STORYVILLE: RUSSIA'S TOUGHEST PRISON - THE CONDEMNED
BBC Four Sun 19th Oct 9pm - 10:20pm
Repeat: BBC Four Monday 2:15am
Review by: Jonathan HolmesThis is every bit as grim as it sounds, but you should watch anyway. Penal Colony number 56 looks exactly the way you’d expect – rusted barbed wire and barking dogs – but there is an entire world inside the gates.
The 260 inmates are responsible for almost 800 murders. They are bad men. But watching them pace back and forth, back and forth in their five square-metre cells, it’s hard not to feel sympathy. Many are “lifers” who had their sentences commuted when Russia abolished the death penalty in 1996. Five minutes after they heard the news, the suicides started. Those that remain navigate a complex hierarchy of guards, old-timers and worse. All struggle to stay sane, trapped inside their own heads.
Documentary exploring the hidden world of one of Russia's most impenetrable and remote institutions - a maximum-security prison reserved exclusively for murderers. The site holds 260 inmates that have collectively killed nearly 800 people, and uncensored interviews give an insight into the prisoners' minds and lives as they discuss topics such as their crimes, life and death, redemption, remorselessness, insanity and hope.
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