The directors of Holloway use a simple but powerful visual device to demonstrate how badly the British prison system is failing the women it incarcerates. Towards the end of their eponynmous documentary, six former inmates are invited to play a version of Grandmother\u2019s Footsteps in the chapel of the deserted ex-prison, where they have been filming for five days.<\/p>\n
They begin lined up against the wall and a voice tells them: \u201cStep forward if you grew up in a chaotic household.\u201d All six women step forward, before being instructed: \u201cStep forward if you experienced domestic violence growing up.\u201d Again, they move ahead in unison. \u201cStep forward if somebody in your household has experienced drug use. Step forward if you grew up in a household where there wasn\u2019t very much money. Step forward if a member of your family has been to prison \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
When I got to my cell, I felt my 18-year-old self cry out<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
By the time the exercise is over, almost all the women have silently made their way from one side of the room to the other, starkly highlighting the film\u2019s fundamental theme: the UK\u2019s prisons are full of vulnerable women being punished \u2013 at great expense \u2013 and not helped.<\/p>\n
Shortly before Holloway prison began to be demolished in 2022, directors Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson secured permission to film inside the abandoned site in London, watching as six women returned to the cells where they were once held, to explore how they all ended up imprisoned as young women. Directors of a more conventional documentary might have plonked the participants on the bare iron frames of their old prison beds and instructed them to pour out their life stories, poking and prodding them for all the shocking details. Compton and Hudson take a subtler approach, arranging the women in a circle, supervised by a trained therapist, and waiting to see what emerges.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m angry that some kids are born into certain circumstances\u2019 … Aliyah Ali, left, and Mandy Ogunmokun. Photograph: Sarah Lee\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
It is a risky strategy. The flow of the conversation is faltering, interrupted by nervousness about how their words will be used, suspicion about the directors\u2019 intentions \u2013 and a sudden, uncomfortable request for the most difficult conversations to continue without the cameras rolling. The film includes all this uncertainty: they debate whether they should proceed before realising their desire to talk about the justice system\u2019s failures mostly outweighs their concerns about sharing chapters from their complicated pasts.<\/p>\n
Compton (Emmy nominated for her documentary on deepfake pornography, Another Body<\/a>) and Hudson (who won a Bafta Breakthrough award for her film Half Way<\/a>, documenting her own family\u2019s experience of homelessness<\/a>) have the confidence to make their subjects collaborators on the project, inviting them into the editing process, to ensure everyone feels happy with how their experiences have been handled. \u201cThey could say what they did and didn\u2019t like,\u201d Hudson says. \u201cThey wanted more laughter included. Our wish was that they felt proud of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once western Europe\u2019s largest women\u2019s prison, Holloway has a significant place in British history. More than 300 suffragettes were held in a wing of the original building during the early 20th century. Ruth Ellis was hanged there in 1955, the last woman to be executed in the UK. Greenham Common protesters spent time here. Sarah Reed, who had previously been a victim of police brutality in 2012, died in her cell in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n
This is not the story the film sets out to tell. \u201cIt\u2019s not a film about Holloway; other films can tell a historical story or show the realities of being in prison,\u201d says Compton, who I meet along with Hudson and two of the film\u2019s participants, Aliyah Ali and Mandy Ogunmokun. \u201cThis is about a group of women returning to Holloway, and finding they are not the same people they were when they were in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n
The women each respond differently when they walk through the corridors of the site, which closed in 2016. Some take delight in defying forgotten rules, skipping along walkways that were previously out of bounds. One begins by cheerfully telling the cameras how she viewed her time at Holloway as a holiday camp experience \u2013 it takes days for her to admit the extent to which her attitude is just a protective front. Another observes approvingly the way that brambles and ferns have started to reclaim the space, springing from beneath the plug sockets and creeping through the windows. \u201cIt feels kind of healing to see that Holloway prison is falling apart,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u2018They wanted more laughter included\u2019 \u2026 directors Sophie Compton, left, and Daisy-May Hudson. Photograph: Sarah Lee\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Some remember with horror the noise of night-time screaming, but several are surprised by the unexpected feelings of affection the building triggers. \u201cIt was probably the first time that I was in an environment which was controlled and felt safe,\u201d Ali, 31, tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s sad that for a lot of us, the first time we felt that connection of belonging and sisterhood, we found it in prison. What does that say about society?\u201d<\/p>\n
She was sent to Holloway at 18. \u201cGrowing up how I grew up, you\u2019re conditioned to just brush things off and get on with things, and wear masks and stay strong. When I went back to my first cell, I felt my 18-year-old self cry out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali is initially the most reluctant of the six participants. The founder of a non-profit organisation, The Daddyless Daughters Project<\/a>, she has rebuilt her life, radiates strength and seems visibly irritated by the entire setup. \u201cI was worried they could edit our voices and create a narrative that we weren\u2019t hoping for,\u201d she says. \u201cI was thinking, \u2018We\u2019re trusting them with a level of vulnerability that we\u2019re not comfortable with. What are these people going to do with it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Gradually she was reassured and slowly began to reveal some of the childhood events that catapulted her into prison \u2013 family breakdown, domestic violence, a move to a women\u2019s refuge, then later into a residential children\u2019s home at the age of 12. Her problems escalated when she got caught up in county lines dealing, as a child exploited by criminal gangs to move and supply drugs. \u201cI was introduced to selling drugs, which I was very good at, and it was the first time that I started to feel a sense of worth,\u201d she finally reveals on camera.<\/p>\n
She is dismayed to remember how little support she received as a child. \u201cThe system saw me as a bad girl \u2026 as somebody who asked for all of this,\u201d she says in the film. \u201cIt was always, \u2018What\u2019s wrong with you? Why can\u2019t you just behave? Why can\u2019t you just stop doing this?\u2019 Nothing was asked about what actually happened to me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Unexpected feelings \u2026 one of the women who returned to Holloway takes a photograph in a cell.<\/p>\n
Her fury is echoed by Ogunmokun. \u201cIt\u2019s so frustrating to see how similar the stories of people going in and out of prison are. Change is so slow,\u201d she says. The daughter of a woman who struggled with addiction, she also spent some of her childhood in care, went to Holloway first aged 20, and was in and out repeatedly for two decades until she shook off her own drug addiction aged 40. \u201cI\u2019m angry that some kids are born into certain circumstances, and what chance do they have?\u201d<\/p>\n
Ogunmokun, 66, has dedicated the 25 years since leaving Holloway to helping former addicts break the cycle of addiction and offending<\/a>. \u201cEvery time I reoffended the judge would say: \u2018You haven\u2019t learned anything.\u2019\u201d She didn\u2019t get the support she needed to change while she was in prison, through no real fault of the prison staff. \u201cThe officers see horrific things, but they\u2019re not trained counsellors \u2013 they\u2019re not mental health trained, they\u2019re not sex-trafficking trained, they\u2019re not domestic violence trained. They\u2019ve got a regime they have to run by.\u201d She hopes the film might persuade viewers that there needs to be a revolution in the way that female offenders are treated.<\/p>\n