material is what helps journalism on a real. we want to present. something of. every look now at the main stories we've been covering for you this. says the sentencing over russian business when put to boot u.s. courts is unacceptable modest and politically motivated received twenty five years for conspiring to sell weapons to terrorists and kill americans. u.n. security council issues its toughest statements yet on syria calling on the government and the opposition to a down arms on conditioning within a week seen in conflict and its peace plan justice is of great guarantees it turns

out the only rebels won't attempt to make gains when the pieces declare. french president nicolas sarkozy wins public support is cracking down on islamic radicals and he loses the faith of young muslims who say they feel rejected by their own country. the time now for our special report about a russian in and turned film director. go on take that sandwich give it to him and stand by. we'll go over the scene a couple of times film director alexei issues your new movie about prison life he has won several top prizes of film festivals yes that's it the film director and his actors have no expectation of public recognition or fame all they really want is to get away from this dismal scenery as soon as possible and never return but

that's it thank you they've called everybody. a film crews artistic freedom is conforming to this high security jail petersburg. the actor's camera man and director all serving sentences a serious crime. roll call finished return to your area. i'm right you'll toss that snowball from here. film studios run by inmates in russian colonies a norse just for fun the aim is to rehabilitate prisoners their involvement in filmmaking is meant to help them reform and start a new life a basic camera is the only piece of equipment at the disposal of the prison produces a crew is normally made up of inmates who know how to handle video recording this colony is lucky there is professional film director serving his term among them.

i mean. one american leader once said we thinking of is the hardest work theories media award which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. is anyone who has been involved in filmmaking at least once and you will tell you need to look would let it sit beery exhausting jocko who can pull. notably what could be in the straightforward vacuous lines late evidence and you will both there are questionable existence he will get some couples that. bowl ring it is as a pictures of ruling families slowly and letters the rooms then is to france

piece of schema for that we get to see it like you. would you say and that almost moving forgive me won an award as an international contests a film about prisoner the director became something of a t.v. personality write a book and build is not a but a prison camp got to be a chess it's a film about treachery love and human integrity for me yes eternal truths that stay alive inside and outside prison in short a war crime the car of course we can't physically make a film about anything but prison life but i'm still not with him so that's a different story for the wolf. when the prison authorities realized the film directors work so to improve the cole and his image they began to take his work seriously what's new in his i like to have two shooting areas it's and. ok i'll talk to the chief of the operation section hopefully he can help us aside

from that is everything going according to plan yes valarie cheval of a man in charge of education at the colony is also the chief producer of unthought of movies it is he who make sure the films shot in this high security camp don't push the limits of what is permitted all members of the crew get together in the kohli's clubhouse they want to discuss a new script and congratulate the film director on his success at the film festival and the office is proud to show off the top prize a gold plated watch or russia's ombudsman collected the prize on our behalf the chief warden gave me the watch and said here is the watch and draw on of what others can't wear such watchers but you can inmates are not allowed to keep things made of precious metals here. when he was starting and thrown off had a hard time persuading prisoners to act in his movies they'd only do it for tea and

cigarettes at the meeting the director gives a last piece of advice before filming begin once. valid if you thoughts to to screenplay. whether criminals or law abiding people were all god's creatures. murderers rapists and drug traffickers make up the bulk of the inmates here each has been sentenced to at least eighty years in prison. has already served five years he was charged with murder after a drunken fight. pleaded guilty and have only been sentenced to six years instead of ten but he denied the charges in court maybe because he truly did not intend to kill anyone or that he hoped to avoid punishment altogether. ninety percent of those who find themselves behind bars try to deny their guilt avoid punishment all of them say they aren't guilty each inmate has

a story that as a rule has little in common with the official verdict unlike what your mates tell each other the films they make a clear cut they contain a plain message about good and evil friend and truth is. funding a woman for a female role in a male colony is a problem but they make an exception for if necessary and easily. even a child to take part in his films. have changed i knew. for the better. and i would say much. has changed. we. are missing you terribly i've been looking for you ask what happened. yes and now and you and to get married.

is one of the gods the rules state that she is not communicate with the inmates but she is ready to risk it because of her love of cinema. and uniforms here or has also martel the psychological barrier between me and them i'll weepy in civilian clothes on the days when i should like now and not her in so much and i can't even then i realize that sidetracked attention. ok let's see if everything is alright from this angle. is the male lead in the new movie he has agreed to take part because of the film's parallels with his own life. yuri is serving a sentence for murder he spent six years behind bars with another six to go or peabody come in. come in.

