1. Magnicidios Poe (Magnicidios Poe)
The sarcastic account of the assassination of five Spanish politicians between 1870 and 1973 is mixed with the narration of five short stories by Edgar Allan Poe illustrated by five skillful pencil artists. A documentary, a video essay, a collage, a provocative experiment where various pop culture figures and icons perform unexpected cameos. The macabre joke of a jester. Never more.
It has an average vote of 2 on TMDB.
2. Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
A portrait of the life and career of the infamous American execution device designer Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Mr. Leuchter was an engineer who became an expert on execution devices and was later hired by holocaust revisionist historian Ernst Zundel to "prove" that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. Leuchter published a controversial report confirming Zundel's position, which ultimately ruined his own career. Most of the footage is of Leuchter, working in and around execution facilities or chipping away at the walls of Auschwitz, but Morris also interviews various historians, associates, and neighbors.
It has an average vote of 6.9 on TMDB.
3. Wrong Fellows (Foute vrienden)
Documentary about four maffia-like friends based in Amsterdam.
It has an average vote of 5.8 on TMDB.
4. Yell, Stomp, Hiss
Building Communism isn’t just about destroying the status quo, it’s about bringing people together in the process.
5. Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison
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.
6. Free Chol Soo Lee
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.
It has an average vote of 7.4 on TMDB.
7. Cruel and Unusual
Five transgender women share their prison experiences. Interviews with attorneys, doctors, and other experts are also included.
It has an average vote of 5.5 on TMDB.
8. The Liberal War
The Vietnam War during the JFK years and beyond. Made in 1972 in the filmmaker's apartment, without documentary footage of the war, metaphors are created through the animation of images and objects, and through guerrilla skits. By rejecting the authority of traditional documentary footage, the anarchist spirit of individual responsibility is established. This is history from one person's point of view, rather than a definitive proclamation.
9. God and Devil on Top of the Wall (Deus e o Diabo em Cima da Muralha)
Imagine a prison with some ten thousand prisoners, many of them dangerous and, to control them, only a few unarmed employees. Small in number, these employees work in shifts. They are almost prisoners themselves, in a routine of tension, but also of humor and emotion. This prison was all too real. While it was in existence, the Carandiru was the largest prison in Latin America, administered by a reduced number of employees. The documentary shows, from the point of view of these few employees, holding the keys, how the prison operated: the delicate balance in the relationship with the prisoners, affinity among employees, moments of tension and, even, of happiness. These are stories told by former employees, among them, Dr. Dráuzio Varella, author of the book Estação Carandiru. These are the secrets of a place that no longer exists.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
10. Near Light
A young man, convicted murderer, has a chance of redemption when he enters the best Italian university of economics, going back and forth from prison to university every day.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
11. Standard Operating Procedure
Errol Morris examines the incidents of abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison.
It has an average vote of 6.842 on TMDB.
12. This Temporal World
A haunting story of the FBI's dark hand in American life. In 2015, Khalil Abu-Rayyan was just a young Muslim man in Detroit, Michigan: to get by, he delivered food for his family's pizzeria. Depressed and lonely, Khalil found solace in smoking weed and looking at extremist material online. Then two young women started messaging him, and he fell in love. But one of them suggested he start doing increasingly violent things. Nothing was as it seemed. And Khalil's life would never be the same. A documentary by Garret Harkawik for the Gravel Institute.
13. From Prison: Young Devil Worshipers
Devil worship? Could it be real?</p><p> Follow up to Devil Worship: Exposing Satan's Underground.
14. Japan from Inside (Le Japon à double tour)
Fu Chu is one of the most important and strict prisons in Japan, where they have more than 2,000 people living together. In addition, it is the one that has the greater number of foreigners. Through the testimony of two French prisoners we know first hand how the inmates of Japanese prisons live behind bars. Fu Chu is known worldwide because many ex-convicts have sued the Japanese State for the treatment received during their incarceration. Amnesty International has been interested in this problem and has denounced the methods used to consider that they violate Human Rights. In this documentary the cameras enter for the first time in the premises of the prison and show how is the strict regime of this institution.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
15. The Condemned
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.
It has an average vote of 6.5 on TMDB.
16. Squat 69 (500 Stenkastende Autonome Voldspsykopater Fra Helvede)
"For Sale! Including 500 violent stone throwers from Hell", was the message from the controversial squat 'Ungdomshuset' in Copenhagen, Denmark. The film takes a balanced look behind the barricades and follows the definitive last year in the life of the squatters before all was demolished in March 2007 and riots broke out in Copenhagen.
It has an average vote of 9 on TMDB.
17. Defending Our Lives
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.
It has an average vote of 5.8 on TMDB.
18. Like a Rose
A short documentary from 1975 about two women serving 25 years in a Missouri penitentiary. Made with an all-female crew.
19. Another Chance
A short 1983 documentary about an alternative to prison.
20. Portrait of God
Portrait of God is a documentary road movie about the manhunt for the most wanted person in the world. The film is constructed as a classic detective story. A middle-aged detective shadows the suspect through the highs and lows of South African society until he ends up in a gigantic prison in Cape Town bursting with murderers, thieves, and rapists.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
