Prison 77

Manuel enters Barcelona's Modelo prison awaiting trial for embezzlement. The year is 1977, Franco has been dead two years and the country is converting itself into a democracy. But the amnesty arrived for political prisoners and not for common ones. Inside, Manuel joins COPEL, the collective organising for prisoners' rights, and finds himself inside a legal argument as much as a jail. What Alberto Rodríguez does is refuse to treat the Spanish transition as a celebration. There is a side of that transformation that touched nobody, and behind these walls nothing changes at all until the men force it. Miguel Herrán and Javier Gutiérrez lead. The film opened the seventieth San Sebastián film festival and drew sixteen nominations at the Goya awards. Its weakness is how much weight it puts on the standard prison film beats. Friendship, brutal guards and an escape plan arrive in the expected order. Who it is for: viewers drawn to recent Spanish history and prison drama. Who it is not for: anyone who avoids hard violence.