{"id":299233,"date":"2026-01-23T09:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T09:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/299233\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T09:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T09:51:08","slug":"sundance-2026-film-frank-louis-director-interview-on-prison-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/299233\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance 2026 Film ‘Frank & Louis’ Director Interview on Prison Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSwiss-Italian writer-director Petra Volpe<\/a> made a box office and critical splash with\u00a0Late Shift<\/a><\/a>, her Swiss international Oscar submission<\/a> starring Leonie Benesch (The Teacher\u2019s Lounge<\/a>) as an overworked yet tireless nurse navigating an overstretched hospital ward. In her new film, Frank & Louis<\/a>, her English-language debut, she zooms in on another often-overlooked care issue: the care needs of the aging incarcerated.<\/p>\n

\n\tSet within the walls of a U.S. prison,\u00a0Frank & Louis\u00a0follows Frank (Kingsley Ben-Adir<\/a>), who is serving a life sentence and takes on a caretaking role for aging inmates suffering from memory loss. Rob Morgan stars as one of those inmates, Louis.<\/p>\n

\n\tInspired by the \u201cGold Coats\u201d peer support program at the California Men\u2019s Colony state prison in San Luis Obispo, Frank & Louis, which world premieres in the Premieres lineup of the Sundance<\/a> Film Festival on Jan. 25, explores the potential for rehabilitation through caretaking.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe theme of care and caretaking, what that means and how we all need it, is such an important societal issue,\u201d says Volpe about her motivation for the film. \u201cWe take for granted that there are people who take care of us. It\u2019s also a taboo, because nobody wants to think about being old and sick and needy. And especially in the context of prison, we never really think about it deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn researching the topic, the filmmaker met inmates to discuss the Gold Coats initiative and found out that care often goes both ways, with caring also becoming a form of self-care. \u201cA lot of the men I encountered when doing the research said that the care work made them feel human again, and that really stayed with me,\u201d Volpe recalls. \u201cIt became my guiding light for this project. The question is: What makes us feel human in any environment, and especially in an environment like a prison, where you are dehumanized from the get-go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBen-Adir\u2019s character initially agrees to take on the care role with the hope that it will help his case for an early release. \u201cThe long years in prison have left him hollowed out, frozen and emotionally checked out, probably also to protect himself,\u201d Volpe explains. \u201cThe work with Louis helps him to defrost. It\u2019s something all of the men I interviewed said: the work with the people they took care of really opened their hearts and started a process of self-healing and reconnecting to themselves, to their families, to their own guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, while the movie may be set in a U.S. prison, the director sees the underlying themes as much bigger and more universal. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe cast, which also includes Ren\u00e9 P\u00e9rez Joglar, Indira Varma and Rosalind Eleazar, each came to the project with their own personal connections to the story. Volpe says, \u201cEither they had elderly people in their families, or incarceration was something that they wanted to talk about. All that was very much a driving force for them. That\u2019s the most wonderful gift for a director, because then the making of the movie is very much driven by this existential need of everybody in the film to tell a story that they really care about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne decision the creative team behind Frank & Louis made early on was not to go for naturalism. \u201cWe wanted to show almost a metaphor, a prison that is a universal prison, and what incarceration does to the souls of people, and how they can break out of that,\u201d the director, who worked with cinematographer Judith Kaufmann, notes. \u201cSo we were focusing more on these kinds of questions rather than authenticity. I wanted the movie to feel emotionally authentic, but in the depiction of prison, we tried to avoid certain tropes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fact that Volpe made two care-centric movies, Late Shift and Frank & Louis, in close succession is mostly a coincidence, but she doesn\u2019t feel finished with the topic yet. \u201cIt took 10 years to make this movie, and it was actually my co-writer, Esther Bernstorff, who had read about the Gold Coats program,\u201d she tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cI was fascinated by it, because it seemed such a contradiction, especially going against all the cliches we have in our heads. Prison is seen as a place of toxic masculinity, a place of violence. But I was interested in the idea that it can also be a place of care and compassion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Late Shift and Frank & Louis, Volpe has also been developing another movie about caretaking. \u201cI would love to make three movies about this topic, because especially in the world we live in right now, it\u2019s such an important issue,\u201d the filmmaker explains. Indeed, there is a project that is \u201cmore about palliative care\u201d that she has been working on for years. <\/p>\n

\n\tOutside of this, Volpe is working on a remake of a comedy she wrote called Golden Years. Seemingly noticing the interviewer raising his eyebrows, she asserts, \u201dYes, I also like doing comedies, not just dramas.\u201d There is also a television show about the story of chocolate in Switzerland. She says, \u201cAs a filmmaker, you always have to have a lot of irons in the fire and a lot of things going on. So, I don\u2019t really take a break. I also feel that the time you have to make movies is limited, and I want to make use of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for Sundance, where the film is seeking distribution, Volpe says premiering her latest film at the Park City fest \u201cwas my wildest dream.\u201d She adds, \u201cIt\u2019s a place where cinema still gets really celebrated, and you find real aficionados who think deeply about cinema and who enjoy complex stories. So, it\u2019s super-exciting to go there for me, but also for my whole team and also the actors.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Swiss-Italian writer-director Petra Volpe made a box office and critical splash with\u00a0Late Shift, her Swiss international Oscar submission…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,6319,19,1452,17,148077,148078,327,16006,148079,16998,81227],"class_list":{"0":"post-299233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-festivals","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-international","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-kingsley-ben-adir","15":"tag-late-shift","16":"tag-movies","17":"tag-oscars-2026","18":"tag-petra-volpe","19":"tag-sundance","20":"tag-sundance-2026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115943799717964266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}