Like It Is

This documentary on the "youth movement" of the late 1960s focuses on the hippie pot smoking/free love culture in the San Francisco Bay area.

1968-07-20 | en

The Work

Set entirely inside Folsom Prison, The Work follows three men during four days of intensive group therapy with convicts, revealing an intimate and powerful portrait of authentic human transformation that transcends what we think of as rehabilitation.

2017-03-11 | en

The Big One

The Big One is an investigative documentary from director Michael Moore who goes around the country asking why big American corporations produce their product abroad where labor is cheaper while so many Americans are unemployed, losing their jobs, and would happily be hired by such companies as Nike.

1997-09-06 | en

Women Behind Bars with Trevor McDonald

Trevor McDonald goes to Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana to speak with some of the women that live there.

2013-09-25 | en

Leaves of K.

In 2018, the Nicaraguan police brutally repressed anti-government protests organised by high school students. K., a 17-year-old girl who was arrested, recounts the horrors of her time in jail.

2022-06-26 | en

America's Greatest Prison Breaks

A look at the prison breakout of Richard Matt and David Sweat from Clinton Correctional facility, as well as a look back at some of the most daring and ingenious prison breaks in American history.

2015-12-27 | en

Was lebst Du?

I followed the everyday lives of Ali, Kais, Ertan and Alban with my camera for over two years. The time was characterized by disappointments, conflicts and also great successes. It all began with a visit to the "Klingelpütz" youth center in the middle of Cologne. Young migrants have been meeting here for many years.

2004-11-13 | de

The Art of Incarceration

Narrated by Uncle Jack Charles and seen through the eyes of Indigenous prisoners at Victoria’s Fulham Correctional Centre, this documentary explores how art and culture can empower Australia's First Nations people to transcend their unjust cycles of imprisonment.

2021-04-17 | en

Los posibles

Santiago Mitre co-directs his first movement following The Student together with choreographer Onofri Barbato. Although it would have been more accurate to say “his first film-story-adventure-movie-great movie following The Student”, the word movement fits perfectly in Los posibles, the most overwhelmingly kinetic work Argentine cinema has delivered in many, many years. The film deals with the adaptation of a dance show directed by Onofri together with a group of teenagers who came to Casa La Salle, a center of social integration located in González Catán, trying to find some refuge from hardship. Already entitled Los posibles, the piece opened in the La Plata Tacec and was later staged in the AB Hall of the San Martín Cultural Center. Now, it dazzles audiences out of a film screen, with extraordinary muscles and a huge heart: Los posibles is a rhapsody of roughen bodies and torn emotions. Precise and exciting, it’s our own delayed, necessary, and incandescent West Side Story.

2013-04-01 | es

Cruel and Unusual

Five transgender women share their prison experiences. Interviews with attorneys, doctors, and other experts are also included.

2006-10-24 | en

52 Blocks: Show and Prove

As beautiful and sleek as it is deadly, 52 Blocks merits special conservation efforts as the United States' only existing native martial culture, as it is indeed, the jazz of the martial arts world. Across the African diaspora, there are manifestations of African-derived warrior-dances, capoeira in brazil, mani in Cuba, ladja in Martinique, pinge in Haiti- yet the US offshoot has remained esoteric, because it was suppressed throughout slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow and then obscured in the criminal justice system. The history, interviews and training of the martial arts style that created Breakdance and boxing greats like Mike Tyson.

2007-01-01 | en

Sara - My Whole Life Was a Struggle

Documentary on Sakine Cansız (Sara), the Kurdish revolutionary and PKK co-founder killed in Paris in January 2013 by Turkish agents.

2015-01-04 | ku

Bin nur ein Jonny

2008-01-31 | de

Prisoners of the War on Drugs

From its beginning during the Reagan years through current times, the War on Drugs has left many victims stranded in the prison system. PRISONERS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS reveals life behind bars in the nation’s prisons. Each prisoner has his or her own story, but for most, the story is predictably similar; they have been criminalized for drugs or drug related offenses, locked up with easy access to substances, and given little opportunity for rehabilitation. This film provides an inside look at the prison system, its prisoners and a war on drugs we do not seem to be winning.

1996-01-08 | en

Death and the Judge

The documentary, " Death and the Judge", revolves around Iran's most famous criminal judge, Azizmohammadi. He served as a criminal judge for 45 years and issued about 4500 death sentences; a record in not only Iran, but also the world. This documentary looks into his personal and professional life as he is followed within his home with his family, in the court of law, and in his retirement days. The ultimate purpose of the documentary is to deduce the role of death in the judge's life as he either takes life away from criminals or death comes to his loved ones. During his retirement, he is once again given the choice between the life and death of a person, despite no longer being a judge.

2018-05-09 | fa

Hævnen er vor - et portræt af fange nr. 22, Palle Sørensen

1989-01-01 | da

Out of Mind, Out of Sight

Four-time Emmy winner John Kastner was granted unprecedented access to the Brockville facility for 18 months, allowing 46 patients and 75 staff to share their experiences with stunning frankness. The result is two remarkable documentaries: the first, NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, premiered at Hot Docs in the spring of 2013 and follows the story of a violent patient released into the community. The second film, Out of Mind, Out of Sight, returns to the Brockville Mental Health Centre to profile four patients, two men and two women, as they struggle to gain control over their lives so they can return to a society that often fears and demonizes them.

2014-04-27 | en

Last Days of Solitary

In 2011, Maine State Prison launched a pioneering reform program to scale back its use of solitary confinement. Bafta and Emmy-winning film-maker Dan Edge and his co-director Lauren Mucciolo were given unprecedented access to the solitary unit - and filmed there for more than three years. The result is an extraordinary and harrowing portrait of life in solitary - and a unique document of a radical and risky experiment to reform a prison. The US is the world leader in solitary confinement. More than 80,000 American prisoners live in isolation, some have been there for years, even decades. Solitary is proven to cause mental illness, it is expensive, and it is condemned by many as torture. And yet for decades, it has been one of the central planks of the American criminal justice system.

2017-03-27 | en

Unarmed Verses

Toronto filmmaker Charles Officer profiles the young people of Villaways Park, a housing project on brink of historic change.

2017-05-01 | en

Preschool to Prison

Preschool to Prison is a compelling examination of how the United States public school system is built and operated like prisons. Zero-tolerance policies are used to justify suspension and arrests that set up a pathway to send children of color and children with special needs from school to prison. Children are being suspended, restrained, dragged, physically manhandled, and subsequently arrested for minor offenses such as throwing candy on a school bus. These personal accounts from people affected by the school-to-prison pipeline give riveting tales about the generational impact on society.

2023-07-15 | en