Prison sisters

regia | director Nima Sarvetsani
fotografia |photography Vahid Zarezadeh
montaggio | editing Jasper Osmund, Phil Jandaly
produzione | production Nima Film Sweden
Sweden, 2016, 90’
Dari e svedese con sottotitoli in inglese e italiano | Dari and Swedish with English and Italian subtitles

Prison Sisters takes us through the journey of two young women who have been released from prison in Afghanistan. Sara’s uncle has planned to kill her in an attempt to save his honour in their small village. Fearing for her life Sara escapes to Sweden, but Najibeh stays behind. While Sara struggles with her newfound freedom, her former prison-mate Najibeh disappears and soon Sara hears that she was stoned to death. Sara and the filmmaker want to find out the truth, only to encounter a maze of half-truths on the streets of Afghanistan. We follow the two main characters, revealing what happened to them –each with an exceptional fate depicting the horrific reality for women in Afghanistan.

BEST DOC – SOLE LUNA XII EDITION, 2017
July 3-9, Santa Maria dello Spasimo

JURY’S STATEMENT – The film exemplary expresses the complex nature of building bridges between cultures with different cultural values and structures. Even when everything seems to lead the protagonist to free herself from primal familial and religious ties, the strength of her sense of belonging suddenly reappears.

JURY
Firouzeh Khosrovani – Director and video-artist
Gianni Massironi – Sociologist and director
Vincenzo Matera – Anthropologist, University of Milano Bicocca
Mark Peploe – Dicrector and screenwriter
Italo Spinelli – Cinema and theater director