In Exchange For Flesh
2025 · 15m · Documentary
When two incarcerated artists secretly document a routine prison practice, they risk their lives to expose a state policy that blurs the line between safety and sexual abuse.
More Like This
Out of Mind, Out of Sight
2014 · ★ 5.7
Four-time Emmy winner John Kastner was granted unprecedented access to the Brockville facility for 18 months, allowing 46 patients and 75 staff to share their experiences with stunning frankness. The result is two remarkable documentaries: the first, NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, premiered at Hot Docs in the spring of 2013 and follows the story of a violent patient released into the community. The second film, Out of Mind, Out of Sight, returns to the Brockville Mental Health Centre to profile four patients, two men and two women, as they struggle to gain control over their lives so they can return to a society that often fears and demonizes them.
More info →Recidīvisti
1998
For thousands of years, there has been a struggle between good and evil in the world; it also takes place within each person from birth to death. By getting to know and trying to understand prisoners – repeat offenders – the filmmakers encourage us to think about human nature, morality, and destiny, as well as the place of prisoners in society. The film was shot in Valmiera Prison, where inmates knit socks and mittens for children in orphanages, sing hymns and read the Bible, develop their artistic talents and train their muscles, but will all this help them to reintegrate into society after their imprisonment?
More info →
Death and the Judge
2018 · ★ 7
The documentary, " Death and the Judge", revolves around Iran's most famous criminal judge, Azizmohammadi. He served as a criminal judge for 45 years and issued about 4500 death sentences; a record in not only Iran, but also the world. This documentary looks into his personal and professional life as he is followed within his home with his family, in the court of law, and in his retirement days. The ultimate purpose of the documentary is to deduce the role of death in the judge's life as he either takes life away from criminals or death comes to his loved ones. During his retirement, he is once again given the choice between the life and death of a person, despite no longer being a judge.
More info →
Det svåra livet
2001 · ★ 9.4
This documentary follows Pia, who is homeless. She is struggling with her drug addiction. During the day she (and many other homeless people) sells the newspaper Situation Sthlm.
More info →
Det nya livet
2004 · ★ 9.2
It has been three years since Tom Alandh made the film "Det svåra livet" about homeless drug addict Pia. This film shows what has happened to her since.
More info →
Leva Livet
2011 · ★ 10
Ten years after documentary filmmaker Tom Alandh started filming homeless drug addict Pia Sjögren, he makes his third and final film about her. Pia was 14 years old when she started smoking cannabis and using drugs. Then it all happened really fast. The heavier drugs, the men who beat, and years of cold nights in basements and attics. Treatment and punishment. Rehabs and prisons. Relapse. Constantly back, at the complete bottom, among shame and guilt. For ten years, Tom Alandh and photographer Björn Henriksson documented Pia's life. Two films were made, this is the third and last film, which shows how she managed to get clean against all odds.
More info →Hard Time: The Making of Prison
2013 · ★ 8
Retrospective documentary on the making of the low-budget horror film Prison (1987)
More info →
Insein Rhythm
2016
Insein Rhythm portrays the sights, sounds and rhythms of Yangon’s Insein train station which is also a stone’s throw away from the country’s infamous Insein prison.
More info →
Prisoners of the War on Drugs
1996 · ★ 7.5
From its beginning during the Reagan years through current times, the War on Drugs has left many victims stranded in the prison system. PRISONERS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS reveals life behind bars in the nation’s prisons. Each prisoner has his or her own story, but for most, the story is predictably similar; they have been criminalized for drugs or drug related offenses, locked up with easy access to substances, and given little opportunity for rehabilitation. This film provides an inside look at the prison system, its prisoners and a war on drugs we do not seem to be winning.
More info →
Unthinkable: The Susan Smith Story
2024 · ★ 10
Hear from the prosecutors who handled Susan Smith's case and why authorities doubted her story from the beginning. The boys' father, David Smith, talks about why he believes 30 years in prison isn't long enough for Susan and what he's prepared to tell a SC Board of Pardons and Paroles to keep her behind bars.
More info →
Last Days of Solitary
2017
In 2011, Maine State Prison launched a pioneering reform program to scale back its use of solitary confinement. Bafta and Emmy-winning film-maker Dan Edge and his co-director Lauren Mucciolo were given unprecedented access to the solitary unit - and filmed there for more than three years. The result is an extraordinary and harrowing portrait of life in solitary - and a unique document of a radical and risky experiment to reform a prison. The US is the world leader in solitary confinement. More than 80,000 American prisoners live in isolation, some have been there for years, even decades. Solitary is proven to cause mental illness, it is expensive, and it is condemned by many as torture. And yet for decades, it has been one of the central planks of the American criminal justice system.
More info →
The Road to Mass Incarceration
2018
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.
More info →