Canadian Women Film Directors Database
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Prisoners of Beckett -- Film Description:
"Prisoners of Beckett is the meeting of two worlds that never usually converge. One is comprised of poetry and freedom, the other silence and obscurity. It's a true story, which begins in a high security prison in Sweden, where a young actor, Jan Jonson, decides to stage Waiting for Godot with a cast of five prisoners. Their performances turn out to be so unique and genuine that Beckett grants them the right to perform his play and follows the enterprise from his Parisian retreat. Soon everyone is gripped by feverish enthusiasm: the prison governor, an exceptionally bizarre character for the post, and Jan Jonson convince the authorities to let the five actors step outside the prison walls and perform in a real theatre in Gothenburg. An extraordinary concession followed by an even more spectacular event! Prisoners of Beckett is a film and a puzzle, half tragedy half farce, which reconstructs this adventure and sets off in search of its heroes today."
-- National Film Board of Canada


Source:
National Film Board of Canada. "NFB -- Prisoners of Beckett" National Film Board of Canada. http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/en/our-collection/?idfilm=54633.