THE MARK OF CAIN

Sailing ships, stars, angels and executioners, Alix Lambert's The Mark of Cain chronicles the vanishing practice and language of Russian criminal tattoos. Recalling the prison writings of Solzhenitsyn or Dostoevsky, Lambert's harrowingly beautiful and penetrating study served as inspiration for David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises

Captured in some of Russia's most notorious prisons, including the fabled White Swan, the film traces the animus of the flowers of this carnal art by way of the brutality of it's origins: the penitentiary and the criminal environment.

Shot inside eight Russian prisons, and featuring incisive interviews with prisoners, guards and criminologists, Lambert focuses on tattoos in order to interrogate other issues, ranging from prison reform to biological warfare conspiracy theories to, most significantly, the country’s shift, in the late ‘90s and early aughts, towards oligarchic capitalism.

Nominee, Independent Spirit Awards, Best Documentary
Official Selection, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam
Official Selection, Margaret Mead Film Festival

"This is a very courageous documentary on the tattooing subculture in Russian prisons. I don't know how it ever got made, but it's beautiful, scary, and heartbreaking.”
- David Cronenberg, director of Eastern Promises and A History of Violence