Cuerda de presos (1996)

The Big One

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.

The Work

Set entirely inside Folsom Prison, The Work follows three men during four days of intensive group therapy with convicts, revealing an intimate and powerful portrait of authentic human transformation that transcends what we think of as rehabilitation.

Standard Operating Procedure

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

The Great Escape

On March 24, 1944, in the heart of Nazi Germany, 76 British, Canadian, Norwegian and French pilots who were held in Stalag Luft III, a prison camp of the Luftwaffe, escaped. Unique testimony from the last survivors, recreations and today’s digital images sheds new light on the audacious escape.

The World's Most Luxurious Prison

Former conservative Justice Secretary Ann Widdecombe visits a Norwegian prison that has been described as the most luxurious of its kind.

Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo

71 years in the making, this feature documentary experience reveals the extraordinary life journey of Hollywood's most unlikely hero, Danny Trejo.

My Life Inside

Rosa is a Mexican woman who, at the age of 17, migrated illegally to Austin, Texas. Some years later, she was jailed under suspicion of murder and then taken to trial. This film demonstrates how the judicial process, the verdict, the separation from her family, and the helplessness of being imprisoned in a foreign country make Rosa’s story an example of the hard life of Mexican migrants in the United States.

Tehachapi

French visual artist-director JR (co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary FACES PLACES with the legendary Agnès Varda) 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.

Daughters

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.

The Arbor

The lives of the late Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar and Lorraine, one of her daughters, and the community of Bradford, in the 30 years since the 18-year-old Andrea penned a play about growing up in the community titled "The Arbor".

Georgie

An ex mobster reflects on love and loss after spending 32 years in prison.

Out of State

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.

Unthinkable: The Susan Smith Story

Hear from the prosecutors who handled Susan Smith's case and why authorities doubted her story from the beginning. The boys' father, David Smith, talks about why he believes 30 years in prison isn't long enough for Susan and what he's prepared to tell a SC Board of Pardons and Paroles to keep her behind bars.

Seeds of Change

An organic farmer in Maine sets out to transform the prison food system. Seeds of Change captures the intersecting stories of life-long farmer Mark McBrine and several incarcerated men as they harvest their own meals from a five-acre prison garden unlike any other.

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.

A portrait of the life and career of the infamous American execution device designer Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Mr. Leuchter was an engineer who became an expert on execution devices and was later hired by holocaust revisionist historian Ernst Zundel to "prove" that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. Leuchter published a controversial report confirming Zundel's position, which ultimately ruined his own career. Most of the footage is of Leuchter, working in and around execution facilities or chipping away at the walls of Auschwitz, but Morris also interviews various historians, associates, and neighbors.

Survivor's Guide to Prison

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.

Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer

In this documentary, filmmaker Nick Broomfield follows the saga of Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who has been accused of committing a brutal series of murders. Broomfield conducts interviews with Wuornos herself, and his crew films her trial as well as her interactions with religious fanatic Arlene Pralle, who gives Wuornos dubious advice and legally adopts her. The cameras also roll as the accused's attorney ignores the case at hand to negotiate a deal to sell his client's story.

Caesar Must Die

Inmates at a prison in Rome rehearse for a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo' goes behind prison walls to follow convict cowgirls on their journey to the 2007 Oklahoma State Penitentiary Rodeo. In 2006, female inmates were allowed to participate for the first time. In a state with the highest female incarceration rate in the country, these women share common experiences such as broken homes, drug abuse and alienation from their children. Since 1940, the Oklahoma State Penitentiary has held an annual 'Prison Rodeo'. Part Wild West show and part coliseum-esque spectacle, it's one of the last of its kind - a relic of the American penal system. Prisoners compete on wild-broncs and bucking bulls, risking life-long injuries. For inmates like Danny Liles, a 14-year veteran of the rodeo, the chance to battle livestock offers a brief respite from prison life. Within this strange arena the prisoners become the heroes while the public and guards applaud

Give Up Tomorrow

When a teenager from a political family in the Philippines is accused of a double murder, the country’s entire judicial system is put to the test after years of alleged corruption.

Emperors of Nothing

Emperors of Nothing is an unprecedented immersion within Forest, a prison in Brussels notorious for its inhumane incarceration conditions, bearing witness to how the human spirit resists or submits to this harsh world. Deeply personal and candid moments shared with inmates and wardens alike, those who have forfeited or devoted their lives to prison, expose universal truths of what it means to be "behind bars".

Louis Theroux: Behind Bars

For two weeks, Theroux visits the San Quentin State Prison.

Detained

A documentary from within the Swedish Migration Board's locked repository where people are in custody awaiting forced deportation. Prisoner and guard are in close proximity around the clock. Converses during sleepless nights and playing football during hot summer days. We follow Sophie, 29, who loves her job at the repository, Sami, 20, the young rebel who is locked up but free inside, and Aina, 47, who were separated from her children and kept locked up while the police are stepping up efforts to enforce their expulsion order.

The Prison Within

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."

Hell

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.

The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer

Richard Kuklinski was a devoted husband, loving father--and ruthless killer of over 100 people. You'll meet him in this powerful documentary that features one of the most vivid and disturbing interviews ever recorded--taped behind the walls of the prison where Kuklinski is serving two consecutive life sentences for multiple homicide.

The Central Park Five

In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and later convicted of raping a white woman in New York City's Central Park. They spent between 6 and 13 years in prison before a serial rapist confessed that he alone had committed the crime, leading to their convictions being overturned. Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, this is the story of that horrific crime, the rush to judgment by the police, a media clamoring for sensational stories and an outraged public, and the five lives upended by this miscarriage of justice.

Serving Life

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.

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison

Cash's concert at Folsom State Prison in California in January 1968 touched a raw nerve in the American psyche and made him a national hero at a troubled time in American history. Using the stark images of rock photographer Jim Marshall, graphic techniques, archive footage and interviews with Merle Haggard, Cash's daughter Rosanne, band members Marshall Grant and WS 'Fluke' Holland, alongside former inmates of the prison, the film documents this explosive concert, the live album that followed and a transformative moment in the lives of Cash, the inmates of Folsom Prison and the American nation in the troubled year of 1968.

The Prisoner of the Iron Bars

In 2002, the greatest prison in Latin America, Complex Carandiru, was demolished. A couple of months before its implosion, director Paulo Sacramento trained some inmates and together with his crew, they produced many hours of footage, showing daily life in prison.

Jacinta

An intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma, Jacinta follows a young woman in and out of prison as she attempts to break free from an inherited cycle of addiction, incarceration, and crime.

Nemesis

The film explores the destruction of a unique train station in Zurich and the construction of the new prison and police centre in its place. From the perspective of the filmmaker’s window, and with testimony from prisoners awaiting deportation, the film probes how we deal with the extinction of history and its replacement with total security.

The House I Live In

In the past 40 years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world's largest jailer, and destroyed impoverished communities at home and abroad. Yet drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available today than ever. Where did we go wrong?