Film
2025 (UK), (Documentary)
Director: Daisy-May Hudson and Sophie Compton
Starring: Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudso
Holloway, winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2024 London Film Festival, is a woman-centered documentary co-directed and co-written by Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson, Filmed in 2021 inside the soon-to-be-demolished Holloway Prison, the film is presented as a co-creation with its participants — all women.
It follows eight women: six former inmates who return to take part in a five-day women’s circle. Mostly set within the prison’s empty corridors and cells, the film alternates between direct observation of the group sessions and voice-over reflections paired with evocative shots of the derelict building. The conversations reveal complex perspectives: Holloway is remembered both as a site of abuse and, for some, a grim refuge or a starting point for recovery. The documentary weaves three threads — critique of the penal system, a study of group therapy’s methods and emotional costs, and intimate personal histories revealing neglect, abuse, and addiction as common roots of incarceration.
Holloway’s compassionate focus and follow-up information on participants underline its argument that many incarcerated women are victims of broader social failure, prompting viewers to reconsider punishment, rehabilitation, and justice.
(1h 26 mins)