Gulag : The secret of happiness

The wirters of the “Envoyé Spêcial” news magazine asked feature film directors, in this case Pavel Lounguine, who worte and directed “Taxi Blues”, to work on non-fiction and to do film reports. The filmmaker went to Pylim, near Sverlosk, capital of the Ural, in one of the last detention camps for common criminal, a Outay with barber wire, watchtowers, uniformes guards and police dogs. This closed world which is organized around its own rules and with the collusion of the guards and the camps administration, has established a well defined hierarchy: “the Bosses”, “the Houjiks”, “the Toadies” and “the Underdogs”.Pavel Lounguine wanted to show everyday lives of the prisoners how they work, eat and sleep while trying to present the reality of this clandestine hierarchy through which camp has faithfully recreated a model of a Soviet society, still subjected to the repression of KGB, and the Police.