Blatnoi Mir – Thieve’s World

BLATNOI MIR is a documentary film about the mental landscape of three Russian life-term sentenced prisoners: a journey to a life imprisonment prison from one year to another with its continual routines and at the periphery of humanity. It is world from which the prisoner never returns.

The prison island Ogny (or Pitak, meaning five penny piece, as the locals call it) is planned with life imprisonment in mind. The island is known as a hard line prison where the prisoners are kept away from each other. In the film the prisoners live their life sentences in a small cell. The monotonous days are disrupted by guarded meals and outdoor exercise periods – always occurring at the same time. In the protection of the walls the seasons meld into each other. Time takes a new form: “Time stretches, today feels like forever and everything ten years ago feels like it happened yesterday.”