The Romanian penitentiary system allows, from 2006, the marriage of people sentenced to serve time in prison.
Most of the inmates cultivate the pre-existing relationships with the concubines or partners who live outside the prison walls. Though, there is a special category, of those who find a life partner during their time in prison.
VISITING ROOM follows the stories of some prisoners found in different penitentiaries across the country, who have found their life partner during their sentence time. The one is either a person from outside, or as them, a person who is serving time in prison. Our intention was to talk to the people found in the special situation of being deprived of freedom, to whom love becomes a substitute for freedom and represents maybe their only hope for a better future.
Adi and Ana started their relationship after Adi had seen her in a photo received by his cell mate. It was enough to start a long course of letters, forced meetings in which they sue each other for fictive reasons. The legal system must take the allegations seriously and try to prove them.
Mihai has seen Eva on TV and insisted to meet her; they told each other their life stories and ended up confessing their love and planning to get married without ever seeing each other face to face.
Cristina and Constantin Baron have been for the past two years in a tumultuous relationship. They met in prison at a show, got married, fought through letters and were close to a divorce, although they are detained in different penitentiaries and only met for their conjugal visits.
The movie is built as a chain of interviews in which different couples confess their love stories, re-confirm their love and expose their plans for the future. Without the hope of finding the answer, VISITING ROOM tries to ask one question. What makes two people who have never seen each other, to write in a letter: I love you very much. You are my life!
