Dead Time: From Prison to Open Air, a movie with Kareem Lecleux and a stunning cast

What is it about?

Three inmates get their first weekend off in a long time. 48 hours to land. 48 hours to connect with loved ones. 48 hours to make up for lost time.

What happens at release? Rather than anchoring her film in prison, director and screenwriter Eva Duchemin takes the rare and fascinating step of following the trajectories of the three characters as they emerge from prison, whether it’s a temporary release or a final exit.

“We’ve all seen movies or reports about prison, but few realize the effects of being away from society for a long time.. And the effect of liberation after so many yearsExplains the filmmaker about his intention to go to the press kit. One day, a young prisoner I knew well did not return from his leave. I began to fantasize about what might be going through the mind of a twenty-year-old who had spent four years in prison and was allowed to spend two days in a state of freedom while he did not complete his sentence. This experience should be both intense and brutal.”

The prison is a shocking place: every square meter is a story of cruel life

The strength of the film lies specifically in the documentary work, which we feel is very accurate and good. As evidence, Eva Duschmin became very interested in this topic through documentaries, including the fight that followed the prison guard (See the film on Arte’s website). A documentary he made before crossing the threshold of his first feature film with Temps Mort. “All this time spent in contact with detainees allowed me to analyze the complexity of imprisonment.The director explains. The prison is an absolute place: every square meter is a story of cruel life; There are many poor and sick people, many young people from working-class neighborhoods. We are slapped because we realize that our society didn’t know what to do with these people and that they ended up in this place that looks like a city but outside the world. Goliarda Sapienza, a great Italian writer whom I admire, once said: “You only know a country when you see its asylums, its hospitals and its prisons.” This proposal seems very programmatic to me, but today it seems clear to me.”

The bias of fiction brings Temps Mort a modesty that would be more difficult for a documentary to achieve. Eva Duschmin makes a staged choice, crossing these three routes, which allows her to approach the subject with great precision and delicacy. The prison takes place behind the screen and allows the intimate questions of each of its characters to be privileged. The main idea was “Give them a share of humanity so that we look at them differently as prisoners“, emphasizes Eva Duschmin, who devoted 5 years to writing Temps mort.

Find all the movie releases of the week

Dead Time, written and directed by Eva Duchemin, with Karim Lecluse, Issaka Sawadogo, Jarrod Cousins, opens in theaters this Wednesday.