The Steel Cage(1954)

The Man with the Golden Arm(en)

When illegal card dealer and recovering heroin addict Frankie Machine gets out of prison, he decides to straighten up. Armed with nothing but an old drum set, Frankie tries to get honest work as a drummer. But when his former employer and his old drug dealer re-enter his life, Frankie finds it hard to stay clean and eventually finds himself succumbing to his old habits.

The Experiment(de)

20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.

Lost Highway(en)

A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.

Pickpocket(fr)

Michel takes up pickpocketing on a lark and is arrested soon after. His mother dies shortly after his release, and despite the objections of his only friend, Jacques, and his mother's neighbor Jeanne, Michel teams up with a couple of petty thieves in order to improve his craft. With a police inspector keeping an eye on him, Michel also tries to get a straight job, but the temptation to steal is hard to resist.

GoodFellas(en)

The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.

The Docks of New York(en)

A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.

Birdman of Alcatraz(en)

After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.

Cool Hand Luke(en)

When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.

Born Innocent(en)

A constant runaway is given over to the care of the state and finds herself in a remand centre for girls. She is soon caught between the uncaring bureaucracy, the sometimes brutal treatment from her peers and her own abusive family, and only one care worker sees her potential to rise above her tragic circumstances.

I'll Be Seeing You(en)

Mary Marshall, serving a six year term for accidental manslaughter, is given a Christmas furlough from prison to visit her closest relatives, her uncle and his family in a small Midwestern town. On the train she meets Zach Morgan, a troubled army sergeant on leave for the holidays from a military hospital. Although his physical wounds have healed, he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and is subject to panic attacks. The pair are attracted to one another and in the warm atmosphere of the Christmas season friendship blossoms into romance, but Mary is reluctant to tell him of her past and that she must shortly return to prison to serve the remainder of her sentence.

Despite Everything(tr)

After serving a jail sentence, Hasan gets a job driving a hearse for the protestant church, and becomes involved with a widow, Ayse, and her son.

Pressure Point(en)

An African-American prison psychiatrist finds the boundaries of his professionalism sorely tested when he must counsel a disturbed inmate with bigoted Nazi tendencies.

Gray Wall Gear(ja)

The stage of this work is Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo in the early Heisei period. Immediately after the bubble burst gangster countermeasures law, there were gangsters who defended the last territory and young people who freely controlled the city. The youth conflict escalated day by day and became a force that surpassed the yakuza, and the runaways were sent to juvenile prisons one after another, where exclusive rules awaited.

6,000 Enemies(en)

A tough prosecutor who has sent dozens of criminals to prison finds himself framed on a bribery charge and winds up in prison himself.

Symmetry(pl)

Skeet(en)

After being released from prison, Billy Skinner returns to his low-income neighbourhood feeling like a fish out of water; the area has changed dramatically, and what was once a predominantly white neighbourhood is now mostly occupied by refugee families.

Undisputed III: Redemption(en)

Russian inmate Boyka, now severely hobbled by the knee injury suffered at the end of Undisputed 2. No longer the feared prison fighter he was, he has declined so far that he is now good only for cleaning toilets. But when a new prison fight tournament begins - an international affair, matching the best fighters from prisons around the globe, enticing them with the promise of freedom for the winner - Boyka must reclaim his dignity and fight for his position in the tournament.

Awaara(hi)

A petty thief is put on trial for the attempted murder of a lawyer. Through a series of flashbacks, the intertwining lives of the thief, the lawyer, and the thief's defense lawyer are illustrated.

Out of the Blue(en)

A young girl whose father is an ex-convict and whose mother is a junkie finds it difficult to conform and tries to find comfort in a quirky combination of Elvis and the punk scene.

Harmony(ko)

Jeong-hye gives a birth to a baby boy in the prison. Her and other inmates create a women's choir to compete in the national choir contest, to meet and greet their families and loving ones.