SAMAD

Samad (Mehdi Meskar) has done it. He paid his bill with justice and now has a job, a new life. Father Agostino (Roberto Citran), his friend and mentor, invites him to prison so that he can inspire his comrades, as an example of reintegration, so that he can tell them about his new life as a free man. But it’s the wrong day: a riot explodes the anger and resentment of the inmates, who decide to barricade themselves in the prison library. Samad will have to choose who to be: Muslim or Christian, accomplice or hostage.

The film is supported by Antigone, the association that fights for rights and guarantees in the Italian penal system:

‘In Samad, the prison is not only one of the scenarios of the film, but is the container in which to place the conflicts that grip the protagonist, represented in a place where time is suspended and the balance always difficult. A prison described through the eyes of a filmmaker who has seen and known the prison world and presents a realistic image of it full of its contradictions. The protagonist presents us with an example of how difficult it is in Italy today to lose the stigma of those who have a past of imprisonment behind them. Talking about prison and the people in it is always essential. In recent years, the cinema has been able, even more than the traditional media, to bring the prison system and its problems out of the cone of shadow that all too often hangs over them. The film Samad is an ally of Antigone in the attempt to create social awareness on a subject that is always at risk of being forgotten’.