Documentary featuring Lewis & Clark prison education class makes Oscars shortlist

There’s a class taught at the Columbia River Correctional Institution in Portland that changes people. The students — half who are in custody and half who are not — explore the history of incarceration in the United States while inside the walls of the minimum-security prison.

That exploration of the students is now the subject of “Classroom 4”, a 39-minute documentary that’s gotten the attention of the prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

“If I look back at who I was before I took that class, I don’t even recognize my attitude, my mentality,” former incarcerated student James Andrew Reed said. “The difference between the way I was thinking before and after is just profound.”

Reed said he used to be unfocused, skeptical and not open to other perspectives.

“When you’re locked up, all you have are relationships with guards and inmates. It gets really heavy on your soul,” said Reed, who was incarcerated at CRCI until October 2025.

But the relationships fostered in the classroom helped Reed reckon with his past and focus on growth.

“Having people come in and treat you with dignity and respect — like a human being — that allows you to focus on, ‘I messed up. I made a mistake, but that doesn’t define me,” Reed said.

Reed’s story is one of many highlighted in the documentary, as it follows the semester-long course from beginning to end in the winter and spring of 2023.

The film premiered at the Aspen Film Festival last year, where it won the festival’s top award in the documentary category. Now it’s on the short list for an Oscar.

Lewis & Clark College professor Reiko Hillyer has been teaching the class, titled Crime and Punishment in U.S. History, at CRCI since 2012. The course is part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which brings together traditional college students with students who are incarcerated.

Hillyer’s teaching style facilitates interactions and discussions between her students. In the film, she asks students to finish open-ended statements by describing their favorite childhood games or qualities they value in friendships.

“The fact that students are connecting across boundaries and differences is extraordinary, but I think equally extraordinary is how much the students actually have in common,” Hillyer said.

These prompts help the students break down barriers, find common ground and create a learning space that allows them to share their personal experiences more readily.

“The ethos of the class is trusting that the students are learning from each other and trying to create just enough structure, just enough comfort for them to sit with the discomfort of being vulnerable,” Hillyer said.

The film, produced by Hillyer’s childhood friend Eden Wurmfeld, didn’t start out as a bona fide documentary.

“It began just as an act of documentation, not necessarily with the intention of making a film,” Hillyer said. “But once the cameras were introduced to the room and the students developed trust with each other and trust in the crew, a documentary emerged.”

Now that the documentary is getting recognition from the film world, both Hillyer and Reed are getting the chance to showcase their experiences from the classroom to a wider audience.

“Seeing the reactions of people in the audience, the emotion that kind of reaches out of the screen — it’s very surreal,” Reed said. “Every time that I see that reaction, it’s almost therapeutic.”

For Hillyer, the documentary captures the ideas, emotions and vulnerabilities of just one cohort of students, but she says every class she facilitates at CRCI is extraordinary.

“I think what is so magical about it is that it takes so little for a connection to occur,” Hillyer said. “It takes so little for someone to feel valued.”

“Classroom 4” is available to stream for free on the Public Broadcasting Service’s documentary film series, POV.

Official Oscar nominations are expected to be announced on Thursday. The awards ceremony is on March 15.