For “Inseparable”, Alban Ivanov and Ahmed Sylla shot several sequences of the comedy by Varante Soudjian in a real prison. And on this occasion, Alban Ivanov did not go far from pissing off the prison management…
Inseparablethe show “Putin”
In 2019, screenwriter and director Varante Soudjian released his first two feature films, comedies Walter and Inseparable. The first tells attempted burglary of a hypermarket by broken arms led by Goran, a hoodlum played by Alban Ivanov. An attempt interrupted by the intervention of Walter, the supermarket security guard but above all a former African warlord.
In Inseparable, Varante Soudjian finds Alban Ivanov, to whom he again entrusts a role of thug. This time he’s “Putin”, a prison inmate and gun fan who has a reputation for being out of control and dangerous. It is with this prisoner that Mika, played by Ahmed Sylla, will share his cell for the short time of the sentence he is serving for a petty fraud. The two become friends, and when Mika walks out, he promises “Putin” that they will meet again and together create a business at the end of it.
Three years later, Mika has changed his situation and is living happy days on the Côte d’Azur, with a dream job and a marriage in sight with the daughter of his boss. The future looks bright, until the day when “Putin” rings at his door…
When Alban Ivanov gets comfortable with real prisoners
For the needs ofInseparable, several sequences of which take place in a prison, the production shot in a real prison in the Paris region. If the cell shared by Mika and “Putin” is reconstructed in the studio, the other sequences in prison were shot in real settings. Screenwriter Thomas Pone explained to the press that team members were searched upon entering and had to leave their cell phones. However, beyond these constraints, they were able to work there freely. But Alban Ivanov told his side, during an interview for the Golden YouTube channel, that he had very nearly caused problems for the production (from 4’05 in the video below).
Installed in the parking lot which adjoined the prison courtyard, the actor explains that, without realizing it, he gave rise to “wild talks“.
There are inmates who talk to us, because we were in the parking lot and everything… And so we talk to them, we answer “How are you?”, “Yeah and you?”, “Brother”, etc. Apparently, afterwards, there was an email which said to the production: “He must stop doing that Alban… It’s called wild visits, and he can have big fines.”
It may seem trivial, but in reality it is forbidden to communicate with an inmate outside of a strictly established protocol by prisons. A “wild visit” then simply consists of positioning oneself at the foot of a prison enclosure and making oneself heard by the prisoners. To, for example, transmit and receive information. Among the freedoms deprived of judicial detention, there is that of communicating at leisure, which is why mobile phones are prohibited there.
