This Prison Where I Live (NC)

Rex Bloomstein's tribute to a prisoner of conscience is a model of sincerity, if not much else. The Burmese poet and comedian Zarganar is enduring a 35-year prison sentence (commuted from 59 years) because his outspokenness displeased the country's military regime.

Bloomstein's protester-in-arms is a German comedian, Michael Mittermeier, whose championing of Zarganar is equally sincere but hopelessly undermined by language. Have you ever heard a German comedian trying to explain a joke as told by a Burmese comedian? However amusing it might have been in the original, most of its impact is lost in translation. The trip to the remote prison where Zarganar is held proves similarly anticlimactic, a drive-by camera shot of watchtowers followed by a hasty exit once the beady authorities catch on to them. Purely as a means of raising awareness this is valuable; as a piece of film-making it's a bodge.