Andrei Schwartz

Almost ten years ago, while filming in the high-security Rahova prison in Romania, the filmmaker met Gavriel Hrieb, a prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a prosecutor. On the day of his release on parole after 21 years, Schwartz stands by him as a friend – but is also interested in Gavriel's story as a director. His team accompanied Gavriel for over two years. At first, he was full of hope for a new life, but he found it difficult to find his place. Romania is now part of the EU. The country has changed, and returning to society is difficult. He can't find a job or a place to live that he likes. His mother's inability to cope and still smoldering conflicts weigh heavily on him. The director eventually suspects that his protagonist has not told him the whole truth about his crime and requests access to the murder file.

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Maria, Tirloi and their relatives have no choice: in their Romanian Roma village there is no work. In order to survive and provide for their families at home, they go begging in Hamburg.

A documentary about everyday life in a Romanian high-security prison near Bucharest. Filmmaker Andrei Schwartz spent more than half a year accompanying and observing the lives of the prisoners. Up to 22 men share a cell in the hopelessly overcrowded Rahova prison on the outskirts of Bucharest. Schwartz focuses more closely on several individual fates and describes how the men try above all to get through each day unscathed. At the same time, the film shows how the prisoners try to preserve their humanity in an inhumane environment and cope with their bleak everyday lives with creativity, humor, and a spark of optimism.