This documentary about motherhood in Chile’s prison system is edited down from 4,000 photos and nearly 2,000 videos shot entirely on mobile phones by inmates of the country’s largest women’s jail. Phones are banned, so the images are often fuzzy and blurred, clips ending abruptly – sometimes with a hiss of “Hide the phone!” or “The guard is coming!”. At times, it can be hard to make sense of what is happening on screen. The voiceover is spoken by Karina Sánchez, who spent more than six years in prison, and she also voices the experiences of other incarcerated women. It’s not immediately clear she is telling multiple stories, however, so the voiceover becomes mildly disorientating.
It’s estimated that 95% of women in Chile’s prisons are mothers, and their children can stay with them in jail until they turn two years old. A woman describes staying awake all night the night before her son left, watching him sleep (she had 10 years to serve of her sentence). Mums tell painful stories of losing contact with their children once they leave; one received a notification from the family court that her children had been taken into foster care, relinquished by her sister.
Film-maker Tana Gilbert collected the footage for her 74-minute film over six years; the title is Spanish for “badly loved” or “unloved” women. One prisoner describes having to give birth in a hospital in handcuffs, after the doctor refused to believe she wasn’t high on drugs (“All you prison bitches are into drugs”). There are funny moments, too, including clips of women frantically exercising after a fitness craze gripped the prison.
We never find out what crimes the women were convicted of, which feels respectful, but there’s little wider context either, of the poverty and inequality that drive up Chile’s female prison population. In the end, the film remains opaque and elusive in ways that audiences (particularly outside the country) might find frustrating.
Malqueridas is on True Stories from 15 August.