Anna au pays des prisons

SYNOPSIS

In the suburbs of Troyes. In an empty apartment, a woman in her fifth year of high school opens one of the many boxes scattered on the floor. “It’s all here,” she says with a sigh of relief. It contains cassette tapes and hard drives. “It’s all I have left from those long years in prison.”

From 2008 to 2023, Anna Karetnikova, a lawyer by training, was assigned as a human rights observer to Moscow’s prisons. With a body camera, she filmed the daily lives of the inmates, but also, implicitly, the entire prison system that governs these facilities.

Alongside Anna, the film immerses us in these previously unseen archives. Through her story and her journey, we discover how the banality of evil can become law. The film will also meet this mother, an exiled, seasoned human rights activist who, despite adversity and threats, continues her fight for the truth.