Picco

Kevin has just arrived at a youth prison. With the wings overcrowded he has to share a cell with three others. Inside, one rule operates: either you are strong or you are not. Pressure, humiliation and beatings are part of daily life. Kevin cannot find his footing, and one of his cellmates gives him the summary of the system: in here you are either a victim or a perpetrator. Philip Koch's first film starts from a real case in a German prison in 2006, in which three inmates tortured a cellmate to death. The film does not turn violence into a spectacle, but it does not hide it either; the weight falls on the fact that nobody intervened from outside. It declares nobody a monster and absolves nobody. Hard to watch, and solidly grounded.