New Guy Pearce prison film Inside takes inspiration straight from the director's life in Melbourne

Charles Williams grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne, and with his family frequently in and out of prison, he credits movies with changing the trajectory of his life. As a teenager, he often drove an hour and a half to the Astor Theatre in St Kilda to watch double features. This experience had a profound impact on him.

"I would go four times a week, see two double features on a Sunday, drive home in my mum's shitty car at midnight... half asleep, just full of movies," the director recalled. He stated that it was an incredible experience that completely consumed him, leaving him at a loss for words to describe it.

Two decades later, Williams won the Cannes Film Festival's Short Film Palme d'Or for his short film "All These Creatures" and has just released his first feature film. "Inside," starring Guy Pearce, Cosmo Jarvis, and teenage newcomer Vincent Miller, is the culmination of years of research into the Victorian correctional system and Williams' own life experiences. This tightly crafted and thought-provoking crime thriller tells the story of characters who are less interested in escaping prison and more interested in breaking free from their own limitations.

In "Inside," we see 18-year-old Mel transferred from a juvenile detention center to an adult prison. Vincent Miller, who was only 15 when he took on the role, responded to an open casting call with an audition tape that Williams called "extremely compelling." Miller traveled from the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales to a correctional center in Victoria for several months of filming, while also completing his tenth-grade studies remotely. He admitted that being in a real prison for days on end "felt a bit weird," but learning from Guy Pearce and others meant he "didn't really want to go back to normal life, I missed [the film] too much." Miller's character is taken in by Mark Sheppard (Cosmo Jarvis), who is hated nationwide for a horrific crime he committed at the age of 13, and Warren Murfett (Pearce), a prisoner about to be paroled but in debt.

"I learned a lot about these environments, which is something a lot of people my age wouldn't know," said Vincent, now 17. "I think it's definitely made me more independent and mature." "Inside," like "All These Creatures" before it, revolves around a sense of inevitability. It raises the question: if my previous family members were all violent, addicts, or in prison, why would I turn out any differently? Williams didn't want to become like the adults he grew up around, but he wasn't sure if he could avoid it.

"I don't think they wanted to end up that way [either], but they did," he said. "Since I was little, I've felt guilty about things I haven't done... [wondering], 'Am I going to wake up one day and become someone else, and then justify it all... blame everyone else?'" There's a sense that Mel in the film could be Williams, in another life, on another path. The director said that, if anything, he put too much of himself into "Inside." "I showed the film to my partner... she was in tears watching it, and the first thing she said to me was: 'Don't do this to yourself anymore.'"

But for Williams, being involved in the project also helped him process his own experiences, and he hoped that his actors would also gain something from the project. He spent four years doing research, visiting prisons and interviewing prison guards and inmates, many of whom also appeared in the film and were encouraged to participate and speak out during the production process. "[I told those former prisoners]: 'I want you to be involved, I want you to feel like the years you wasted in this damn place, you got something out of it, you contributed something.'" "I think they [did get] a lot out of it, especially [performing with] prison guards and realizing that not everyone is against them."

Released after the Queensland election, when "adult crime, adult punishment" was a key campaign promise, and similar measures recently taken in the Northern Territory, lowering the age of criminal responsibility, Williams insists the film is not a political statement. "No one is going to go see a movie like this and say, 'You know what, before I came here, I thought kids should be locked up. Now I don't think so.'" "I just don't think art is for doing that. I think that's the purpose of propaganda."

However, "Inside" does raise questions about the culpability, rehabilitation, and intergenerational trauma of young violent offenders. Williams points out that in Victoria, 40% of the prison population has acquired brain injuries, compared to 2% in the general population. "If a person is 10 years old, even if they have a good upbringing, when we know their brains haven't fully developed, should they really be fully responsible for their actions?" "[If] they have learning disabilities because of their upbringing, and their mental age is only six years old, [or they] have traumatic brain injuries... so they are almost incapable of making the right decisions?" He also addresses the incarceration rates of Indigenous people with real-world examples. "I took the exact percentage of Indigenous people incarcerated in Victoria, which is 10.8%, and then I cast the exact 11% of Indigenous actors, and the same with the Sudanese and other CALD communities."

Leaving aside the prison setting, the theme of trying to control our own habits and behaviors, "however small or large," is relevant to almost everyone. He hopes people leave "Inside" with the same feeling he had on the long drive home from the cinema in his teens. "You're not going to think: 'Now I know being mean is bad. Now I know racism is bad.' It's never like that." "You just feel less alone, more connected to the human experience, almost in the world of the characters... [those] movies really had such a big impact on my life."

"Inside" is now in theaters.