Ombline

Stéphane Cazes : 2012

A young woman with a baby a little over one year old reads from a Noah and the Ark book. The room she is sitting in is a cell and guards are waiting for the story to finish so that they can take the child away. Ombline is twenty and full of anger. Her mother died when she was too young to remember her, her father has been in prison for years and she was brought up in an institution where she fell in love with a man caught up in the underworld who also ended up dying. Ombline is sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a police officer who was about to arrest her boyfriend for drug possession. But she has not served her sentence for long before finding out that she is pregnant. When she gives birth to her son Lucas, her life in prison takes on an entirely new dimension. Ombline is able to spend 18 months with him behind prison walls. Moments of tenderness are mixed with fights with guards and the knowledge that she will soon have to decide who to entrust her baby with. As she becomes aware of her situation, Ombline learns to deal with her anger and takes on the responsibility associated with her new role. Stéphane Cazes's debut feature is an intense and unsentimental story, set in the almost docu-realistic tradition.