Attica
★ 6.8 · 2021 · 117m · Documentary
Follows the largest prison uprising in US history, conducting dozens of new interviews with inmates, journalists, and other witnesses.
More Like This
Teach Our Children
1972
This film focuses on the historic 1971 Attica prison rebellion in upstate New York. It targets the conditions that caused prisoners to take drastic steps toward securing their basic rights. The film questions the reactions of prison warden Oswald, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and President Nixon, as well as the death of 31 inmates and prison guards from bullets fired by the National Guard. Through on-site footage taken during and following the rebellion, and follow-up interviews with inmates, this film relates a powerful message concerning prisoner's rights and provides an important historical document. A Third World Newsreel production about the 1971 rebellion at Attica State Prison.
More info →
Swissair Flug 100 – Geiseldrama in der Wüste
2024
On September 6, 1970, militant Palestinians hijack a fully occupied Swissair plane. After weeks of negotiations, the Federal Council capitulates, gives in to the terrorists' demands and releases three Palestinians imprisoned in Switzerland.
More info →
Flight 149: Hostage of War
2025 · ★ 8
When BA Flight 149 unwittingly landed in a warzone, its passengers and crew were taken hostage. Did the UK government allow it? And who were the mercenaries on board?
More info →
Holding Liat
2025 · ★ 6.8
Liat Atzili was kidnapped from her kibbutz on October 7. What begins as a chronicle of her parents, sister, and children's efforts to secure her return, becomes a portrait of conflicting impulses towards anger, indifference, and compassion straining the bonds of one grieving family.
More info →
The Weather Underground
2002 · ★ 6.6
The remarkable story of The Weather Underground, radical activists of the 1970s, and of radical politics at its best and most disastrous.
More info →The Maribor Uprisings
2017
Equal parts film, conversation, and social experiment, this interactive documentary uses footage shot by activists in the crowd of the Maribor uprisings, a 2012 to 2013 Slovenian protest, to pull you into the fray, where you must collectively decide what happens next.
More info →
El Comité
2006
A documentary chronicle of the prisoners’ takeover of the Garcia Moreno Penitentiary in Quito, Ecuador. The prisoners find they suddenly have a voice after they take 360 people hostage, and a pattern of abuse and corruption by the guards toward the prisoners becomes clear after lengthy negotiations.
More info →
Ghosts of Attica
2001 · ★ 8.2
Documentary about Attica prison riot and lawsuits to get compensation for the victims of these events.
More info →
Strangeways: Britain's Toughest Prison Riot
2015
Twenty-five years after the biggest riot in British penal history, this film brings together the ringleaders of the trouble with the prison guards they battled with over three weeks of anarchy that brought Strangeways to its knees. For the first time, these events are told through unparalleled access to the people at the heart of the riot - ex-inmates, prison officers and the governor himself - createing a compelling story of the struggle for power between the authorities and the hardcore prisoners who ultimately took their protest onto the prison roof. The stand-off that followed is documented until the final moments, when the siege was ended in a dramatic takedown in front of rolling news cameras.
More info →
The Potentiality of Storming Heaven
2009
6 December 2008, few minutes after 9 pm - Time Zero of the December Revolt. Two policemen shoot against a group of youngsters hanging out on a Saturday night, at the heart of the Exarcheia district of central Athens, an area with a long history of insurrection against authority and riots for socio economic and political grounds, inhabited mainly by anarchists, anti-authoritarians and liberals. The police bullet finds in the heart and kills 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. As soon as the news of Alexis' murder spreads mainly through the internet, hundreds of people from the rest of Athens gather at Exarchia, which is circled by hundreds of riot policemen and that in turns infuriated people and the neighborhood quickly goes "on fire" with flaming barricades and stone attacks against the police, that lasted all throughout the night.
More info →Criminal Injustice: Death and Politics at Attica
2012
Forty years after the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War, the dead remain buried along with the truth. Until now. Based on interviews with eyewitnesses who just now are telling their stories, as well as access to newly discovered documents, the film sheds new light on exactly what happened at Attica between September 9-13, 1971. Criminal Injustice raises compelling new questions about the 39 deaths at Attica, White House involvement, and the corrupting influence of Nelson Rockefeller’s political aspirations before, during, and long after the deadly retaking of the prison. Former hostage Michael Smith said that “the cover up started as soon as the shooting stopped.” This film reveals that the truth actually may have been concealed long before that.
More info →
33 Photos from the Ghetto
2025 · ★ 7.1
The film traces two families, one of which is Jewish, who preserved the images for decades but hadn’t brought them to light. 80 years after their creation, the son of the photographer finds the forgotten negatives and launches an investigation. With a team of researchers, archivists, and animators who use near-forensic precision to reconstruct locations and contexts, they trace the circumstances of those tragic days and the lives captured in each frame.
More info →