AFI's blog

By Nived Ravikumar
Special to the Daily News

In ALONE IN FOUR WALLS, Alexandra Westmeier takes us inside a prison in her native Russia where the convicts are not mobsters but rather adolescent boys.

Despite their youth, the crimes they have committed are no less heinous—robbery, assault, murder. ALONE IN FOUR WALLS gets its name from a tattoo given to many of the children, “four dots, with one more dot in the middle, which signifies ’first time behind bars.’ According to Westmeier, “the children show [it off] with pride without understanding the whole story,“ that statistically, 91-percent of them will return to prison.

ALONE IN FOUR WALLS
9:20 p.m., Wednesday, November 5th @ ArcLight Hollywood 8
12:15 p.m. Friday, November 7th @ ArcLight Hollywood 8

For Westmeier, the journey to make the film began when she was working as a broadcast journalist. While doing a report on juvenile crime, an adolescent prisoner told her, “I like it [here], it’s better here than at home.” She became fascinated in why that was the case, how could a child “like it better behind bars than at home“?

The prison is not typical. The boys attend class, take music lessons, have dental checkups, all within its confides. It feels like a boarding school, yet when a 12-year-old boy recounts how he slayed another boy in chilling detail, we remember the titular four walls.

The prevalence of such cases suggests broader societal malaise. In modern Russia, while some people are rapidly gaining wealth, many households remain hopeless and economically depressed. This leads to increased rates of alcoholism, crime and juvenile delinquincy. Indeed, many of the children featured in the film grew up dealing with an alcoholic father. While each individual is ultimately responsible for their own actions, Westmeier seems to suggest a fundamental flaw in a society with such an epidemic of teenage killers.

It is no wonder that the boys do not want to leave. In this prison, they are among peers. They can aspire to normalcy. Life outside the walls, however, is a great unknown. These children are bright and articulate, but also resigned to their fate as outcasts of mainstream society. There is no hope for something greater or a return to innocence. Westmeier’s interviews with their parents reveal a similar antipathy, that they too have moved on.

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