Lion's Den

A prison movie with a difference, Lion's Den focuses on the females inmates in the mother-and-child wing. In doing so it manages to both cunningly disguise the cliches of the genre (lesbian relationships, fights, riots) and be deeply unsettling. The children remain with their mothers until they are 4 so their formative years are spent incarcerated in a run-down cell block. Julia gives birth and raises her child while in jail for murder (although it's never clear what actually transpired between her, the injured Ramiro and the dead Nahuel). Despite inevitable tensions, there's a communal approach to childcare - Marta initially feeds baby Tomas as Julia can't cope (a crying baby sets off a chain reaction of wailing children and shouting prisoners) - and the children do attend a kindergarten inside the prison. The bars of a prison door double as a climbing frame and colourful stickers adorn the grimy window of a cell, while the maternal bond is never in doubt. One woman cuts her wrists when her child reaches the age for removal and Julia falls apart when her mother takes Tomas. It's a tricky dilemma: prison is clearly no place for these young children (they can't run around in a park or make new friends or do any of the things other children do) and yet they also need to be with their mothers. This is the heart of the film, and as Tomas grows physically so does Julia emotionally, reflected in her hair changing from a dyed blonde mane to a brunette crop. The wish-fulfilment ending only emphasises the true impossibility of the situation.