The roles at the École nationale d’administration pénitentiaire, ÉNAP for short, are clearly allocated: the trainee prison officers on the one side, the teaching staff on the other. Guillaume Massart’s film maintains this separation in aesthetic terms too. Usually captured from the perspective of the pupils, “Detention” provides a look at a curriculum that is not for the fainthearted: how does one command the prisoners’ respect and obedience? What mental strains go hand in hand with the job? Can these trainee prison officers actually gain legal advantages in potential conflict situations? Over the film’s two-hour running time, a remarkable effect takes hold: as the pupils’ critical voices gradually fall silent, the prison system appears ever more questionable from the audience’s perspective. Can even a “proper” training lead to the abuse of power if this is not explicitly addressed and problematised? How does a uniform shape a person? Having spent a total of one year at the school for “Detention” and undergoing the training himself, Massart finds a unique tonality to convey an ambivalence that is both unsettling and claustrophobic.

Carolin Weidner

The weather forecast announces temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius. Jaqueline Zünd has travelled to the Gulf region and transforms the crushing heat into feverish images and a score that bears witness to the scorching winds. Yet not everyone is subject to these dystopian conditions to the same degree. While Tarik delivers food on his motorbike in long shifts, and Sophy trudges through a red-hot Dubai with a parasol, the wealthy settle down in air-conditioned rooms, some of them almost icy. In Kuwait, a palatial shopping mall is used for jogging. Meanwhile, an estate agent with a broken heart buys big blocks of ice in order to give the wild cats on the edge of the city a little relief. Zünd leaves room for the oppressive atmosphere to become palpable, for one to be overcome by a sense of existential hopelessness. “Death or emigration” is how a meteorologist describes the future vision for the region. “But no one listens.” “Heat” is a depressing preview, a nightmare scenario which sets its sights on the social dimension of the progressing climate catastrophe above all: at the start, it’s always the most vulnerable who can’t afford ignorance.

Carolin Weidner