One After premiered in New York on October 10 - the Annual World Day Against the Death Penalty - in 2009.
The director of One After, Margarethe Baillou, consciously let her Texan Directors of Photography pick the actual shooting locations, thereby involving them as first audience members by allowing them to decide what to focus on during the 17 executions.
One After was built on unusual production risks: For nearly five months, the production team had to monitor all up-to-the-minute news on executions in order to capture the exact first hours of all 17 executions. Stays and delays instantly changed the filming schedule, and a single event of tardiness of any team member or a technical mishap would have ruined the entire project.
Rather than offering a traditional pro and con discussion about capital punishment, One After invites the audience to reflect deeper on the societal circumstances that allow crime to exist in the first place, leading only then to the question of punishment.
Initially, One After covered all executions across the United States during the time frame between Independence Day and Thanksgiving in 2008. As the list of execution dates kept growing, however, the focus shifted to Texas, as it is the state that is most readily associated with capital punishment in the United States, thus bearing more symbolism.