Behind Bars(2001)

I Come From(en)

America is the world's largest jailer and our over-burdened corrections system treats individuals as numbers. I COME FROM focuses on incarcerated poets and playwrights who use the power of creativity to change the direction of their lives. Their poems and plays reflect hard lives lived, tough environments negotiated, past mistakes made. This film focuses on six incarcerated artists whose work declares a wish, a will to survive, to grow as human beings and embrace an architecture of change. Recorded at Northpoint, Kentucky Department of Corrections, USA.

Criminal Injustice: Death and Politics at Attica(en)

Forty years after the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War, the dead remain buried along with the truth. Until now. Based on interviews with eyewitnesses who just now are telling their stories, as well as access to newly discovered documents, the film sheds new light on exactly what happened at Attica between September 9-13, 1971. Criminal Injustice raises compelling new questions about the 39 deaths at Attica, White House involvement, and the corrupting influence of Nelson Rockefeller’s political aspirations before, during, and long after the deadly retaking of the prison. Former hostage Michael Smith said that “the cover up started as soon as the shooting stopped.” This film reveals that the truth actually may have been concealed long before that.

Inside(es)

In the Youth Prison of Catalonia live around around 300 youngsters between the ages of 18 and 23. Five of them picked up a camera for a year to tell how is life behind the walls of a prison. One year to talk about darkness, the passage of time, death and freedom. Particularly freedom.

Cain's Children(hu)

Three boys, they all committed murder. After discovering their haunting faces and disturbing stories in a banned prison documentary from 1984, the filmmaker goes out to find them and discovers untold secrets and a Hungary he has never known.

The University of Sing Sing(en)

An inside look at the notorious Sing Sing Correctional Facility, where one of the U.S.’s only in-prison college programs, Hudson Link, offers long-time inmates an education – and a new lease on life.

Lost for Life(en)

A documentary about juveniles who are serving life in prison without parole and their victims' families.

The Prison Within(en)

Survivors of violent crimes and prisoners incarcerated for murder connect to undergo astonishing transformations, liberating themselves from the debilitating constraints of trauma, and shattering preconceptions of "us and them."

Standard Operating Procedure(en)

Errol Morris examines the incidents of abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Hell(es)

Chennu committed his first crime when he was 15 years old: being a street kid. And he entered hell: Pademba Road. The adult prison in Freetown. In hell, Mr. Sillah is in charge, and there is no hope. Chennu got out after four years. Now he wants to go back.

Attica(en)

Follows the largest prison uprising in US history, conducting dozens of new interviews with inmates, journalists, and other witnesses.

The Iceman and the Psychiatrist(en)

For the third time, HBO cameras go inside Trenton State Maximum Security Prison--and inside the mind of one of the most prolific killers in U.S. history--in this gripping documentary. Mafia hit man Richard Kuklinski freely admits to killing more than 100 people, but in this special, he speaks with top psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz in an effort to face the truth about his condition. Filled with more never-before-revealed confessions, it's the most chillingly candid Iceman special yet as it combines often-confrontational interview footage between Kuklinski and Dietz with photos, crime reenactments and home movies that add new layers to this evolving and fascinating story.

Binnen de muren(en)

Documentary about a guard at a dome prison in the Netherlands.

Att stå utanför och se in…(sv)

Dead Behind Bars(en)

200 young people under 25 have died in custody since 1992 in England and Wales. This is the story of three of them; young men who died behind bars - told by the people who knew them best, it explores the flaws in the system and the lapses in care that contributed to their deaths.

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.

Survivor's Guide to Prison(en)

Today, you're more likely to go to prison in the United States than anywhere else in the world. So in the unfortunate case it should happen to you - this is the Survivors Guide to Prison.

Metamorphosis(en)

Metamorphosis is a documentary-style film giving the true account Bill Troester and the transformation he experienced by Jesus out of a life of violence, crime and drug addiction.

The Devil's Island: Journey Into Jungle Alcatraz(en)

Imagine the prison of Alcatraz, only 10 times worse, built on tropical, hellish and deadly islands, lost to the rest of the world. Three tiny castaway islands rise away from the coast of French Guyana, in South America: The Devil's Islands. Now buried under an impenetrable jungle, lay the lost remains of what had been for a hundred years the most storied convict prison in history. There, while most of the prisoners faded into oblivion, a few became legends. Some because they were innocent, as in the scandalous Dreyfus Affair, some because they somehow escaped the islands of nightmare, as did the "butterfly", Henry Charrière, immortalized by Steve McQueen in Papillon. Now 50 years after the prison doors slammed shut for the last time, we explore what's left of the Devil's Islands' unbelievably dark and oppressive realm.

El Panóptico Ciego(es)

The documentary chronicles the 139 years of the ex penitentiary García Moreno in Quito, Ecuador, and traces left by the inmates to be transferred to the new prison in the province of Cotopaxi.

Picturesque India or, In and About Calcutta(en)

Botanical gardens in Bombay plus the highly decorative Jain Temple in Calcutta.