Svetlana Sigalaeva: Not With Us
We have very often been informed about the terrible conditions for the inmates in Russian prisons. The released Pussy Riot members were the last ones to point out that something needs to be changed… to use an understatement.
This film, produced by the film school VGIK, adds excellently to the information that we have, not by showing but by having an ex-inmate tell her story from a point of view that (literally) is placed just opposite the prison building that is surrounded by barbed wire. Sometimes there is no water available. Sometimes the light is kept on during nights to prevent the inmates to fall asleep. The inmates (it is a prison for women) are not allowed to communicate from one cell to the other. If that happens, sounds of sirens are put on so nothing can be heard. And so on so forth, a flow of examples of physical and mental torture.
The film crew is inside the prison as well. They have filmed rehearsals and performances of songs and sketches, melancholic Russian love songs conveyed from a stage. But they have also caught faces and situations of tenderness between the women inside. Love grows between the women, not allowed of course, but families are created in the prison, as says the chain-smoking woman who is our storyteller, and who also painfully tells us her own story of relationship(s) that broke. 76 out ot 100 go back to prison – no freedom outside, better suffer inside… You could argue that the camerawork could be better but (also) in this case the content is so strong that it takes you by the heart. Good choice by ZagrebDox!
Russia, 2012, 43 mins.
