Sepa: Our Lord of the Miracles (1986)★ 7.5/10
- Documentary
Directed by: Walter Saxer
Written by: Walter Saxer, Mario Vargas Llosa
Sepa is an open-air penal colony created in the Amazon by the Peruvian government in 1951. Tasked with growing crops on these lands, the inmates were permitted to roam freely, yet they soon found themselves forgotten by their country.
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Reviews
SseamouseSeptember 10, 2024
seamouseSeptember 10, 2024The film addresses Peru's unique prison system of punishment. It begins with the notorious riot at Lima’s El Sexto prison on March 27, 1984. The fuzzy news footage of the chaotic confrontation between police officers and prisoners was captured by Saxer directly from a TV screen using his camera. The riot, which stemmed from inmates demanding better living conditions, resulted in 22 deaths, including two hostages, and left 10 others injured.
After that, the camera masterfully pans over to the deserts surrounding Lima, followed by rivers and highlands, and finally, a vast wilderness known as La Colonia Penal Agrícola del Sepa (or Sepa in short) in the eastern part of Peru of the upper Amazon region. This marshy plain had been used by the Peruvian government as an open-air exile camp since 1951. It was dubbed the “green prison without walls,” where prisoners who had already served many years of their sentences were sent to cultivate crops on the 37,000-hectare land. They were even allowed to live there with their families. The system sounds eerily similar to how the Soviet Union and Russian Empire expanded their frontiers in Siberia.
While one American inmate, a devout Christian, saw this as a divine blessing and a model for prison systems worldwide, the Peruvian prison administration seemed to have consciously or unconsciously forgotten these “free prisoners,” many of whom had long completed their sentences but never received their release orders.
It was only after existing for more than 30 years as a penal colony that filming was allowed in Sepa to document and tell the stories of these suffering prisoners. Saxer’s documentary adopts a calm observational style, though its pacing and visual pauses reveal a sense of sympathy. Through the narration of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, we learn about the harsh realities of this exile camp, which deviates far from the public’s idealized notions of an “open prison.”
After that, the camera masterfully pans over to the deserts surrounding Lima, followed by rivers and highlands, and finally, a vast wilderness known as La Colonia Penal Agrícola del Sepa (or Sepa in short) in the eastern part of Peru of the upper Amazon region. This marshy plain had been used by the Peruvian government as an open-air exile camp since 1951. It was dubbed the “green prison without walls,” where prisoners who had already served many years of their sentences were sent to cultivate crops on the 37,000-hectare land. They were even allowed to live there with their families. The system sounds eerily similar to how the Soviet Union and Russian Empire expanded their frontiers in Siberia.
While one American inmate, a devout Christian, saw this as a divine blessing and a model for prison systems worldwide, the Peruvian prison administration seemed to have consciously or unconsciously forgotten these “free prisoners,” many of whom had long completed their sentences but never received their release orders.
It was only after existing for more than 30 years as a penal colony that filming was allowed in Sepa to document and tell the stories of these suffering prisoners. Saxer’s documentary adopts a calm observational style, though its pacing and visual pauses reveal a sense of sympathy. Through the narration of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, we learn about the harsh realities of this exile camp, which deviates far from the public’s idealized notions of an “open prison.”