Trailer for The Condemned.
A seven-hour drive from the closest city and hidden in a forest as large as Germany, Russia’s Penal Colony 56 is as remote as it is impenetrable. A maximum-security prison for murderers, the imposing fortress locks down 260 of Russia’s most dangerous killers. After six months of hard negotiating with the Russian Prison Service, cameras enter this secret world to reveal prison life’s daily rituals, psychological conditioning and dark dramas. In shockingly frank interviews, lifers confess not only what they did, but how they survive 23-hour stretches in solitary five-metre-square cells day after day. Though other inmates face the possibility of getting out at the end of their term, no one talks about freedom. Carefully observed details of the modern gulag punctuate an engrossing journey into the minds of the terrifying men who call it home. Meticulously composed and candidly expressive, The Condemned reveals two crushingly harsh forms of punishment—state and self.