Regional Competition

A woodworker carves elegant ornamentations, metal disks are lifted glowing out of the furnace, rows of seamstresses work at their machines and a man carefully brushes a horse in a stable. With its exquisite lighting and camerawork, The Same would appear to demonstrate the beauty of craftsmanship, repetition and uniformity – in reality, we are seeing the monotonous lives of prisoners in four Serbian prisons. The only spoken words we hear are short announcements by the guards, who are, in turn, equally uniform and part of the system. Yet, there are countless unique variations underlying all this uniformity, while there is much sameness in supposedly free choices. The rhythmically edited images portray the prison as a metaphor for society, which is also made up of countless rules and rhythms.