Swiss-Italian writer-director Petra Volpe made a box office and critical splash with Late Shift, her Swiss international Oscar submission starring Leonie Benesch (The Teacher’s Lounge) as an overworked yet tireless nurse navigating an overstretched hospital ward. In her new film, Frank & Louis, her English-language debut, she zooms in on another often-overlooked care issue: the care needs of the aging incarcerated.
Set within the walls of a U.S. prison, Frank & Louis follows Frank (Kingsley Ben-Adir), 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.
Inspired by the “Gold Coats” peer support program at the California Men’s Colony state prison in San Luis Obispo, Frank & Louis, which world premiered in the Premieres lineup of the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 25 before traveling the festival circuit, including a screening at the Locarno Film Festival’s Piazza Grande on Aug. 10, explores the potential for rehabilitation through caretaking.
“The theme of care and caretaking, what that means and how we all need it, is such an important societal issue,” says Volpe about her motivation for the film. “We take for granted that there are people who take care of us. It’s 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.”