my name is alex see my name is igor. i have a son too he was four years old when i was imprisoned just. now he is ten we haven't seen each other in well it'll be exactly five years on the first of march. celestial blood will go through i got into prison my wife often visited me here she would bring me parcels circles with. them that lasted for two years but then she told me she was seeing another man. will objecting to that would have been stupid on my part and she was young and i had another eleven years to serve why should i make her suffer. how old are you. eight. apocryphal story. of the

saddest thing is that a boa did to my parents i couldn't attend their funerals since my father died the day after the verdict was announced my mother followed him half a year later it's a shame i didn't accompany them on their final journey of course but my wife has left me with that i still have a long term love to serve are the least of my worries. every inmate dreams about the great hollywood romance is shown in film but in reality nobody ever comes to see the inmates cobalts off or until all of alexy is even turned down an offer of loyalty duty he is merited by his prison filmmaking under such rules inmates are entitled to extra visits from relatives or more postals see and then i don't care about visits and they see that i see no point and down they still yes wives are allowed to spend more time with their house plants. but i'm not

officially married kill. my how no mother no father no grandmother and no grandfather. who would ever come to me. and the almost twenty two year old son was born by his first wife he lives in a russian city far from here and he never comes to see his father sometimes on the wall of talks with him over the phone which requires special permission. gave him it's my fault when i left them or tomb was just a little boy. age and your father more than anything else. alexei's daughter victoria is eight years old she was born elsewhere wedlock victoria and her mother svetlana live in st petersburg they have never come here to see alexei he abandoned them when his daughter was a year and a half. aleksey decided to break those bones she told me she wasn't ready to take

responsibility for the child she said the prospect was too much for him it's against him enormously the thought that his life would be entirely changed unbearable i said to him. him in the tory. as for me i want you to prove her family was some may not care about their relationships not been formalized but i do very much. this town going our passports justifying to our marriage would have meant a lot to me was what is and us said ok. sometimes that's how we parted but after that he got carried away. this is what victoria wrote on a postcard she sent to her father happy valentine's day adding papa i love you very

much. and soon valentine's day inmates get together for a poetry recital. on the palm beach through. the hole on. the. old. oh. i think sunday presides over the meeting nicknamed leona he's been generally acclaimed as the best poet in the camp and twenty years of life in prison or produced twenty three take note books of poetry there are thousands of verses about love your work spoke winslow mitchell people think you should be a publisher was like it should work it struck

a serious expenditure if you make it if you have it usually. if you're serious. you know what alexander leone off killed seven people in cold blood one of his victims was a woman. culture is that so much given to each musician on the market ali in a manner in the wake of the recent military coup there are growing fears it is africans need plunging to portray apted civil strife. well for the future science technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered. alexander leone of could hardly be described as

a positive character but film director and thrown off could not have found someone with a more conflicted history for his first documentary alexander is a camp legend he has crossed poles with the man in charge of the colonies education department valarie shovel off several times both are found themselves in the same high security prisons shovel of as a prison administrator. as an inmate. i first saw him a long time ago a little for that was back when i was serving in a high security jail in the urals. is a strong willed man. or someone to survive in a russian jail juror all the movements from place to place without cracking is nothing to sneeze. you i have applied for parole the law allows me to do that. i have already served one thousand

years out of a total term of twenty five years i was thirty six years old when i was arrested and you know i'm almost fifty five which still. here the footage is from a legacy of a documentary entitled the point of no return as all of his. this is the one film the convicted director shot in the hope the people on the other side of the fence would see the main question of the film is addressed to society do they want his fellow inmate leone off to be set free head of troy. preferably a question he's asked in the film as alexander imagine yourself walking around town and coming across europe victims' relatives what would be your reaction. frankly talking about this here is pointless i can only hope that they would recognize me after so many years i would rather avoid an encounter with them and make sure i

never cross their paths. each morning alexander goes through a set of exercises of the car in the special forces to perfect their skills he is a perpetrator by training learned to kill during the war in angola he was discharged from the armed forces he went on to make short work of his enemies in the same cold manner then make claims he eliminated business partners who had betrayed him. to expose the post-mortems the woman had a sexy asian i put her to sleep so to speak and they pushed him if you press some points on the human neck person will pass out never to wake up again. of what he says is not true. at all of preferred a free wheeling lifestyle. well he never saw them poignant and instead took part in drinking bouts with shady characters. and it's not that he murdered people as

