the. crew of our team live from moscow our top stories head of the u.n. criticizes the syrian regime for cracking down on the opposition despite closures from to mask is to cease military activity within days of peace plan interest by u.n. arab league envoy kofi annan demands that by thursday or must be a cease fire between authorities and rebels. self declared coup leaders in mali agreed to step down and hand power to civilians after immense pressure from neighboring countries following two weeks of military rule in return and fuel and

trade ban against mali will be lifted and giunta organizers granted amnesty. critics lash out of the u.s. for trying and sentencing to youths as adults calling it cruel and unjust around ten thousand miners are held in adult jails and prisons throughout the country next on r.g.p. from convict to movie director the story of a russian prisoner and his journey to a new life. 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 to

earth but that's it thank you they call everybody. a film crews artistic freedom is confined to this high security jail on the ascent petersburg. the actors cameramen and director all serving sentences a serious crime. roll call finished return to your area. and 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 human life a basic camera is the only piece of equipment at the disposal of the prison and 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. the old one american leader once said the thinking is the hardest work theory is the mediocre award which is probably the reason why so few engage in it and. has anyone who has been involved in filmmaking at least once and you will tell you need to people would let it sit very exhausting jocko people. notably what could be any straightforward bagus lines late every day at school and you will off their questionable existence he will go to some of the. bowl wearing it is that those that pictures of ruling families of ling and letters the room

sanish to france piece of schema for that he will get them he like you. both alexei and the last movie forgive me won an award as an international contests a film about prisoner the director became something of a t.v. personality writes i go thinking as a film is not about a president going to be a chest it's a film about treachery love and human integrity for me yes eternal truths to stay alive inside and outside prison i'm sure there will come across as of course we can't physically make a film about anything but prison life becomes from the rhythms but that's a different story for the world. when the prison authorities realized the film directors work so to improve the call his image and began to take his work seriously last year because i like to have two shooting areas.

ok i'll talk to the chief of the operations 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 and the last 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 colonies clubhouse they want to discuss a new script and congratulate the film director on his success of the film festival and 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 drawing of what others can't wear such watchers but you can you mates 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 begins. very good if you thoughts tradition green play. whether it will criminals or law abiding people we're 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. 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 he just made 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 and. funding a woman for a female role in a male colony is a problem but they make an exception for if necessary you can easily for even a child take part in his films. have changed i knew. so for the better. it looked great and i would say much. has changed we. have been missing you terribly i've been looking for you ask what happened. yes and now and pray and then to get married.

is one of the gods the rules state that she is not to communicate with the inmates but she is ready to risk it because of her love of cinema because of the lyrics i know listen ian if i'm here or has to marco the psychological barrier between me and them i'll meet people in civilian clothes on the days when i was shooting like now and not tiring so much might have even then i realized that sidetracked attention. ok let's see if everything is alright from this angle. is the male lead in a 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 with six to go. hey buddy come in. come in.

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

eight. the political story. the saddest thing is that i know a dead 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 for fear of course that my wife has left me or 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 the 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 lloyd's duty he is merited by his prison filmmaking under such rules inmates are entitled to extra visits from relatives or more possibles sloganeering and i don't care about visits weakness in the i see no point and. they still yes

wives are allowed to spend more time with their houseplants. but i'm not officially married kim. oh 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. but it's my fault when i left them or tomb was just a little boy even one day your father more than anything else. alexei's daughter victoria is eight years old she was born wedlock victoria and her mother svetlana livingston petersburg they have never come here to see alexei he abandoned them when his daughter was a year and

a whole. aleksey decided to break those bones she told me she wasn't ready to take responsibility for the child she set the prospect was too much for him it's against him enormously. to thought that his life would be entirely changed unbearable i said to him. 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 . in this town when our passports testifying to our marriage would have meant a lot to me was what is and us said ok. sometimes that's how authorities got it after that he got carried away. this is what victoria wrote on a postcard she sent to her father happy valentine's day adding i love you very

much. and soon valentine's day inmates get together for a poetry recital. along. on the will all be. bowling oh. oh. oh. i think some presides over the meeting nickname neal he's been generally acclaimed as the best poet in the camp has twenty years of life in prison and produced twenty three thick notebooks of poetry there are thousands of verses about love it will spark when still mission people think you should be

a publisher was like it they should get something you must all get expenditure if you let me keep what you have it's usually let's see if you're serious because. the way alexander leonel killed seven people in cold blood one of his victims was a woman.

