The greatest peril of documenting a live event is that no matter how skillfully it's captured, a director is always at the mercy of the footage. Former journalist Nonny de la Peña arrived in Monroe, Michigan, perhaps expecting—though certainly not hoping for—the new trial of a father and son falsely imprisoned for child molestation to result in yet another miscarriage of justice. That it doesn't happen brings her compelling The Jaundiced Eye to an anticlimax, but the toll of her subjects' decade-long battle and the disturbing prejudices that fueled it still register powerfully. A gay man, Stephen Matthews, and his father, Melvin, were accused by Stephen's ex-lover and her homophobic husband of sexually abusing his 6-year-old son. Represented by an incompetent lawyer, the Matthews were each given a 19- to 35-year sentence based solely on the child's testimony and a poorly administered chlamydia test that gave false positive results. A physical examination of the boy revealed no signs of trauma—this despite at least one outrageous charge that the defendants had forced a machete handle into his rectum—but, undaunted, the prosecution proceeded without a shred of solid evidence. In a memorable scene, Peña records their eventual exoneration, which comes not in the public forum of a courtroom, but on a piece of paper in a sterile government hallway. Given their traumatic experiences in prison, the years robbed from their lives, and their permanently tarnished reputations, the Matthews' hard-fought victory rings resoundingly hollow. As its title suggests, The Jaundiced Eye is a potent look at a community that's selective in what it sees and the victims that suffer under its gaze.