Incubator documentary selected for Hot Docs
Tales From the Prison Cell (Hungary, Croatia, UK, 2020)
Can the power of imagination amend challenged or broken relationships? Three imprisoned fathers write fairy tales that are turned into short films featuring their own family members. This creative attempt to reconnect and heal is bitter-sweet, but with an uncertain outcome. “Tales From The Prison Cell” explores family relationships showing how being in jail can affect the lives of a household and poses an inevitable question: Can magic and creativity set you free?
Tales From the Prison Cell HotDocs (Photo: Proton Cinema)
“In a Hungarian prison, filmmakers task incarcerated fathers to write fairy tales about their children. Next, they will turn those fairy tales into short films, with the prisoner’s loved ones in the leading roles. In an effort to help strained families bridge the unnatural divide that prisons cause, director Ábel Visky gets creative by spotlighting the transformative power of art. Unmissable is the weight of each father’s absence in the lives of their children, and the toll taken by each valuable moment lost. The battle with isolation, for some, becomes a war with paranoia, making the fairy tales more than just a way to give a gift to their families, but instead a vehicle to tell silenced truths. Tales from the Prison Cell seeks beauty where there often is none, providing fairy tales for families when their imaginations are the only place that they can truly be together.” Nataleah Hunter-Young, Hot Docs
Ábel Visky was born in 1987 in Bacau, Romania. After receiving his Photography, Film, and Media diploma from Sapientia University in Cluj, he earned his Film Director degree from The University of Theater and Film in Budapest, under director Ildikó Enyedi’s guidance. He has had success as the director of fictional films (Romanian Sunrise; Playfellows) as well as documentary shorts (Zsolt and Kriszta). Tales from the Prison Cell is his first feature film.
Tales From The Prison Cell was produced by Proton Cinema and co-produced by British Taskovski films, Hungarian Arizona MPS and Croatian Fade In with the support of the National Film Institute Hungary, the Croatian Audiovisual Center, Creative Europe and Hungarian Film Incentive.