Un Enclos

The Penal Centre in Rennes is a women’s prison located in the heart of the city. The ancient building with its imposing architecture includes within its walls a real garden. Lying behind the chapel, it can be used by prisoners under the chaplain’s supervision. With the ever-increasing pressures of the prison environment, it offers a space where they can break the monotony of daily life and again take possession of time. This humble, almost pathetic, garden opens up a way forward in the self-recovery process and affords a pause in the prison sentence. The film uses the garden as a vantage point from which to depict the penal establishment in all its flaws and the prison world seen in all its emptiness. The garden also allows the women to meet and exchange ideas. They say that ‘it’s the only place in the prison which doesn’t feel like prison’. In the garden, a space opens up for speech as an act of resistance and as a testimony to freedom.