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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2025
6.30 PM
BLACK BOX, PALAZZO DIEDO

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Running time: 1h 20m
The film is screened in Russian with English subtitles. Free entrance until capacity is met.
The event will be followed by a talk between the director and producer of the film, Mark Franchetti and Professor Matteo Bertelé.

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With unprecedented access, this documentary looks into the hidden world of one of Russia's most impenetrable and remote institutions - a maximum security prison exclusively for murderers. Deep inside the land of the gulags, this is the end of the line for some of Russia's most dangerous criminals - 260 men who have collectively killed nearly 800 people. The film delves deep into the mind and soul of some of these prisoners. In brutally frank and uncensored interviews the inmates speak of their crimes, life and death, redemption and remorselessness, insanity and hope. The film tracks them though their unrelenting days over several months, lifting the veil on one of Russia's most secretive subcultures to reveal what happens when a man is locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours every day, for life.

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Mark Franchetti is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. He worked 23 years as a reporter and foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times and was based in Moscow for a long time.

He has written extensively about Russia, the former Soviet Union and covered the wars in Chechnya, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, and Ukraine. He has also reported on the Italian mafia.

He has been awarded the British Press Award for his coverage of the Moscow Theatre siege as well as a Foreign Press Association award for his front-line report on the death of Iraqi civilians at the hand of US troops during the Second Gulf War.

Matteo Bertelé is professor in Contemporary and Russian Art History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His interests deal with Russian, Soviet and socialist art and visual culture, the exhibition studies and the cultural dimension of the Cold War.