The penal colony evokes harsh conditions of detention in remote and desolate places, which often punish “crimes” such as political dissent or homosexuality and which have been the subject of many works of literature and cinema: the French Guiana by Henri Charrière and Franklin J. Schaffner, the imperial Siberia imperiale and the Soviet gulags of Aleksandr Solženicyne and Aleksandr Mittà, the Chinese laogai of Hongda H. Wu. In the Penal Colony – selected in International Critics’ Week in Locarno, where it received the Marco Zucchi Award (read the news) – borrows its title from the famous story by Franz Kafka to challenge this literature and tell us that these places are today very different.

Written and directed by Gaetano Crivaro, Silvia Perra, Ferruccio Goia and Alberto Diana, from an original idea by Nicola Contini, the documentary takes us to four different Italian locales, in four distinct chapters, only to give us, at the end of this 85-minute contemplative journey, a laconic definition: “Penal colonies – reads a caption – nowadays also called outdoor workshouses, are a special detention regime enforced since the end of the 19th century. In Sardinia, three of the last penal colonies in Europe are active: Isili, Mamone and Is Arenas. The Asinara penal colony, closed in 1998, is now a national park.”

It is precisely in the phlegmatic and isolated daily life in these four places that we find ourselves transported as witnesses to something inaccessible and unusual. In Isili, the prisoners (most are of African origin) are tasked with raising a flock of sheep. A sign on the wall warns that “grazers, stable cleaners and dairy workers must take advantage of weekly rest (in their cells)”. After work, we see them engaged in a football match. In Mamone, there is snow, and we see the prisoners fix a dry stone wall, burn stubble, and repair the brakes of the Defender belonging to the penitential police. There is a school for the inmates and one can see – like a vision – a female teacher. Mustafa is getting ready to leave after having served 9 years. In Is Arena, we follow a young Arab man who takes the cows to pasture and, during a phone call with his parents, complains that the animals don’t have adequate food. The sight of a deer is a poetic moment that proves that nature is the true master of these territories and reveals how illusory this freedom of action is. On Asinara island, the institutions have surrendered, the cells are empty and animal rights organisations have turned them into a wildlife observatory and marine species rescue centre, for creatures such as the wonderful 25kg turtle Raffaele that we see in the film.

In the Penal Colony is a documentary of pure observation. The common denominator for the four directors is the use of a fixed camera, kept at a certain distance, at times a little closer. There are no interviews that can suggest any particular position regarding the rights of prisoners (Italy has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for the overcrowding of cells and the recurrence of suicides). The only “testimony” is an audio recording dating back to 1992 in which a woman says she has 16 children, two of which are in Asinara and one in Pianosa (her husband is in the Spoleto jail), and denounces the impossibility of visiting them. The spectator is therefore invited to form an opinion on this legacy of colonial imperialism that is disappearing, where convicted prisoners serving fixed sentences coexist with “internees” subject to security measures due to their alleged social dangerousness, known in slang as “white life imprisonment”, a form of detention that can be extended indefinitely.

In the Penal Colony was produced by Mommotty.