21 Days Inside

Description: A two-year old boy is found dead in a well of an impoverished Bedouin village in the Negev desert. The police are told that the mother, Ratiba, is mentally unstable and immediately proceed to arrest her. She is detained for 21 days. Her interrogations are conducted without the presence of a lawyer. She is forced to confront her hostile mother in law and indifferent husband in the interrogation room. Informers are planted in her cell, twice, to try to elicit her confession. She is escorted back to the scene of the crime while the questioning continues. Much of the film is based on the police footage of the interrogations and site visits. Jailhouse snitch recordings made by the police are played against evocative illustrations. Placed under immense pressure, this vulnerable woman eventually confesses.

Merits: Zohar’s extensive use of the police’s own videos and recordings is powerful and damning. Most filmmakers might have stopped there. Her film makes the laudable effort to evoke Ratiba’s perspective. The use of an Arabic woman’s voiceover to relate local myths about the well is poignant. The re-enactments with a doll representing Ratiba feel a little crude. While we learn that this woman’s fate could have been far worse, the mystery of her son’s tragic death remains unresolved.

Rating: Reference to a child’s murder.

Harley

Asia