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.
Despite his dedication to the junior-high students who fill his classroom, idealistic teacher Dan Dunne leads a secret life of addiction that the majority of his students will never know. But things change when a troubled student Drey makes a startling discovery of his secret life, causing a tenuous bond between the two that could either end disastrously or provide a catalyst of hope.
A woman struggles to interact with her family and find her place in society after spending fifteen years in prison.
Jerry (Jamie Draven) was an idealist when he served in the first Gulf War. But when he was later deployed to Iraq, Jerry was an older man, a father of three and embittered by broken promises and unfulfilled desires. When Jerry returns from Iraq he has been transformed by horrors that cannot be forgiven. He lives a life of poverty, his children afraid of him and his wife, Nora (Vinessa Shaw), unsympathetic and unhappy. When Jerry discovers that Nora has betrayed him, his anger and despair drive him to commit an act so heinous and irreversible that nothing he had experienced in combat could have prepared him for.
A death row inmate turns for spiritual guidance to a local nun in the days leading up to his scheduled execution for the murders of a young couple.
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.
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.
Aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin attempts to achieve success in show business by stalking his idol, a late night talk-show host who craves his own privacy.
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
Behzad, who has been in prison for manslaughter for a long time, has a son who does not know about him. When he is introduced, the son goes through a conflict. Then, as a family, they go to the victim's family seeking consent so Reza would be released.
Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.
The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.
A disc jockey, a pimp and an Italian tourist escape from jail in New Orleans.
It is the dawn of World War III. In mid-western America, a group of teenagers band together to defend their town—and their country—from invading Soviet forces.
A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the '50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.
The story of Salvador Puig Antich, one of the last political prisoners to be executed under Franco's Fascist State in 1974.
A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.
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.
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.
An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing 'Mister' Albert Johnson, things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she can. She perseveres, holding on to her dream of one day being reunited with her sister in Africa.