Directors: Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson
Writers: Sophie Compton, Stella Heath Keir and Daisy-May Hudson
Holloway Prison will soon be turned into flats, but what kind of ghosts will roam the new corridors is yet to be seen. Once the largest women’s prison in Europe, Holloway has a long history; the suffragettes were force-fed there; Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK, was executed there, and in 2016, Sarah Reed’s death there was one of the reasons for the prison’s sudden closure in the same year. Asking six ex-prisoners to return there before the building is knocked down results in thoughtful cinema.
The women explore the deserted site, the blue and cream design now interrupted by green as nature returns: A fern flourishes out of a skirting board. Some women go back to their old cells or their dorm rooms, where the beds still stand inches from each other. One looks for her graffiti on the wall above a top bunk and, in another scene, remembers the telephone room from where she called her mother. Another woman declares that they will be the last prisoners ever to leave the jail. The others remonstrate with “ex-prisoners”, but they know what she means all the same.
However, the women are not there simply to explore their old home but, instead, to participate in a five-day group therapy to put their prison days behind them. At first, the icebreakers and exercises they are asked to take part in seem awkward and patronising, as any worker forced on a training day recognises, but the activities yield interesting and therapeutic results. One woman declares that her prison sentence was a walk in the park, that her life in the “hood” had prepared her for life inside. The other women had a rougher time, but one remembers her sentence as an escape from drug addiction and poverty. Prison gave her three meals a day and relative safety.
With complete control over the final edit – on one particularly gruelling day, the women even ask that the camera remain outside the circle they’re in – the women are never exploited in this quietly moving film. This form of collaboration between directors Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson, the six prisoners and the two therapists ensures that the narrative comes from a group effort which all are happy with.
There are no show-downs, no arguments and no intrusive score to manipulate the audience. Of course, there are tears, but when there are, the camera is discreet, staying at a distance, providing the women with the dignity that they were not afforded when the prison was open, awash with inmates. That these intelligent and eloquent women were ever incarcerated is surprising, and we are only given hints as to what they had done wrong. One was an activist for animal rights, and a couple mention drugs. Indeed, one woman confides in her talent for selling them.
Most of the women are now involved in charity work supporting other women who are failed by the system. While one is now an abolitionist feminist fighting against the institution of prison altogether, another acknowledges that her time in jail enabled her to learn more about herself. All of the six former inmates are very different people, which this film makes clear.
When Holloway Prison closed, the women inside were sent to different prisons in the country, destroying their links with each other and, in many cases, splitting them up from their families who lived nearby. While the Government has promised that a women’s centre will be part of the new development and that some of the new houses will be affordable, we can only hope that Holloway’s troubled history isn’t entirely erased.
Holloway is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2024.
