Städtebewohner

A jail for juvenile offenders in Mexico. Thomas Heise films carefully and precisely, in a wonderful black and white, the power structures of the place. He shows, almost in a foucaultian way, the power beneath and above it. Heise's stark humanism does not flinch in front of the everyday ordeal of the inmates. He's there, filming, doing a job, his job as a filmmaker. Poems by Brecht create a counter-structure to the film, maybe even a possibility of a different way of looking at life. And once Heise is inside the structure, he can finally ask questions. Very few. Very precise. The answers come across as shockingly blunt. Things are what they are. Through his formal strategy the director questions the whole power structure of the judiciary system while simply observing how it works and what it does to the bodies and minds of those who live inside it. Once outside again, the question will remain: what is really outside and what is inside? And nothing will be the same again. A powerful observational film that creates visual movements of musical exactitude.

Giona A. Nazzaro