Explores the realities of death-row inmates inside Huntsville (Texas) Unit, a prison with the highest number of executions in 1997. Features interviews with prisoners, guards, officials, lawyers and victims' family members.
Dramatic Escape follows inmates at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Upstate New York, as they attempt to mount a behind bars production of A FEW GOOD MEN. Tracing the inmates' steps from auditions through their curtain call, we are witness to their journey - both as individuals and as a players ensemble. All of the obstacles involved with putting on a stage production on the outside become all the more difficult behind bars. Hear the inmates' stories and candid retelling of the crimes that landed them in prison. Witness their everyday struggle with what they have done and listen as they contemplate whether redemption is ever achievable either to themselves or to the outside world.
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.
Imagine a prison with some ten thousand prisoners, many of them dangerous and, to control them, only a few unarmed employees. Small in number, these employees work in shifts. They are almost prisoners themselves, in a routine of tension, but also of humor and emotion. This prison was all too real. While it was in existence, the Carandiru was the largest prison in Latin America, administered by a reduced number of employees. The documentary shows, from the point of view of these few employees, holding the keys, how the prison operated: the delicate balance in the relationship with the prisoners, affinity among employees, moments of tension and, even, of happiness. These are stories told by former employees, among them, Dr. Dráuzio Varella, author of the book Estação Carandiru. These are the secrets of a place that no longer exists.
Behind the walls of the Compound, LA’s most violent juvenile offenders await their trials. To their advocates, they’re kids. To the system, they’re adults. To their victims, they’re monsters. Who are they to you?
While locked-up for six years in federal prison, artist Jesse Krimes secretly creates monumental works of art—including an astonishing 40-foot mural made with prison bed sheets, hair gel, and newspaper. He smuggles out each panel piece-by-piece with the help of fellow artists, only seeing the mural in totality upon coming home. As Jesse's work captures the art world's attention, he struggles to adjust to life outside, living with the threat that any misstep will trigger a life sentence.
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
In this documentary we meet five children in Sweden and see what happened in their lives. Robin was nine years old, but he already knew what a prison looked like and the bad a punishment can do. Frida was not yet born when we filmed her mother Angela in 1983. Her sister Malin lived for several years in a foster family. Bosse was 14 years old and in 9th grade when we met him in 1978. He was the only guy in the class who had glasses. Marie received many postcards and letters from her father, but very rarely met him while she was growing up.
North Philadelphia, PA – Kev, El and Andy are three men united by one struggle: they are trying to defy gravity. As part of the 700,000 prisoners released into society every year, they find themselves faced with a chilling outlook: 67% of ex-offenders re-offend within three years. What explains this invisible force that keeps former inmates in a seemingly unending cycle of incarceration? Filmed on the street over the course of two years, Pull of Gravity is an intimate portrait of these three men that confronts head-on the gritty details of lives cut short by poverty and drugs, where dealing is seen as the only route to economic prosperity, where using offers an escape from powerlessness, and where prison is too often the next stop. The film’s unfiltered lense captures its subjects as they lay bare their stories, fears, and tentative dreams.
Errol Morris examines the incidents of abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Through the job inside a prison in Mexico, men reveal the perception, the illusion and the decadence of a isolated reality, as well as organized.
A documentary about juveniles who are serving life in prison without parole and their victims' families.
Scott Mills travels to Uganda where the death penalty could soon be introduced for being gay. The gay Radio 1 DJ finds out what it's like to live in a society which persecutes people like him and meets those who are leading the hate campaign.
Four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C., jail.
Devil worship? Could it be real? Follow up to Devil Worship: Exposing Satan's Underground.
Documentary about four maffia-like friends based in Amsterdam.
Errol Morris's unique documentary dramatically re-enacts the crime scene and investigation of a police officer's murder in Dallas.