BABIES INSIDE THE WALLS

Written and directed by: Perrine Lottier

Production: Horya Films

Theme: Contemporary Questions / Society / Woman

Format: 1x52'

Synopsis: When a prisoner is pregnant, or is placed in detention when she has a small baby, she has the option of keeping the child with her until the age of 18 months. She is in this case transferred to a special area of the prison, or to a penitential institution which has such quarters.. Thus, in the prison of Fleury-Mérogis, one of these « Nursery Wings » has been constructed. There, mothers and children live for several months in close proximity (16h a day locked up together!). At eighteen months, however, the children must quit prison life. The separation seems even more violent since it has been preceded by this incredible proximity. Of course, many prisoners will be lucky enough to be leaving at the same time as their baby. But there is still the interminable wait for judicial or prison decisions, the succession of moments of doubt and despair with moments of hope, and then the uncertainty of the outside world: most of these women have nothing waiting for them outside. Statistically many of them will be thus obliged to separate temporarily from the child. I am interested in the feelings of these young prisoner mothers, during the eighteen months period “in parentheses” that they spend in the nursery of the prison. The film that I propose to make is an intimate documentary, shot entirely within the maternity wing of the prison, on the possibility of a constructive maternal feeling in these conditions of incarceration.