Meet the Filmmaker

Starling Thomas

I created Born Captive because this country has stolen our births, our bodies, and the stories we were never meant to survive. My mother labored in chains. My brother entered the world under state supervision. Their story isn’t rare—it’s hidden on purpose, tucked into the crevices of a monster system that swallows generations whole.

The horror in this film isn’t imagined. Naomi’s visions are historical truths America refuses to name. From cotton fields to protest jails to youth facilities, Black women have been forced to give birth in captivity for centuries. The terror is inherited.

Through ancestral haunting and political clarity, Born Captive exposes what this system was designed to do. This violence is intentional.

I’m telling this story the way our ancestors did, through breath, shadow, and memory that rises when silence fails. Horror becomes the language. Naomi becomes the vessel.

This film is resistance. A demand for justice. A call to end prison birth once and for all. If the state insists on burying these women’s voices, then this story will lift them loud enough to shake the institutions that tried to erase them.