Institutions of Violence
A long-term exploration of imprisonment, torture, and state repression — from the Soviet Gulag to contemporary penitentiary systems.
For many years, one of the central subjects of our work has been the study of closed institutions in which power is exercised over people through different forms of violence, coercion, isolation, and control.
We consider this subject particularly important because the prison can be seen as a concentrated model of society — a place where relations between the individual and the state, power and vulnerability, law and violence become especially visible. To understand a society, one can look at what happens behind the walls of its prisons and at how it treats those it has deprived of freedom.
Our engagement with the Russian penitentiary system began when our friends, members of Pussy Riot, were imprisoned. Through their experience, we encountered the realities of incarceration and the violations of law and human rights within the prison system.
We subsequently began exploring the historical foundations of this system through our work with Memorial and the Gulag History Museum. We recorded numerous interviews and made dozens of films with survivors of Soviet repression and their relatives, examining how the experience of the Gulag continues to exist in personal and collective memory.
At the same time, we continued working with the contemporary penitentiary system in collaboration with human rights organizations. We visited prisons as volunteers and conducted filmmaking workshops for incarcerated teenagers.
Our research has also extended to psychiatric institutions. Since the Soviet period, psychiatry has been used as an instrument of political repression against dissidents, and in contemporary Russia these punitive practices have begun to re-emerge.
Within this field, we have produced our own films as well as works created in collaboration with human rights organizations and museums.
Presented here is a selection of works from this long-term exploration of institutions of violence.
Two Months Until Freedom
This film was made in collaboration with the human rights organization For Human Rights.
The administration of Penal Colony No. 15 (IK-15) in the Irkutsk region had repeatedly used violence against prisoners. On April 9, 2020, a protest broke out at the Angarsk penal colony. Special forces were deployed to suppress it. Two hundred prisoners were transferred to Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 6 (SIZO-6) in Angarsk and another 300 to SIZO-1 in Irkutsk, where they were subjected to severe torture and sexual violence.
The film’s protagonist, Evgeny Yurchenko, describes the methods used to suppress the protest.
In 2021, the film served as evidence leading to the opening of a criminal case against Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) officers accused of torturing prisoners in pre-trial detention centers following the protest.
Bastøy — Prison as a Practice of Normal Life
Coming from Russia, where we had encountered a prison system based on isolation, hierarchy, and violence, we travelled to Norway to experience a fundamentally different approach to incarceration. On the island of Bastøy, we interviewed prison director Arne Kvernvik Nilsen and explored the Norwegian “principle of normality”: the idea that the punishment is the restriction of liberty, not the deprivation of ordinary life and other rights. At Bastøy, everyday practices — living in a home, cooking, working, learning, making decisions, and taking responsibility — become part of rehabilitation. The film asks a simple question: should prison teach a person how to be a prisoner, or how to stop being one?