Director

Zeina Daccache

Lebanon | 2021 | 75 min | Arabic

• Producer Zeina Daccache
• Production Company Catharsis - Lebanese Center for Drama Therapy
• Screenplay Zeina Daccache
• Cinematography Karim Ghorayeb
• Editing Myriam Geagea
• Sound Raed Younan
• Cast
• Contacts

  Catharsis – Lebanese Center for Drama Therapy
  

  zeina@catharsislcdt.org | info@catharsislcdt.org

About the Film

The Blue Inmates is the third film in the theatre therapy documentary projects by Lebanese filmmaker Zeina Daccache. For many years, Zeina has been working with Lebanese prisons, offering therapeutic theatre workshops to the disadvantaged inmates in Lebanon. In 2009, she collaborated with inmates in Lebanon’s largest prison to address the conditions of the Lebanese prisoners. They presented the play 12 Angry Lebanese, where they relayed their conditions, fears, and dreams. Four years later, in 2013, Daccache entered Baabda Prison for women and stirred up similar concerns, encouraging female detainees to recount their emotions, stories, struggles and conditions in Scheherazade in Baabda.

The two documentaries chronicle the training process of the two plays, while presenting live excerpts from stage performances by the prisoners. They were both showcased in prison to carefully selected guests including Lebanese government officials.

In The Blue Inmates, Zeina Daccache and her team from the Catharsis Lebanese Center for Drama Therapy visit the blue building of Roumieh Prison, which houses mentally ill inmates. They were supported by mentally sound inmates who accepted to take on the roles of their fellow mentally ill prisoners, to make their voices heard, telling all about their stories, feelings, and desires, which gave a glimpse of their lives inside the blue building.

Zeina’s therapeutic approach provided an opportunity for self-expression while revealing the catastrophes and defects within prisons, laws, governance mechanisms, judgment, and security. These revelations gave hope to make reformations and fix all that could be fixed, which is shown at the end of the film with some of the inmates.

The film documents theatrical rehearsals, giving it a sense of privacy, showcasing its participants’ confessions. It looks into the conditions of the inmates, who despite their crimes, need attention to make some radical changes in the buildings where they are incarcerated and in the laws that govern their trials.

Nadim Jarjoura