The Guy with the Knife(2015)

Running for His Life: The Lawrence Phillips Story(en)

Feature length documentary examining the troubled life and tragic death of college football standout and talented NFL running back Lawrence Phillips, whose scars of childhood abuse and abandonment haunted him throughout his career.

Stereotypy(es)

Animal captivity is a human decision. An apparently invisible but in the eyes of anyone behavioral pattern, calls into question the deprivation of freedom through a paranoid choreography.

Indictment: The Crimes of Shelly Chartier(en)

Sensationalized in the media as a high profile catfishing case involving an NBA superstar and an aspiring model, Shelly Chartier was portrayed as a master manipulator who used social media as her weapon. Through the sensitive and intelligent lens of Indigenous directors Lisa Jackson and Shane Belcourt, the sensationalism is swept aside to reveal something much more compelling and complex - the story of a young woman caught in historical circumstances beyond her control and how she struggles to rebuild her life after incarceration.

Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison(en)

Pete and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson visited a Texas prison in Huntsville in March of 1966 and produced this rare document of of work songs by inmates of the Ellis Unit. Worksongs helped African American prisoners survive the grueling work demanded of them. With mechanization and integration, worksongs like these died out shortly after this film was made.

El Almafuerte(es)

The youngsters housed in the "Almafuerte" Maximum Security Juvenile Institute have their first approach to audiovisual recording. A film and documentary video workshop serves as an excuse for them to make a short film inside the prison. The camera is a rabid toy that generates fascination in them and rescues a sheltered, innocent smile that seemed forgotten under the shadows. While inside libertarian cries bounce against the walls, outside sounds fanfares of an iron fist.

Rainy in Glenageary(en)

An experimental true crime documentary based on the unsolved murder of Raonaid Murray, a 17-year-old Irish girl, which achieved nationwide attention during the 2000s.

Sag mir, wo du stehst(de)

Wrong Fellows(nl)

Documentary about four maffia-like friends based in Amsterdam.

Acts of Violence(en)

A riveting expose about the personalities of murderers and their motives. This 72 minute film covers the McDonalds' restaurant massacre, President Reagan's assassination attempt, serial murderer Henry Lee Lucas and others.

Strong Island(en)

Examining the violent death of the filmmaker’s brother and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free, this documentary interrogates murderous fear and racialized perception, and re-imagines the wreckage in catastrophe’s wake, challenging us to change.

Double Murder: The Inside Story(en)

On June 1, 2005, police were called to a house in Luton, a town with a population of around 10,000 Poles. At a small rented house, they made the grim discovery of two Polish brothers who had been brutally murdered by extreme blunt force trauma to their heads and bodies. "Double Murder: The Inside Story" reveals the detailed account of the investigation.

Les "Folles de la Place Vendôme"(fr)

A documentary released in 1985 about the Mothers of Place Vendôme.

In Paradisum(et)

In Paradisum relates two disturbing stories simultaneously. The female narrator tells her personal tale of imprisonment as the wife of the notorious Estonian serial killer, Andreas Hanni. Although her story is bizarre, it touches familiar themes that run throughout modern life: the desire to be loved and the fear of being alone. Pille Hanni's tale unfolds over cinema vérité images of life in several Estonian prisons. At times the images reflect in a literary way the events of the narration, yet they are representations and impressions, rather than traditional documentary style footage of the people involved. This opens the story to a more general interpretation, often with unsettling results. The parallel contents reveal, at two levels of story and social organisation, how the bizarre and inhuman can be tolerable and even addictive in the face of our fears.

True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality(en)

An intimate portrait of Alabama public interest attorney Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, who for more than three decades has advocated on behalf of the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned, seeking to eradicate racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

Two Spirits(en)

Fred Martinez was a Navajo youth slain at the age of 16 by a man who bragged to his friends that he 'bug-smashed a fag'. But Fred was part of an honored Navajo tradition - the 'nadleeh', or 'two-spirit', who possesses a balance of masculine and feminine traits.

The Big One(en)

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.

Death Files(en)

A disturbing documentary about true murders and real death.

Unfinished Lives(en)

In 2014, 24-year-old USC graduate student, Xinran Ji, was beaten to death by four teens when returning home from a study session. A lawyer, Rose Tsai, took it upon herself to tirelessly advocate on his behalf and represent his parents, as they attempt to understand the senseless tragedy together.

The Condemned(en)

With unprecedented access, this documentary looks into the hidden world of one of Russia's most impenetrable and remote institutions - a maximum security prison exclusively for murderers. Deep inside the land of the gulags, this is the end of the line for some of Russia's most dangerous criminals - 260 men who have collectively killed nearly 800 people. The film delves deep into the mind and soul of some of these prisoners. In brutally frank and uncensored interviews the inmates speak of their crimes, life and death, redemption and remorselessness, insanity and hope. The film tracks them though their unrelenting days over several months, lifting the veil on one of Russia's most secretive subcultures to reveal what happens when a man is locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours every day, for life. A startling insight into inscrutable minds and the forbidding world they have been condemned to. (Storyville)

Visions of Abolition: From Critical Resistance to a New Way of Life(en)

Weaving together the voices of women entangled in the criminal justice system, along with leading scholars on prison abolition, this film provides a critical analysis of the disfunctionality and violence of the prison system.