2016
This film from Bill Moyers is the first documentary to focus exclusively on people formerly detained in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island Jail. They tell their compelling stories direct to the camera, revealing the violent arc of the Rikers experience – from the trauma of entry to extortion and control by inmates, to oppressive corrections officers, violence and solitary confinement.
2024
An Alabama corrections officer falls in love with a man awaiting trial for murder and risks it all to help him escape.
2004
A look beyond the shock and inhumanity of prison rape to the intricate social hierarchy that keeps it alive. A filmmaker goes deep inside Alabama's infamous Limestone penitentiary to uncover the long-term causes and consequences of prison rape. With a startling lack of inhibition, five inmates reveal the workings of an elaborate inner society.
2023
In America, the prison system has become a place of retribution, not restoration. Inmates are often treated as sub-human, and often find themselves feeling hopeless. But a small midwest college decides to give inmates an opportunity to earn a bachelor's degree. Experience the journey of the resilient inmates as they fight incredible odds to change their lives – and change the system.
2017
Out of State is the unlikely story of native Hawaiians men discovering their native culture as prisoners in the desert of Arizona, 3,000 miles, and across the ocean, from their island home.
2013
Trevor McDonald goes to Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana to speak with some of the women that live there.
2025
Kung-Fu Ombijam, an artist and former inmate, and Facundo, a young man still serving his sentence, are united by their passion for rap. Both take part in a music workshop inside prison, where they share their experiences and challenges, exploring the transformative power of music. Through their stories, Tumbero reflects the struggle to find a new path and how, despite past hardships and experiences, art becomes a tool for self-discovery and for building a future filled with greater hope.
2006
A documentary chronicle of the prisoners’ takeover of the Garcia Moreno Penitentiary in Quito, Ecuador. The prisoners find they suddenly have a voice after they take 360 people hostage, and a pattern of abuse and corruption by the guards toward the prisoners becomes clear after lengthy negotiations.
French visual artist-director JR situates his latest social-art intervention in a Southern Californian supermax prison, where he has imagined an enormously ambitious collaboration with the facility’s inmates.
2020
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."
2011
SERVING LIFE documents an extraordinary hospice program where hardened criminals care for dying fellow inmates. Narrated and executive produced by Academy Award®-winner Forest Whitaker, the film takes viewers inside Louisiana's maximum security prison at Angola, where the average sentence is more than 90 years.
2018
A convicted felon builds a feminist movement from behind bars at an all-male prison in Soledad, California.
