Outside the Woman

The idea for » Draußen die Frauen« (The women outside) was born during our work for Die WERFT. Why do men in this exceptional situation of »prison« speak so disparagingly about the people they miss the most? Why is the mother always sacred, but the self-confident young woman a whore?

Only angry ones get into the cast

It was clear early on that »Draußen die Frauen« had to be created as a free work apart from our project commission and that only a smart mixture of professional actresses and real, angry, desperate misogynists can provide the ingredients that this semi-documentary approach calls for. Therefore the work begins with the question of how they can be identified and persuaded to cooperate. As a first step, we hang a provocative poster in all the departments of a German prison. The cliché works: not because prisoners actually apply for the casting, but because social workers at the prison give us clues which prisoners have torn down the poster. We get in touch with them and start to conduct interviews.

From filmic observation to commentary

These interviews, some of them lasting several hours, were supplemented by background discussions with the women concerned, e.g. young female AVD officers, and became the basis for the script that was being written in parallel. Five young men with very different biographical relationships to women are accompanied through an everyday prison day. A challenging attempt for our team and a balancing act between honest interest and the desire to bring to light the degrading stereotypes behind prison walls.