In Dovecote, an atmospheric drama short film byItalian director and co-writer Marco Perego turns the camera on society’s often unseen citizens: the women confined to a seaside prison in Venice. Making its debut at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival, Dovecote, filmed inside Giudecca’s working women’s prison on an island in the Venetian lagoon, centers around a woman (Zoë Saldaña) during her final moments before being released. The film was also exhibited at the 60th Venice Biennale as part of the Vatican Pavilion.
Here, Perego speaks to Deadline about the inspiration behind the short film, what it was like to film in the women’s prison and wanting to encourage audiences to think about the cost of freedom.
DEADLINE: What inspired this short film? Did you start with the idea of what the short was going to be about, or did the title come to you first?
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MARCO PEREGO: No, I was selected this year to be part of the Venice Biennale. It’s where each country selects one artist or multiple artists to represent. Myself and Zoë represented. They asked us, “Do you want to be a part of this?” And I agreed. So I went to Venice, and discovered this prison, the Giudecca Women’s Prison, and there are 81 women inside the prison. I met all the inmates and talked to them. It was a very beautiful process. I came home and me and Alex [Dinelaris Jr., co-writer] were in New York, and we tried to figure out how to approach this story. We thought about two questions we were asking the women. First, we learned that all these women were sharing a room, like 10 women to one room. And when you’re walking through the prison, you feel the rumors [of the outside world that blame them for being inside the prison]. 99% of the women in that prison were abused by men. But that many women in that prison like that, it was almost like a dovecote, and Venice is full of pigeons and stuff like that. So, that’s where the title came from.
What was very interesting was this perspective that came from the women. One, is sometimes they prefer to be inside versus being released outside, because the outside makes them feel completely invisible. The second thing is how amazing it is that they built this community for each other. No matter if they’re from Africa, Romania or Italy, they are all together even though they speak different languages, but at the end of the day, they belong together.
DEADLINE: You actually worked with some of the inmates for the short, right?
PEREGO: Yes. There’s only Zoë, Marcello Fonte, the guard and Gaia Scodellar. The rest were all inmates or real guards. I learned so much by being with them. For me, this is a film, but it’s also about an open conversation about how these women have this invisibility and what it means to be seen and to belong somewhere.
DEADLINE: The film mainly focuses on the last moments of Zoë’s character’s time in prison. But there’s also plenty of shots of the women themselves in the prison. How would you describe what the short is about?
PEREGO: The [shot] of the women in the corridor, the meaning of that is that all the women represent every type of woman. That corridor shot is them looking at us and who we are. It’s also meant to show the craziness of Venice, it’s one of the most touristy cities in the world, everybody goes there and sees the beauty. And these women that are inside this place, you see this continuous circle of different women coming in and out all the time. Zoë’s character goes out, and other women come in. And it should make you ask yourself what freedom is. What one of the women inmates told me on my first visit there was, “Outside, I don’t know if I can create this community and belong.” She’s coming with me to the HollyShorts film panel. She did more than 20 years there, and she came out on parole and she talked with us. What she said touched me so much, she said, “When I watched the short, when I was inside, people opened the door for me. When I was outside, I was invisible.”
And I think it was more about if you think about the way the film is made, the outside is only blue, the frame is four by three, and the framing is all cuts all the time, it’s very rigid. Inside, there’s no frame, it’s one take. It’s very big, large and floaty. The question is really thinking about what freedom is. Is it inside the prison or outside in the real world? Because sometimes, you have this rigidity about human behavior, and that’s what I was thinking about.
DEADLINE: Did the prison give you a hard time filming there? How did that work?
PEREGO: No. It was a very beautiful experience. When the Venice Biennale invited us to shoot in there, they asked the artists, do you want to meet an inmate? There were some artists who wrote poetry of them or did a portrait of them. My idea with my wife was, “OK, let’s make a film.” And they were so open about it. Also, the women left these letters to me and my wife every night we were shooting. And then, every time we went back to the hotel, we read their story. It was very fascinating. It was a transformative experience. [When I was in the early stages working on the short] the first thing people would say, was, “Oh, maybe you want to make this movie inside a prison in the United States.” But it’s very hardcore in the U.S. to bring anything inside prisons. So, if you think about this type of prison, there is 81 women, and two of them are sentenced to life, but the rest of the crime is maybe three to five years.
DEADLINE: There is something really innocent about the way the film is shot. It’s not judgmental at all.
PEREGO: I felt the same. My wife did a lot of work with prisons at the early age of her life. Our family is also very involved with women’s rights. It’s something very important for us to try and really support. When I started to meet these women, I just felt this purity and innocence there. And the truth is maybe some of them just snap, I don’t know. Life goes a different way sometimes. But when I was reading all the letters they wrote, it was very compelling and it made me ask myself similar questions. I’m happy to hear you feel the same way.
DEADLINE: This is probably really obvious. But I would love to know how you cast Zoë for this project. I assume you just turned to her and was like, “I know where you live.” So, she had no other choice but to join in.
PEREGO: No, my wife is the best. I just really asked her, “Do you want a part of Venice Biennale?” And she said yes. When Zoë and I first went to meet all the inmates—and throughout pre-production— Zoë came and wanted to meet the 23 ladies who wanted to do this movie. She mentioned to the ladies that she wanted to make this film and hear these women’s stories so that she could tell our [children] their stories. And the women started to cry, but this helped them all to bond. Because what happened in that prison, every Wednesday, the family of these inmates can bring the kids in, and they have a little garden with some slides for the children, and when Zoë said that there was a bond and trust. It was important that Zoë made that happen because these women were asking, “Hey, how are you going to portray us?”
At the end of the project, we all became so close. The important thing for me and Zoë now is to push this film and have the audience also ask themselves about this purity and innocence. I hope this film will pull off that emotion in that conversation and ask themselves about the women on screen.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]