Prison Train

The Man with the Golden Arm

December 1955 •English

A junkie must face his true self to kick his drug addiction. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2005.

The Experiment

March 2001 •German

20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.

City of God

August 2002 •Portuguese

In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.

THX 1138

March 1971 •English

People in the future live in a totalitarian society. A technician named THX 1138 lives a mundane life between work and taking a controlled consumption of drugs that the government uses to make puppets out of people. As THX is without drugs for the first time he has feelings for a woman and they start a secret relationship.

Lost Highway

January 1997 •English

A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.

Veer-Zaara

November 2004 •Hindi

Squadron Leader Veer Pratap Singh, a pilot in the Indian Air Force, rescues the stranded Zaara, a woman from Pakistan, following a bus accident, and their lives are forever bound.

The Sleeping Car Murder

November 1965 •French

Six people travel by train overnight from Marseilles to Paris. When the train arrives at its destination, one of the passengers, a girl, is found dead in a sleeping berth. The police led by Inspector Grazzi investigate the other five passengers, suspecting that one of them was responsible. However, as the investigation is stepped up, the other passengers start turning up dead. It is then up to the last remaining two to solve the case, before they become the next victims.

Für den unbekannten Hund

November 2007 •German

Dark Blue Almost Black

March 2006 •Spanish

Jorge is a young man whose plans for the future are put on hold when his father has a stroke. For seven years, he diligently nurses his father and works as a janitor while studying part time to get a business degree. When Natalia, his childhood crush, returns from a stint studying abroad, Jorge begins to yearn for something better. He is desperate to find a new and better job, but finds that no one will hire him because he has experience only as a janitor. Antonio, Jorge’s older brother, soon to be released from jail, is an opportunist who has never gotten along with their father. In prison, at a theater workshop, Antonio meets Paula, a beautiful young woman in jail on drug charges. Paula has a problem because she flirted with another inmate's boyfriend.

The Sweet and the Bitter

September 2007 •Italian

Saro, a young Sicilian thug, that from jobs assigned by his godfather, won the favor of leaders of Cosa Nostra, becoming a "man of honor".

Hala

September 2003 •English

Arnut and Hala are drug dealers who were brought up by a gangster's family and are now selling amphetamines for him in Bangkok. Arnut likes Hala's girlfriend, Piangdao, so he informs the police about a deal they are doing so Hala will be arrested. He tells Piangdao he was killed by the police during the deal. However, he is really in prison where his cellmate tells him of a cave on the Burmese border that he can find gold buried by the Japanese during the war and also get magical powers if he goes there. In the meantime Arnut convinces Piangdao to poison the boss of the gang. He takes over all his operations and then sends her to work in a brothel. Hala gets out of jail and finds out everything. He gets the magical powers and gets very rich and then decides to settle the score.

Black Rain

September 1989 •English

Two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. However, in Japan he manages to escape, and as they try to track him down, they get deeper and deeper into the Japanese Mafia scene and they have to learn that they can only win by playing the game—the Japanese way.

Blondie Johnson

February 1933 •English

A Depression-downtrodden waif uses her brains instead of her body to rise from tyro con artist to crime boss.

Murder on the Orient Express

November 1974 •English

In 1935, when his train is stopped by deep snow, detective Hercule Poirot is called on to solve a murder that occurred in his car the night before.

Knockaround Guys

November 2001 •English

Four sons of well-known New York mobsters must retrieve a bag of cash from a small Montana town ruled by a corrupt sheriff.

The Harder They Come

September 1972 •English

Ivanhoe Martin arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, looking for work and, after some initial struggles, lands a recording contract as a reggae singer. He records his first song, "The Harder They Come," but after a bitter dispute with a manipulative producer named Hilton, soon finds himself resorting to petty crime in order to pay the bills. He deals marijuana, kills some abusive cops and earns local folk hero status. Meanwhile, his record is topping the charts.

Smokin' Aces

December 2006 •English

When a Las Vegas performer-turned-snitch named Buddy Israel decides to turn state's evidence and testify against the mob, it seems that a whole lot of people would like to make sure he's no longer breathing.

Half Nelson

August 2006 •English

Despite his dedication to the junior-high students who fill his classroom, idealistic teacher Dan Dunne leads a secret life of addiction that the majority of his students will never know. But things change when a troubled student Drey makes a startling discovery of his secret life, causing a tenuous bond between the two that could either end disastrously or provide a catalyst of hope.

Vada Chennai

October 2018 •Tamil

A young carrom player in North Chennai becomes a reluctant participant in a war between two feuding gangsters.

Donnie Brasco

February 1997 •English

An FBI undercover agent infiltrates the mob and identifies more with the mafia life at the expense of his regular one.