Carthage Film Festival offers inmates rare escape

Tunis: For the first time, three prison inmates in Tunisia were allowed a brief taste of freedom for the sake of art.

The prestigious Carthage Film Festival offered the prisoners the chance to briefly escape confinement -- under police supervision -- to help make a documentary about the festival.

"To be free, even for a while -- nothing is more beautiful," said one of the inmates, who gave his name as Nemss.

The trio were chosen due to their "good behaviour, but also their audiovisual gifts", said Tarek Fanni, the head of cultural programmes at the prison authorities.

"It´s an important means of reintegration," Fani said.

The idea was the result of a collaboration between the film festival, the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the North African nation´s prison authority.

Nemss, 30, who has already spent one-third of his life in prison and has five more years left to serve, said leaving the confines of jail was a major event.

"After this moment of happiness, I ask myself how I will return to the prison," Nemss said.

The three inmates had already undergone eight months of training at a club in their prison in Mahdia city, on Tunisia´s eastern coast.