An Australian teacher and documentary filmmaker, who was runner-up in The Good Oil 2025 Writers’ Award, has won Best Film at the oldest-running film festival in the Americas for a film advocating for clemency for a prisoner who she and legal experts believe was wrongly convicted of murder.
By Debra Vermeer
Si Paros wrote her entry in The Good Oil Writers’ Award, ‘Voice to the Voiceless: a pilgrimage of hope and justice across continents‘, about her journey to film the US documentary while working as a teacher in a remote Aboriginal community in Australia.
Both activities reflected her deep passion for social justice, and commitment to living the parable of the Good Samaritan by not walking by when she saw injustice but stopping to listen and accompany those in need.
Since then, the documentary, titled My Name is Robert Ruark, has been completed and is launching at film festivals across the US, including opening the 28th Arpa International Film Festival at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Most recently, the film won Best Film at the Columbus International Film Festival in Ohio, the city in which the documentary was based.
Si said the warm reception from judges and audiences for the story of Robert Ruark has been gratifying after a long and challenging path to produce and release it.
“We started shooting interviews for the film from 2024, but there was a lot of work even before that, to get to that stage,” she said.
She first dipped her toe into filmmaking in 2019 when she was teaching in Ecuador. Collaborating with a filmmaker she knew, they began creating small productions for a YouTube audience.
“We were doing little travel things or food tasting shows, and we were going to do a docuseries for YouTube,” she said.
“But every single time I did a pilot episode, and it was actually getting a lot of attention and was well-received, I realised my heart wasn’t in it. I’m a bit of a social justice warrior and I just felt I couldn’t commit to the things we were doing.”
Returning to Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic and teaching in Queensland, Si was up late one night, looking at all the shows on Netflix that glorified crime and punishment, when she had an epiphany.
“I just felt that incarcerated people are often deeply troubled people and they need more compassion and understanding, and this was something I could do,” she said.
“So, back then, the plan was to make a docuseries for YouTube with each episode highlighting the rehabilitation of particular incarcerated people.”
This prompted an intense period of research where Si was vetting the stories of people in prison, looking for cases that would counteract all the despair she was seeing in popular television programs.
It was during this research that she came across the case of Robert J Ruark who was serving a sentence of 31 years to life in an Ohio prison for murder.
In 2021, Si and Robert spoke several times, after which she told him she wanted to make a docuseries episode that highlighted his rehabilitation. Robert declined and they withdrew contact, until he reached out again in 2023.
It was only through this later dialogue that Si researched his case more deeply and came to believe that inadequate legal representation had resulted in a wrongful conviction for Robert, a view which only strengthened as she got further into the project.
Filming for the documentary finally got underway in 2024, with Si fitting it all in between her regular teaching job, by now in remote Australia, as well as postgraduate study.
“I was spending every holiday flying back and forth, filming interviews and everything that goes into a project like this,” she said.
Despite having never directed or produced a documentary on this scale, Si was able to surround herself with experienced filmmakers who each contributed to bringing her vision to life.
“This was my debut, but I’ve always been adjacent to people in film,” she said. “For example, Peter Carrodus, who was our supervising editor, is, thankfully, a family friend. He’s done Crocodile Dundee, Wog Boys Forever and lots of big things. And our main editor, Sean Courtney Lewis, has done a lot of the soaps, like Neighbours. So definitely, I was the least qualified in the room. But I did the directing and producing and I would say I’m an A-plus producer. That’s where my talents lie, in managing and organising things and bringing it all together.”
The documentary features a range of interviews with Robert Ruark, filmed in prison, along with interviews with his family and friends, legal experts and court transcripts.
It tells the story of how an altercation among neighbours led to a man being killed by a gunshot. Robert was charged with the crime of felony murder through felonious assault, a charge which only exists in two US states, and relates to a death which occurs as a result of another felony, in Robert’s case, alleged assault.
In the film, Robert says that he was defending his brother who had a gun pointed at his head during the fracas.
The legal experts and justice advocates interviewed in the film argue that Robert received inadequate legal representation, which has deprived him of his freedom since 2008.
Having served almost 18 years in prison, during which he has undertaken multiple education courses and been a mentor and role model for other prisoners, Robert said he is hoping that in telling his story, he can obtain his freedom.
“Our main goal with making the film was to appeal to the Governor of Ohio for Robert to be granted clemency,” Si said. “So, it’s been an impact community campaign and an impact documentary at the same time. And we’re really hopeful that that’s going to happen.”
In the meantime, Si is hitting the road across the US Midwest, taking the film to other festivals. Throughout the state of Ohio, there will be screenings of the film, together with panel discussions and Q and As, to try and build awareness and promote community dialogue.
Si said that at its heart, the documentary and the community campaign to free Robert is a story of mercy, hope and justice.
“The thing that definitely directs me with most things is Catholic Social Teaching. I’m very much driven by the dignity of the human person, in seeing a need and doing something about it, and then seeing a result,” she said.
“I feel so deeply in my soul that Robert is going to get his freedom this year, and if that happens, that’s huge, but we’ll have to wait and see. Either way, it’s important that his story is being heard.”
