America's Greatest Prison Breaks

When Canada's Government takes the decision to transform the correctional system to one that puts punishment first, the country's rehabilitative prison farms are one of the first causalities. A strong opposition forms towards the farm closures and for two days in late summer of 2010, hundreds of angry protesters stand in front of Frontenac Prison Farm in the heart of Kingston, Ontario, ready to block cattle trucks brought in to remove the hundred-year-old prize dairy heard.

The film focuses on Ernesto Rossi (1897 – 1967), who was imprisoned by the fascist regime between 1930 and 1943 for his political ideas. Exiled on the island of Ventotene, he co-authored the Ventotene manifesto.

In this deeply personal film, director Roger Ross Williams sets out on a journey to understand the complex forces of racism and greed currently at work in America's prison system.

This video, The Road to Mass Incarceration, by Greenhouse Media summarizes criminal justice policy decisions dating back to the 1960s. Although the effects often took decades to manifest, each of these policy shifts increased the rate of incarceration in the U.S. The video ends with many of the architects of these changes, Democrats and Republicans alike, admitting the failure of these policies and suggesting that it is time for real change.

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.

The true story of a young teenage girl whose mother is incarcerated for murder. Living in a Catholic Children's home run by an order of nuns, she provides poignant commentary about her mother, her own situation and her outlook for the future.

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.

Brindisi, Italy: a focal point in cigarette smuggling. The director returns to her hometown to see what's left of the past and what lies in store for the future.

It was the biggest escape in the history of the Berlin Wall: in one historic night of October 1964, 57 East-Berliners try their luck through a tunnel into West Berlin. Just before the last few reach the other side, the East German border guards notice the escape and open fire. Remarkably, all the refugees and their escape agents make it out of the tunnel unscathed, but one border guard is dead: 21-year-old officer Egon Schultz.

Documentary about the "cárcel vieja" of Murcia

There are 100,000 US citizens in solitary confinement across the country, a staggering number prompting comment from both President Obama and the Pope. Situated in rural Virginia, 300 miles from any urban center, Red Onion State Prison is one of over 40 supermax prisons across the US built to hold prisoners in eight-by-ten-foot cells for 23 hours a day. Filmed over the course of one year, this eye-opening film braids stark prison imagery, stories from correction officers, and intimate reflections from the men who are locked up in isolation. The inmates share the paths that led them to prison and their daily struggles to maintain their sanity.

On August 7th 1974, French tightrope walker Philippe Petit stepped out on a high wire, illegally rigged between New York's World Trade Center twin towers, then the world's tallest buildings. After nearly an hour of performing on the wire, 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan, he was arrested. This fun and spellbinding documentary chronicles Philippe Petit's "highest" achievement.

Frequent perpetrator Tony ends up in the Pieter Baan Center after yet another violent robbery. For seven weeks, a procession of behavioral researchers passes him by. They must ultimately come to a unanimous conclusion and then advise the judge: whether or not accountable; tbs or not. Psychiatrist: "What is the worst outcome for you?" Tony: "Tbs with compulsory care." The Pieter Baan Center is a detention center with the special task of investigating persons suspected of a serious crime. It is an independent investigation commissioned by the Ministry of Justice. In a seven-week process, the suspect's personality, the possible presence of a disorder and / or a mental illness and whether it can be linked to the crime are examined. Is there a chance of recurrence?

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.

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.

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.

In 2018, the Nicaraguan police brutally repressed anti-government protests organised by high school students. K., a 17-year-old girl who was arrested, recounts the horrors of her time in jail.

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

Impressionistic glimpses of London life from early morning to rush hour.

For three months, the journalist Jesús Quintero visits more than thirty prisons and interviews more than a hundred prisoners in order to discover what life is like for those who live in them.