Netflix documentary 'Procession’s’ life beyond the film

In Robert Greene's documentary “Procession,” six men who decades ago were sexually abused by Catholic priests and clergy in the Kansas City area, come together to do drama therapy

Filmmaker Robert Greene knows well the burden of responsibility in making a documentary. It’s not just to the film itself, the audience or the storytelling. It’s the responsibility to the subjects in front of the camera. And in “Procession” the subjects were six men who decades ago were sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests and clergy.

“I don’t know that documentaries change the world, but I do know that they change the lives of the people on screen,” Greene said. “This is my seventh and I know how it can affect positively and negatively. If you have that knowledge, you have to build on it. You have to do something with that. And that’s what this project is.”

There were a lot of ideas that had been circling in Greene’s head by the time he saw a press conference on the news with four survivors and their lawyer in Kansas City that would ultimately inspire the project. A lifetime student of documentary, Greene was thinking about our evolving relationship with cameras, the point of making films at all anymore and whether or not they could actually be used to help people. He’d recently read the book “The Body Keeps the Score” and was introduced to the idea of drama therapy.

So, Greene decided to call the lawyer he saw on television, Rebecca Randles, to start a conversation about exploring their story through drama therapy.