Rancho
(Rancho)

A prison, a living space for men who have not chosen to be together: daily gestures, night-time conversations, jokes, stories, games and remorse, aspirations on hold. Rancho is a living portrait, plunging us into an Argentine prison, where the camera is familiarly close to a handful of detainees who are listened to (sometimes music) rather than interviewed. Be it the young boxer with a short sentence or the prison’s “godfather” who has already served thirty years and is preparing the youngster for his release (“you shouldn’t be in here”) – each man is seen for who he is, and even this closed world corresponds to an intimate part of his reality. In his debut feature documentary, the watchful and ever-present Pedro Speroni himself becomes a “rancho” and sets aside the courts’ judgements to capture the truth of an incarcerated life in its human dimension. AR