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Dawn Porter didn’t know that the release of her documentary, Trapped, would coincide with the Supreme Court case that will either enforce or dismantle the very abortion restrictions Trapped aims to illuminate.

She did know, though, that she had met an exceptional character in the form of Dr. Willie Parker. Parker, a black physician from Alabama, has dedicated his career to providing reproductive healthcare, including abortions, for women in the South. He travels among Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi to serve as many women as he can. He is a religious man and believes his work aligns with, rather than contradicts, his faith, though the protesters outside the clinics he visits not-so-respectfully disagree.

Porter met Parker after the 2013 premiere of her second film, Gideon’s Army, which focused on three public defenders in the Deep South. In the restrictive world of the TRAP laws for which her documentary is named — Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers, which is exactly what it sounds like — Porter found a story about people she sensed she hadn’t heard enough about before: Low-income women and women of color who seek abortions. She was stunned at the lengths to which clinics need to go to stay open when conservative politicians want to legislate them out of existence.

Trapped premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking, and opens in theaters on March 4. It follows a handful of abortion providers and lawyers who navigate the labyrinthine hellscape that is basic reproductive healthcare. I spoke with Porter by phone about the cinematic limitations of telling a story that mostly takes place in clinics and centers on women who, understandably, have reservations about appearing on camera, resisting the impulse to only include “sympathetic” characters, and what audience she hopes her film has the power to reach.