Four-year-old Mateo Trapero could never have guessed that one remark from him would send his parents to jail ... to work on a film. It was the boy pointing out the pink-coloured women's prison along a motorway that led to Lion's Den, Pablo Trapero's film about a young librarian named Julia who gives birth to and raises a child inside prison after being incarcerated for her boyfriend's murder.
The director's wife, Martina Gusman, is a producer of the film and its star, playing Julia, a dejected woman contending with the chaos in her prison block while struggling to bring up her child in this environment. Her attachment to her son pits her against her mother, Sofia, who wants Julia to let her care for the boy.
The 37-year-old Buenos Aires-born director admits he has become more interested in parenthood since becoming a father. Lion's Den was a personal film for him as part of Gusman's on-screen pregnancy was real. But the film is hardly sentimental. Living conditions in the prison are severe and whether Julia did kill her boyfriend is never clearly established.
This is not to mention Trapero's obvious critique of Argentina's penitentiary system for subjecting pregnant inmates, and the children they give birth to, to highly unsatisfactory living conditions. The film was shot in a real (but unused) prison block, with the on-screen participation of wardens and inmates from eight prisons in the Traperos' home province.
Was it difficult to make this film in an actual prison? It wasn't easy, but it was essential for me to base the production in this context. There were two reasons for this. First, it lets us have a perception of what prisons are like. Secondly, the film's a social mission and I thought it was valuable for us to make a film about everyday life, to share images and reality. ... and I'm not referring so much about sharing with the audience, but more with the people we worked with on the film, the nurses and the staff who are so close to the inmates. The most important part is that we lived every day with the people there.
Was there a lot of wrangling with the prison authorities over the film? We had to have so many permits and authorisation papers, that it was more like working in court than on a film. We sent prison officials the screenplay and said we wanted to do this film and told them we'd do it whether they wanted to work with us or not. But I was very surprised that they said yes - then again, when you think about it, they need to attract attention about the prison system because they work in it.
We asked for permits from prisons in the city of Buenos Aires but they said no, but in the province they said yes. And now that the film has come out, the city officials are very jealous of it. [Politicians] are talking about the conditions pregnant inmates and their children face and they are now changing the law. They are ashamed of the situation and want to improve it. Would the reluctance of Buenos Aires officials stem from your portrayal of the city's police force as corrupt in your 2002 film El Bonaerense?