The Other Side of the Wall (2007)

Next to Rennes men's prison, as next to almost all the prisons in France, there a Family Support Centre for the prisoners' families. Visitors go there before and after a visit. They come back, every week, sometimes three times a week. They wait. It is a space of its own. Visiting is time consuming. They always arrive early. If they are a few seconds late, the door of the prison will remain closed. So they wait, to be sure to be on time, to be let in. The prison rules infringe upon this place, a passage between the outside and the inside, where all feelings are amplified: frustration, anger, hope, desire, fear, passion... To have the strength to go there, you must be so deeply rooted in life that you can breathe life into this inflated waiting time.This film is about life in that place. It is also an echo of what prison is made of. By choosing to remain exclusively «next door», the film paradoxically offers a direct approach of what the carceral reality is. The hidden side of imprisonment, life outside, without the other. But definitely life, not a subsitute.