This deeply moving film follows the maximum-security detainees training to run a marathon. It’s a troubling portrait of masculinity, but one which offers hope

Christine Yoo’s intelligent, compassionate and deeply moving film, 26.2 to Life: Inside the San Quentin Prison Marathon, follows some of the inmates of the California maximum-security facility. The men, most of whom are serving life sentences, are preparing to run 100-odd laps of the heavily guarded prison yard, along a barely marked track, weaving in and out of prisoners who do not know or care to stay out of their way. All of them are subject at any time to a minor or major lockdown that will interrupt or even cancel the race for which they have trained all year. They can wear non-prison-issue clothes to run in, but their shoes are the property of the state and have to be booked in and out by each man at every session.

The 1000 Mile Club, as the runners are known, are trained by a group of volunteers led by Franklin Ruona, an experienced marathon man himself. A naturally quiet and watchful soul, he doesn’t talk to the men about their crimes unless they want to. His view is that they are people who have not had his luck or advantages: “I just feel like I am my brother’s keeper,” he says. In the febrile prison atmosphere, he is an oasis of calm.