The House I Live In

Pete and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson visited a Texas prison in Huntsville in March of 1966 and produced this rare document of of work songs by inmates of the Ellis Unit. Worksongs helped African American prisoners survive the grueling work demanded of them. With mechanization and integration, worksongs like these died out shortly after this film was made.

Nearly 10,000 children in Britain visit a parent in prison every week, BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Catey Sexton gives a humane and sensitive insight into their lives in this documentary made for Children in Need (1980).

Carré rouge sur fond noir

An experimental intake of Ojore Nuru Lutalo as he recounts the 22 years he spent in political isolation, and the flourishing comradery he built with prison abolitionist, Bonnie Kerness, whose work supported him and other prisoners.

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

On June 3, 1973, a man was murdered in a busy intersection of San Francisco’s Chinatown as part of an ongoing gang war. Chol Soo Lee, a 20-year-old Korean immigrant who had previous run-ins with the law, was arrested and convicted based on flimsy evidence and the eyewitness accounts of white tourists who couldn’t distinguish between Asian features. Sentenced to life in prison, Chol Soo Lee would spend years fighting to survive behind bars before journalist K.W. Lee took an interest in his case. The intrepid reporter’s investigation would galvanize a first-of-its-kind pan-Asian American grassroots movement to fight for Chol Soo Lee’s freedom, ultimately inspiring a new generation of social justice activists.

With unprecedented access, this documentary looks into the hidden world of one of Russia's most impenetrable and remote institutions - a maximum security prison exclusively for murderers. Deep inside the land of the gulags, this is the end of the line for some of Russia's most dangerous criminals - 260 men who have collectively killed nearly 800 people. The film delves deep into the mind and soul of some of these prisoners. In brutally frank and uncensored interviews the inmates speak of their crimes, life and death, redemption and remorselessness, insanity and hope. The film tracks them though their unrelenting days over several months, lifting the veil on one of Russia's most secretive subcultures to reveal what happens when a man is locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours every day, for life. A startling insight into inscrutable minds and the forbidding world they have been condemned to. (Storyville)

An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

Documentary about the magnitude and severity of domestic violence. This film features four women imprisoned for killing their batterers and their terrifying personal testimonies. It won an Oscar at the 66th Academy Awards in 1994 for Documentary Short Subject.

Documentary about four maffia-like friends based in Amsterdam.

We discover a modest, almost derisory garden, located in the heart of the women's prison in Rennes, Brittany, France.

After decades behind bars, three men set out to prove success can lie on the other side of tragedy. Follows the stories of Harrison, Noel, and Chris as they return home from San Quentin State Prison. After spending most of their lives incarcerated, they are forced to reconcile their perception of themselves with a reality they are unprepared for. Each struggles to overcome personal demons and reconstruct their fractured lives. Grappling with day-to-day challenges and striving for success, they work to reconnect with family and provide for themselves for the first time in their adult lives. Told in an unadorned vérité style, we experience the truth of their heartaches and triumphs. As their stories unfold over weeks, months and years, the precarious nature of freedom after incarceration in America is revealed.

The film is about a woman’s prison and shows how creativity transforms people and gives them strength.

Set as an experiment in a simulated cell in Oslo, three former political prisoners are locked up for three days with no film crew, to revisit their memories of Syria's darkest detention facilities.

Five transgender women share their prison experiences. Interviews with attorneys, doctors, and other experts are also included.

A film narrated by a prison interview with long-jailed black radical Ojore Lutalo. Ojore touches on many issues, from what prisons are, to why he is in prison to the nature of the black radical struggle. Ojore was released in 2009, only to be rearrested a few months later as the alleged "Amtrak Terrorist" in Colorado. All charges were dropped after no one was able to provide any evidence of wrongdoing.

Young Kids Hard Time explores the story of young children sentenced to adult prison for decades, through the eyes of 12-year old Paul Gingerich and 15-year old Colt Lundy, both serving 30 years in adult prison for killing Colt's stepdad.

This documentary, which features Sergei Parajanov’s heartbreaking letters from prison, explores creativity among inmates and the art born in conditions designed to destroy all traces of selfhood.

Province of Ciudad Real, Spain, December 29, 1990. During the annual march to the Herrera de la Mancha prison, held in support of the members of the terrorist gang ETA imprisoned there, the Basque rock band Negu Gorriak holds a concert, which is recorded, edited on video and turned into a tool of vindication. Decades later, a film crew tries to elaborate a personal essay around this event and its meaning.

While Germany sits as one of the major democratic models, an ex-prisoner of the Stasi delivers from his former cell a frightening testimony that questions the sustainability of our contemporary democracies.