Sara - My Whole Life Was a Struggle

The Big One

September 1997 •English

The Big One is an investigative documentary from director Michael Moore who goes around the country asking why big American corporations produce their product abroad where labor is cheaper while so many Americans are unemployed, losing their jobs, and would happily be hired by such companies as Nike.

Standard Operating Procedure

February 2008 •English

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

Music of Yarsan: A Living Tradition

January 2015 •English

The educational documentary film Music of Yarsan: A Living Tradition is an investigation into the variety of muscial practices in the life of the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq people of the Guran region, in the Kermanshah province of Iran.

Defending Our Lives

March 1994 •English

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.

13th

October 2016 •English

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

Do You Remember Revolution?

October 1997 •Italian

In Italy, in the mid-seventies, Adriana, Barbara, Nadia and Susanna were 20 years old when they decided to join the armed struggle and leave behind their social life and their families in order to make the revolution the center and the aim of their existence. Today they have returned after many years in prison, and they try, each one of them, to recount their own experiences. They speak about the political reasons which initially sustained them, the conflicts, the doubts, and the moments of being torn apart which market out their lives as women caught up in the vortex of war. A course of events which ended in the condemnation of the armed struggle and the pain of the lives that were destroyed – their victims’ lives and their own.

Free Chol Soo Lee

August 2022 •English

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.

Privacy of Wounds

November 2018 •Arabic

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.

Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison

March 1966 •English

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.

The American Matrix - Age Of Deception

January 2010 •English

A shocking new 2 hour film by B.A. Brooks. This 2010 release is a follow up to "The Decline And Fall Of America" which was released in 2008. "The American Matrix - Age Of Deception" details news items that all people should be aware of such as the economic collapse of The United States and the formation of the a New World Order. See what has really been going on in America today.

Life After Life

April 2017 •English

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.

Wrong Fellows

September 2010 •Dutch

Documentary about four maffia-like friends based in Amsterdam.

Mula

October 2021 •Spanish

Francisco, Isabel, Fco. Javier and David are captured in different parts of the world when they worked as "mules" to overcome the crisis. They tell their stories from the deal that turned them into traffickers to their release from prison.

The Condemned

June 2013 •English

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)

Por Favor, Socorro

June 2021 •Portuguese

Girls Can't Surf

March 2021 •English

It’s the 1980s and the world of professional surfing is a circus of fluorescent colors, peroxide hair and radical male egos. "Girls Can't Surf" follows the journey of a band of renegade surfers who took on the male-dominated professional surfing world to achieve equality and change the sport forever. Featuring surfing greats Jodie Cooper, Frieda Zamba, Pauline Menczer, Lisa Andersen, Pam Burridge, Wendy Botha, Layne Beachley and more, "Girls Can't Surf" is a wild ride of clashing personalities, sexism, adventure and heartbreak, with each woman fighting against the odds to make their dreams of competing a reality.

Prison, My Parents & Me

November 2016 •English

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).

In My Own Words

January 2005 •English

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.

Prison Art

October 1998 •Russian

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.

An Enclosure

March 1999 •English

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