Overview

From the tiny sewing studio in Tires Prison (Portugal) Vicky, Yau and Iracy hand-sew designer La.Ga handbags. Mothers separated from their children and families, imprisoned in a foreign country that they only get to know behind thick bars. In a mix of languages, we understand that time spent in this "factory" simply flies but in the cells the daily struggle goes on. Just like La.Ga, women also come out of prisons with a stamp. Can designer objects, sold from New York to Tokyo, contribute towards changing the lives of the women who produce them behind bars? In Venezuela we meet Yanetzi, an ex-inmate from Tires, now working 9 to 5 in an office. At night that she creates the bags that her son will sell in the streets of Caracas the following day. Design Behind Bars is an intimate portrait of the women's feelings towards life inside and outside the confines and how working with design changed them.