Love will find a way: Julian (Jean Jean) and Yanelly (Judith Rodriguez Perez) steal a precious moment. Credit:Palace Much harder was getting the inmates on board. Cabral spent nine months in prison before he shot a frame of his movie. "It was about creating a relationship first, getting to know them, them getting to know me, creating trust," he says. "Instead of telling them, 'Hey, excuse me, move out of the way, I'm going to make a film, it was, 'Hi, I want to make a film, but I don't know what the film is going to be about. Can you tell me what the film is going to be about?' "They actually liked the whole process of me sitting down and listening and writing and taking them into consideration – and having them as actors in the film too." The bulk of his cast was drawn from real-life inmates and guards; only a dozen or so were professionals. They, too, spent time inside. "The actors were there for three months before, rehearsing and just listening, so day one of shooting was not day one for anyone – it was like day 120."

The shower scene from Woodpeckers. Credit:Palace Though he started the project without a script, the seed for Woodpeckers was sown on day one, when he first saw the elaborate signing across the 150 metres that separated the male and female inmates. "It was meant to be," says Cabral. "In that moment I knew there was this contrast about being in prison and having this preconception that everything was going to be violent and very hostile, and then seeing and experiencing how they were talking about love, and just communicating. I knew it was a love story I had to make because it was about that contrast." Judith Rodriguez Perez as Yanelly. Credit:Palace The scenes inside the prisons seem almost impossibly bad. When Julian first arrives, he has to turn over most of the little money he has smuggled inside to score a bed. There are no doors. The men shower in groups, with barely enough room to scrub.

Are conditions really that awful? "Oh my God, yes. La Victoria was built for 2000, but there are 8000 there now. People sleep on the floors, sleep in the bathrooms, if you get sick you infect everyone. It's just a bunch of human beings being locked up and finding their own way to cope with that reality." Director Jose Maria Cabral on the set of his film Woodpeckers. Credit:Hilda Pellerano Shooting in such conditions was never going to be easy. The guards told him they could protect him, but only to a point; if there was a riot, he was on his own. The limits of this fragile arrangement were put to the test in a scene in which Julian is pummelled around the head by inmates as he is brought into the prison. In the film, it looks intimidating enough; in reality, it got way out of hand. "What happened was he fell on the floor, people started taking his clothes off, they started taking his tennis shoes, they took everything," Cabral recounts. "So the police came in and it was worse because once they saw the police they started fighting. Then some of the crew, including myself, went into the fight and got Jean Jean out of it."

Cabral says the inmates weren't deliberately trying to hurt Jean Jean. "All of them have knives," he says, matter-of-factly. "If they'd wanted to kill him they'd have done so in a second." They were merely acting, "but when you have 50, 70 people hitting your head and taking your stuff it's going to hurt, it's going to be violent … when everything stopped, one of the guys who'd been really hitting him came up and said, 'Hey, did you like it? Was it real, was it real?'" They were born to Method, it seems. Woodpeckers has already taken wing on the international circuit, becoming the first film from the Dominican Republic to screen at the Sundance Festival in January. Last month, it was announced as the Dominican Republic's entry into the Oscars. For many foreign audiences this is the first glimpse of his country. Does it worry him at all that what they see is such a harsh portrait? "Everyday life is not like that, but you can see in the movie the way society works here," he says. "There are more privileged people you have to pay for everything. There are people who don't have somewhere to sleep, who don't have basic needs, you can how Haitians are treated differently. We live in a democracy, yes, but there's big inequality.

"So in a way, the movie reflects a little bit our society. But it also reflects the bright side of how inventive Dominicans and this whole island can be. "Even in harsh conditions, we can invent a new language. We want to feel connected, we want to communicate. Above all, love is important for us too." Woodpeckers screens at the Cine Latino Film Festival, November 14-29 in all state capitals. Details: cinelatinofilmfestival.com.au Facebook: karlquinnjournalist Twitter: @karlkwin Podcast: The Clappers

A taste of Latin cinema The Summit

From Argentina comes this portrait of a politician who admits to having stared evil in the eye "once or twice" on his way to becoming president, yet remains determined to navigate a course through personal and national obstacles without sacrificing all sense of integrity. Ricardo Darin plays the president; the title – referring to the annual gathering of Latin American leaders, the mountain retreat where it happens, and the ascension to the peak of power – is a clever conceit. Tales of an Immoral Couple

With a plot straight out of the Shakespearean playbook, this Mexican rom-com finds two old flames (Cecilia Suarez and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) bumping into each other after 25 years and pretending, like, it's no big deal. Each concocts a story about their fabulous life and fabulous spouse, but each of those spouses is the stuff of fable. What could possibly go wrong? Inseparable

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