a result of a brawl was simply he and his drinking companions would make friends with someone and drink with him at his place and then kill him there was a layoff was given the death penalty for his killings he strangled most of his victims of the scar. the owner was condemned to die but he was on death row for just two years before president yeltsin introduced a moratorium on capital punishment and nine hundred ninety six. fellow inmates said to me alexander it seems to us that you'll get life imprisonment i prayed and went to face my fate this was different when i entered the room and was told i was now in for twenty five years instead of getting the death sentence i felt like i had been reborn and i had been stuck in prison for six years by then so another twenty five years was just a trifle. we wanted to meet relatives of his victims and show to them

what sort of person lay all of that's become the key question is whether an inmate can reform here is a man with nineteen years of confinement behind him a man writing poetry demonstrating loyalty to the administration and abiding by the law. man doing all he can to prove that he deserves a release from here. but then he already saw an act of humanity when his sentence was changed now he wants another is that the right thing to do. i'm still in two minds that's why we wanted to meet the relatives of his victims to ask that question but the plan didn't come to pass therefore i've been telling undrawn of that his film is incomplete. when. the court turned down the almost plea for parole now he has to serve another five years to whittle away the time he acts in

films as working on a roll in and thoughtless production. of. heartache . look around the tea room. each day some one thousand. public convicts come here to the coolies industrial section to see timber. and make plumbing fittings clothing all souvenirs. all of it will be afraid tomorrow outside the prison. most of those who do the hard physical work here see filmmaking as a way of shirking the routine labor that helps society. they maintain that the public outside these fences takes little interest in films about prison life. one of can sees that his movies are not most he says but. the girl well i wouldn't go so far as to describe it as

a live action film you know it's just fooling around that's all there is to. prison slang and cheap special effects don't help his cause for instance in the movie. the only friend of the main character is a talking cat. andrei. was . it's me chance and it sounds. like a chill i run in while here. i say are scared of your own shadow johnson chance on my dear cat. this young man works sound engineer at a small theater in some peaches he is twenty nine he's old he left high security prison only a year ago to six years and so right he had been sentenced to eight and

a few years for drug trafficking while in prison with a made a prize winning film was one of the main factors that led to his early release. had to feel it was prison that paved the way to this theater to be more a. exact it was like see a drone and see that it had not been for the film we made together and i wouldn't be here now that's for sure i will go with the film festival was chaired by the theatres artistic director he like our film and gave alexa his business card saying give me a call when you get out of there it so happened that i was the first to get out. was the camera man and the last production skills he learned in prison his new drug is ambition was to make movies of. filming costs money and fully realizing his talent is still beyond his means. it's nicer making

a film in prison wasn't much of a problem the guys didn't need much broader to motivate them they were only too willing to accept t.v. and cigarettes as pay. nowadays all the people working with director alex am a quite young his new camera man is twenty three years old i was the same age when he was put behind us both fellows were convicted for the same crime drug trafficking. cuban rapper leo mendez is yet another man serving a sentence for drug crimes like see him to compose a soundtrack for his new film a convicted film director on the north doesn't care much about whether anybody outside needs his films he hopes that his films help leo and other young men learn new skills when they are released the directors wish that

they realize they are stronger more worthwhile things in this life than drugs. i yearn for that day when i'm released on parole and in the last author there are still three years two months to go i thought. you know i want to return home so very much. so i work hard and try to be on my best behavior here much etc i would come to think of it the two years i spent in a scholarly of taught me to manage my time are probably in our choices but also been learning new skills from the other inmates who still treated people here know how to teach them. my son he's a successful teaching that one day i told my wife again i know what the junos hang out so good as i mean drugs and all that stuff will from but you must learn

and she said you know i trust him so much i can't imagine him doing anything wrong more than i feel the same way i think cartoon want to fall into the trap. is come to realize that he was a bad father to his children he left them with their mother at a time when they needed a father most of all he'll be fifty when he is set free in five years time after that rule of the earn his children's love again. that she was a self-sufficient personal even a trouble free life. i think he has since taken a long hard look at his life. sometimes they just reeks people to make him realize that time is running out. just in this that my son was to see me when i left.

the. state of the gosh i need to do so much to cure child. with this prison term. i missed so much. alexy on the off received his first guest in four years. said lola his college mate brings him a gift he treasures most of all memories three hours creep away unnoticed as they recalled highlights of their college days going to the seaside during the holidays and cutting cloths to watch new films.

alexy dishonest send the watch he won for his film forgive me to his saw the. various the new batch of convicts. after their chance i got a black mark one two. i. i. i am i i i i i i i i i i i i

i. i'm.