alexander leon of could hardly be described as a positive character but film director and thrown off could not find some of the more conflicted history of his first documentary alexander is a camp legend he has crossed paths 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 the owner of as an inmate creation some of i first saw him a long time ago one of the most of it was back when i was serving in a high security jail in the urals. is a strong willed man. that would push someone to survive in a russian jail and ensure all the movements from place to place without cracking is

nothing to sneeze at. with 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 is the footage from alexia documentary entitled the point of no return of all of his works this is the one film the convict director shot in the hope that people on the other side of the fence would see the main question. the film is addressed to society do they want his fellow inmate leo off to be set free head of troy. the question he's asked in the film is 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 wouldn't 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 pro trooper by training learned to kill during the war in angola he was discharged from the armed forces and went on to make short work of his enemies in the same cold manner the in making claims he eliminated business partners who had betrayed him. to expose the post-mortems the woman had died of a sexy asian i put her to sleep so to speak. 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 employment and instead took part in drinking bouts with shady characters. and it's not that he murdered people as a result of a brawl it 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 given the death penalty for his killings he strangled most of his victims of a scarf. leo 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 get life imprisonment i prayed and went to face my fate and this was 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 with and i had been stuck in prison for six years by then so another twenty five years was just a trifle with them. but we wanted to meet relatives of his victims and show to them what sort of person lay all of that becomes. a 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 police 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 them. but the plan didn't come to pass therefore i've been telling undrawn of that his film is incomplete. what. the

court turned down the almost pee for parole now he has to serve another five years to whittle away the time he acts in films is working on a role in and develops production. you. look around the room. each day some one thousand five. from the convicts come here to the coolies industrial section small timber. and make plumbing fittings clothing will soon need is. all of it will be applied to my outside the prison. most of those who do the hard physical work here see filmmaking as a way of shocking the routine labor of the scope society. they maintain that the public outside these fences takes little interest in films about prison life. a lot

of can seize that his movies annoys most he says like. 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 . yeah it's me i catch on so much. like a chill i run in a while here. i say are scared of your own shadow john sounds on my dear camera. this young man works as a sound engineer at

a small theater in something just. good in his twenty no he's old he left his security prison only a year ago after six years inside he had been sentenced to eight in a coffee is 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. capital schools it was prison that paved the way to this theater in the morning. sacked it was a legacy of drone flights and it had not been for the film we made together i wouldn't be here now that's for sure but i will go with the film festival was chaired by the theatres artistic director he like our film and gave 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 in production the skills he learned in prison his new drug his

ambition now is to make movies. and filming costs money and fully realizing his talent is still beyond his means. making a film in prison wasn't much of a problem but guys didn't need much broader him 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 thought of 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 yes now the man serving a sentence for drug crimes. asked him to compose a soundtrack for his new film the convicted film director and then off doesn't care

much about whether anybody outside meets his films he hopes that his films help leo and other young men learn new skills when they are released the director's wish is that they realize they are stronger while things in this life than drugs. have sort of a yearning for the day when i'm released on parole and the last train where there are still three years two months to go i thought i was well you know i want to return home so very much. the rest is russia so i work hard and try to be on my best behavior here on which it says it all world come to think of it the two years are spent in the scholarly have taught me to manage my time properly in our choices but i've also been learning new skills from the other inmates the soldiers the people here know how to teach them. from my son he's a successful teaching and one day i told my wife and i know what they do know

seeing the outside of the i mean the drugs and all that stuff you're going to war from for the new move and she said well you know i trust him so much i can't imagine him doing anything wrong the more 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 toy of that he will have the earn his children's love again. just that she was a self-sufficient personally been a trouble free life. i think he has since taken a long hard look at his life. sometimes they'd greets people to make him realize that time is running out.

still that my son was to see me when i left. him and then gosh i need to do so much to kitchen up. with this prison term. i missed so much. both received his first guest in four years. said lola his college mate brings him a gift he treasures most of all memories trio as creep away unnoticed as they recalled highlights of their college days going to the seaside during the holidays and cutting close to watch new films.

alexy decides to send the watch he won for his film forgive me to his so. there's a new batch of convicts. march one two. i. i. i. i am i i i

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