's under arrest, but not what for, what the evidence against him is, or even whether he's been charged with a crime. It provides a stark and humorous warning about a precipice we're already beginning to fall off.