After graduating film school, Josh Banville took the route that many aspiring filmmakers had taken before. The Massachusetts native moved out to California to jump-start his career, or as he says, to join “the so-called industry.”

Banville, however, readily admits that he did little to further his career for the first several months (“just surfing every day”) until his father began sending him press clippings and information about a legal project back in Boston where wrongfully incarcerated people were being let out of prison. He began to understand that his father was trying to give him a nudge to get back into filmmaking, use his degree, and that there could be a very good subject for a documentary back home.

It was while filming one of the lawyers involved in this project that Banville met Shawn Drumgold, a Dorchester man who had been wrongfully arrested and convicted of murder, and spent 15 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Drumgold’s life and battle with the Boston legal system would be the basis of Banville’s documentary, “A Life Taken,” which will be shown at this year’s Woods Hole Film Festival, which runs July 31^st through August 7^th in Cape Cod.

“I met Shawn at a lecture at Harvard while tailing one of the lawyers that allowed me to follow him around with my camera,” Banville said. “He is a really outgoing guy; he gave me his information and it started from there. We got to talking and three weeks later I packed the car and moved back to Boston.”

The novice filmmaker threw himself into the project, buying a camera, a computer and editing software. Even though he was learning as he went, he never felt like he was intruding on Drumgold’s world. Banville was shooting and editing the documentary by himself, which led to much of the access he enjoyed.

“He really wanted me to tell a story,” Banville said. “He felt very comfortable with me, with his family walking in his neighborhood. He introduced me to his friends and made it easier for me while ignoring the fact that I was tripping over my own feet learning how to make a documentary.”

Banville assembled and edited the footage, believing that the first edit was a finished film.

“I saw that it was a great story. This is definitely going to get into Sundance. How could it not get into Sundance?” he said with a laugh.

He screened the movie for family and friends, and after the film failed to get into any festivals, it seemed like an end to that phase of his filmmaking career. He looks back on that first cut now and realized it was a missed opportunity. At the time, however, he was only getting started.

“I moved to New York shortly after what I saw was my first and final draft and I started working for a television show,” Banville said. “I got real busy with other stuff and Shawn’s case kind of died. And then two and a half years into it after we finished, Shawn brought a civil suit against the city of Boston, so once again my dad started to convince me that I needed to re-shoot some of this stuff and come back. I started talking to Shawn and picked it up from there.”

The second time around, Banville had gained some crucial experience, not to mention filmmaking contacts with people he could bounce ideas off of, and was determined to tell Drumgold’s story properly. He scrapped the first cut of the documentary and went about re-editing the 50 hours of footage he had gathered. He started to realize that he hadn’t necessarily gone about it the right way the first time; his inexperience especially came through when he interviewed subjects.

“I went and completely discarded the first cut; I just went back to all the footage and I started piecing together a different story, Banville said. “The second time was a little easier, but I ran into difficulties because I couldn't go back and shoot all the money moments from when I was there when I was 24 and these people opened up.”

The reconstructed film was cut from what Banville calls “a grueling hour and thirty” to a much tighter 45 minutes. And while he may still have wanted the film to play Sundance, he was more concerned with telling Drumgold’s story. Part of that story, of a man who was wrongly imprisoned for 15 years, is intertwined with how the city of Boston, the district attorney’s office and the police department chose to deal with the case.

Banville interviewed Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley and even after Drumgold was set free, it was clear the city did not want to take responsibility.

“He's been adamant about Shawn Drumgold's guilt. He still thinks that he's a guilty man and they let him out because there were some things that the prosecution did wrong at the first trial. He believes he doesn't owe Shawn any more than that.”

Even if somebody from the city of Boston ever admitted fault, they could never give back what they had taken from Drumgold.

“Shawn spent 15 years behind bars and we all wanted the fairytale story of when he comes out and gets back together with his wife who waited for him for 15 years and goes on his merry way like a success story,” Banville said. “But the reality is that he comes out and he is majorly messed up; it’s trauma, like going to war--like post traumatic syndrome. He doesn't fit into society. He can't find work because he’s got a murder rap even though everybody knows he is innocent.”

Ultimately, Drumgold did receive some measure of justice from his case: he was awarded $14 million in his civil suit against the city. And his family has stayed positive throughout the whole ordeal, which is incredible in itself.

“It's a strange thing to see a family go through that much and stay that positive,” Banville said. “It seems crazy to me; they lived it and that’s how they chose to deal with it—they’re very positive and they're still dealing with it.”

Banville emerged from the filming of “A Life Taken” as a much wiser filmmaker. From start to finish, the project took a little more than six years, including the breaks. He has a few projects that he’s working on, including another documentary and a few scripts that he has been writing which will take him towards his goal of writing and directing features. The experience taught him a lot about the human spirit; it also taught him that as a filmmaker, carrying the burden entirely by himself was a great learning curve, but not necessarily the right way to go about it.

“You really need a team of like-minded individuals before you go in on any project and sit down and really figure out what the story that you wanted to tell or else it will take you six years to fumble through.”

"A Life Taken" screens Friday, August 6th at the Woods Hole Film Festival. For a complete schedule, visit www.woodsholefilmfestival.org