'Don't build prisons, they cost too much!' In this era of Great Recession, the conservative and tough-on-crime State of Texas takes an unprecedented path by becoming a social justice leader with programs that rehabilitate offenders. Looks like rape, abuse and death are no longer parts of the solution for modern-day Bonnie and Clyde...
An inside look as the 38-year-old prepares to perform at the famed Bridgestone Arena in his hometown of Nashville, featuring never-before-seen tour footage and interviews with the musician and those closest to him. It also shows how Jelly Roll balances life on tour with philanthropic work, including a visit to a juvenile detention facility where he was incarcerated multiple times to share his story in the hopes of inspiring positive change in others.
The year’s most spectacular Documentary short films.
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.
Preschool to Prison is a compelling examination of how the United States public school system is built and operated like prisons. Zero-tolerance policies are used to justify suspension and arrests that set up a pathway to send children of color and children with special needs from school to prison. Children are being suspended, restrained, dragged, physically manhandled, and subsequently arrested for minor offenses such as throwing candy on a school bus. These personal accounts from people affected by the school-to-prison pipeline give riveting tales about the generational impact on society.
A documentary on reformed ex-con Rick Maylender and his attempts to help troubled youths by taking them out of their environment and showing them how to find and repair abandoned classic vehicles.
On a sailboat in the middle of the Ocean, five teenagers in rehabilitation are travelling with adults of different ages and backgrounds. Off unknown coastlines, the boat’s space becomes a huis-clos in which everyone faces their own difficulties, the challenge of living together and also the manoeuvres of sailing, the Ocean and its turmoil—until the arrival on land.
After years behind bars, three young men begin to rediscover lives of aggression and excess in their raucous Roma community. Among them is Alex, a captivating figure with a disturbingly blasé attitude toward violence, women, and guilt. In this absorbing documentary, offering a rare peek into contemporary Roma culture, Alex and his fellow ex-cons reconcile the outside world with the gray-shaded areas of morality with which they all struggle.
Ruby Franke's rise as a "momfluencer" with millions of followers hid a nightmare; when her son fled and alerted a neighbor about the abuse, police raided her home, rescuing her children.
Mikami, an ex-yakuza of middle age with most of his life in prison, gets released after serving 13 years of sentence for murder. Hoping to find his long lost mother, from whom he was separated as a child, he applies for a TV show and meets a young TV director Tsunoda. Meanwhile, he struggles to get a proper job and fit into society. His impulsive, adamant nature and ingrained beliefs cause friction in his relationship with Tsunoda and those who want to help him.
Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim and Doug Lussenhop present "Hamper's Pre-Natal Life Coaching".
Chick Hewes is released from prison and finds work as an accountant. Two years later, Chick's crooked friend, Benny LaMarr, to whom he is indebted for past kindnesses, steals a diamond necklace from the home safe of the district attorney. When the district attorney threatens to accuse the police of inefficiency in crime fighting, Garvey, who is campaigning for the office of police commissioner, promises to catch the thief in twenty-four hours.
A demented prison doctor performs gruesome shock therapy experiments on inmates.
While on trial for her life, a young woman recalls her tough upbringing and her involvement with the men who brought her to this current state of affairs.
A woman hires a life coach to help mend her stressful life. Rather than help her however, the life coach, who turns out to be psychotic, launches a full on campaign of terror, effectively ruining the woman's life rather than fixing it.
After being released from prison, con man Thurston Hall gathers his gang of cronies--along with innocent chump Guy Kibbee--to help him sell worthless stock in a New Mexico gold mine.
Determined to build a new life for himself, a young man returns home to find work and a place to live and struggles to not fall back in with his old crowd.
New documentary by Annie St-Pierre
A tribute to the cartoonist and filmmaker Chaval, aka Yvan Francis Le Louarn.
A fantasia of post-indoctrination, immigration, and iconography. A pageant of wanderers and searchers: Mormon missionaries, a pioneer, polygamists, scouts, hunters, church-goers, and an aspiring prophet walk and walk and walk. A pilgrimage of memory, history, ancestry, and place.