Daniel Ruchat has just started work as a prison officer.
P. B., charged with attempted murder, has been transferred to the small Lausanne prison Bois-Mermet. As days go by, both discover their new environment. And as their paths cross, the viewer is taken through the twists and turns of life inside the prison.
Michel Finazzi is a Swiss filmmaker with a long career in documentaries. In 1997, he began running film- and video-workshops in “Bois-Mermet” prison in Lausanne, Switzerland. The goal was to socialize the prisoners. After conducting these workshops for 16 years, he began to write the story of his first docufiction in 2013. This film, BLOC CENTRAL, was shot between 2014 and 2018 in the same prison where he worked with the detainees. 57 actors, most of them professionals, and a technical crew of 15 were hired in order to realize this project.
Director Statement
In his first full-length fiction film, Michel Finazzi depicts life in the Lausanne prison Bois-Mermet. This feature film, closely based on reality, reveals various aspects of life inside prison and depicts the people who live and work there, from inmate to director, from social worker to supervisor.
It is well-documented because the film-maker worked for 16 years in two regional prisons and consequently has in-depth insider knowledge of what prisons are like. With great precision, he covers practically every detail of prison life. It is also fiction, because the director has distilled numerous anecdotes and life stories into a sensitively-crafted story that captures the attention from start to finish.
Michel Finazzi does not dwell on the controversial issues surrounding prisons, preferring instead to turn his attention to the human beings who can be found there, both inside and outside the cells. His carefully composed portraits are moving in their humanity. And the spectator discovers that the microcosm of the prison is a reflection of society as a whole, with its norms and codes and comical situations.