Prison
see all genres ›Lockup ranks low in the list of things people want to actually experience but many love to vicariously "go directly to jail" at the movies. While jail time might be mostly grinding tedium in real life, somehow on celluloid it's always rife with suspense and thrills.
Watch Prison Films
Genres / Crime / Prison
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Poison
The second feature directed by Todd Haynes, POISON is a groundbreaking American independent film and was the most fervently debated film of the 1990s as well as a trailblazing landmark of queer cinema. A work of immense visual invention, Haynes' spectacular follow-up to his legendary SUPERSTAR:...Watch Movie
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Mesrine: Killer Instinct
MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT introduces us to Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), a loyal son and dedicated soldier back home and living with his parents after serving in the Algerian War. Soon he is seduced by the neon glamour of sixties Paris and the easy money it presents....Watch Movie
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Mesrine: Public Enemy #1
Now back in France, Mesrine is finally in police custody and facing justice for his crimes. After escaping a courtroom and kidnapping the judge at gunpoint, Mesrine is declared Public Enemy Number 1 and is eventually condemned to a maximum-security prison where he writes his...Watch Movie
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A Jail in Colombia
A look inside La Modelo prison in Bogota, Colombia. Called a "model" prison by Colombian officials, the prison in reality is controlled more by the prisoners than the guards (with 5,000 prisoners for 2,400 spots, and not more than 150 security guards assigned to La Modelo)....Watch Movie
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Riki-Oh
Ricky is sentenced to prison for the pulpy murder of a lowlife responsible for his girlfriend's suicide. In the dystopian future of 2001, the prison system has been privatized and run by monsters far worse than the criminals they keep locked up. Ricky finds himself up against the Gang of Four,...Watch Movie
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The Consequence
Martin has been sent to jail. While there he meets fifteen-year-old Thomas, the son of one of the prison staff. Thomas immediately develops a deep crush on Martin. The two men find (and share) their mutual passion behind the locked door of Martin's cell. Once released, the two move in together...Watch Movie
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My Time Will Come
A pre-dawn murder sets in motion a series of interlocking tragedies that eventually find their way to the city morgue's brooding Dr. Arturo Fernandez. Physically and emotionally isolated from the world around him, Arturo develops an oddly intimate relationship with the...Watch Movie
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Herman's House
Herman Wallace may be the longest-serving prisoner in solitary confinement in America (40 years and counting in a 6-by-9-foot cell). This award-winning documentary is a moving account of the remarkable expression his struggle finds in an unusual art project proposed by New York artist Jackie...Watch Movie
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Amnesty
A new national law brings together a man and woman visiting the same prison to meet their incarcerated spouses. ElsaпїЅs dutiful contact with her husband is part of a routine consumed with job searching, raising her two sons, and getting along with her father-in-law. When she meets Spetim, a...Watch Movie
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Time
TIME blurs the line between documentary and fiction, questioning the system of filmmaking itself, while also addressing the root of another system entirely: The American Correctional System. Through a collection of conversational portraits filmmaker Theodore Collatos presents a group of male...Watch Movie
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The Brig
"I went to see 'The Brig', the play, the night it closed. The Becks were told to shut down and get out. The performance, by this time, was so precisely acted that it moved with the inevitability of life itself. As I watched it I thought: Suppose this was a real brig; suppose I was a newsreel...Watch Movie
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Cut Snake
CUT SNAKE is a tense, psychologically driven crime thriller in which one man discovers his biggest enemy to putting the past behind him may be only himself. Set in Melbourne in the mid-1970s, CUT SNAKE tells the story of Sparra Farrell, an ex-convict who is trying to make a new life for himself...Watch Movie
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Women's Prison
This taboo-breaking film is based on Manijeh Hekmat's long fieldwork among women prisoners in Iran. She depicts the lives of Iran's lost generation in the two decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution using the claustrophobic life of women behind bars as a metaphor for the entire society. Her...Watch Movie
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Raiders of the Living Dead
"The dead are after me!" wails the power ballad theme-song chorus for this ultra-low-budget, New Jersey-shot horror film (and, indeed, they are). A reporter (Robert Deveau) researching mysterious disappearances and a whiz-kid teenager (Scott Schwartz of A CHRISTMAS STORY) who...Watch Movie
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Por sus propios ojos
Agence France Press claims, "PROPER EYES, Liliana Paolinelli's first feature-length film, is a trip inside a maximum prison as seen through the eyes of the prisoners' female relatives; a sobering and intense drama made by a developing new talent in Argentine cinema. Filmed in...Watch Movie
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Shifting Sands
Marcia Grey is a struggling artist with a sick sister and an unpaid rent bill. The rent collector insults her and, after a struggle, he drops his wallet. Missing it, he calls a policeman and, by way of revenge, he returns to the flat where he accuses Marcia of theft. Unable to defend herself, she...Watch Movie
