An elderly inmate serving a life sentence awaits a lonely death in his solitary cell—until a voice calls out to him. It belongs to a balsam flower, Housenka, that speaks like a human. Through their "conversation", the old man begins to reflect on the life he's led.
Five inmates break out of a remote minimum security prison for women. Four are hardened convicts, the fifth was wrongfully convicted. As the authorities chase them down, the cons terrorize or kill anyone who gets in their way.
A World War I veteran’s dreams of becoming a master architect evaporate in the cold light of economic realities. Things get even worse when he’s falsely convicted of a crime and sent to work on a chain gang.
Anker is released from prison after a fourteen year sentence for robbery. Anker’s brother, Manfred, is the only one who knows where the money from the heist is. Meanwhile, Manfred has developed a mental illness, causing him to forget where the loot is stashed. Together, the brothers now embark on an unexpected journey to both locate the money and discover who they really are.
A single mistake puts a 19-year old girl behind bars, where she experiences the terrors and torments of women in prison.
A man who spent his formative years in prison for murder is released, and struggles to adjust to the outside world and escape his lurid past. He gets involved with a cheap dancehall girl, and when her protector is accidentally killed, they go on the lam together, getting jobs as farm labourers. But some fellow workers get wise to them.
When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
Shipped off to a Romanian orphanage to finish his sentence, a British criminal finds romance but also discovers corruption inside the facility.
A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.
A career criminal who has been deformed since birth is given a new face by a kindly doctor and paroled from prison. It appears that he has gone straight, but he is really planning his revenge on the man who killed his mentor and sent him to prison.
Jake Blues, just released from prison, puts his old band back together to save the Catholic home where he and his brother Elwood were raised.
A Finnish man goes to the city to find a job after the mine where he worked is closed and his father commits suicide.
19-year-old Eric, arrogant and ultra-violent, is prematurely transferred to the same adult prison facility as his estranged father. As his explosive temper quickly finds him enemies in both prison authorities and fellow inmates — and his already volatile relationship with his father is pushed past breaking point — Eric is approached by a volunteer psychotherapist, who runs an anger management group for prisoners. Torn between gang politics, prison corruption, and a glimmer of something better, Eric finds himself in a fight for his own life, unsure if his own father is there to protect him or join in punishing him.
People in the future live in a totalitarian society. A technician named THX 1138 lives a mundane life between work and taking a controlled consumption of drugs that the government uses to make puppets out of people. As THX is without drugs for the first time he has feelings for a woman and they start a secret relationship.
A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.
A small-town girl schemes to get to Hollywood only to run into the man she left behind.
After hiding his loot and getting thrown in jail, brooding outlaw Ruby befriends Quentin, a dim-witted and garrulous giant. After Quentin botches a solo escape attempt, they make a break together. Unable to shake the clumsy Quentin, Ruby is forced to take him along as he pursues his former partners in crime to avenge the death of the woman he loved and get to the money.
A support program brings the two Kanckis Gerd and Steinbock into the care of women. There they are supposed to prove that they are capable of integrating into society. Now Gerd stupidly kills a bar owner. This puts an end to their excursion into freedom for the time being.
Disgraced pro football quarterback Paul Crewe lands in a Texas federal penitentiary, where manipulative Warden Hazen recruits him to advise the institution's football team of prison guards. Crewe suggests a tune-up game which lands him quarterbacking a crew of inmates in a game against the guards. Aided by incarcerated ex-NFL coach and player Nate Scarborough, Crewe and his team must overcome not only the bloodthirstiness of the opposition, but also the corrupt warden trying to fix the game against them.
When a young boy comes in to see a doctor abourt a red mark on his face, the doctor's wife welcomes him into the consulting room instead. As they talk, she offers him something to eat and then notes that his manner of eating is just like that of her previous husband, who died in prison many years earlier. It turns out that the young man had been his cell mate for a year, and he tells her the story of how her husband died. She then remembers (in flashbacks) how she had helped her first husband rid himself of his sexual repression, and how she had promised him she would marry her current husband if she were widowed. It seems her doctor-husband was a man who could remain untouched through any political climate, and was much admired by her first husband. Now that her memories have been awakened by the young man's account, she ignores the repeated phone calls of her current husband and decides to rid this young man of his own sexual repressions.