Films with theme "Prison films", sorted by rating

, 1h47
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Comedy, Action, Crime
Themes Prison films, Transport films, Films about automobiles, Évasion, Road movies, Buddy films
Actors Tom Waits, John Lurie, Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Ellen Barkin, Rockets Redglare

Three men, previously unknown to each other, are arrested in New Orleans and placed in the same cell. Both Zack (Waits), a disc jockey, and Jack (Lurie), a pimp, have been set up, neither having committed the crime for which they have been arrested. Their cellmate Bob (Benigni, in his first international role), an Italian tourist who understands minimal English, was imprisoned for manslaughter.

, 1h46
Directed by Frères Coen
Origin USA
Genres Comedy, Musical theatre, Action, Adventure, Crime
Themes Films about music and musicians, Films based on mythology, Prison films, Radio, Transport films, Musiques du monde, Musical films, Films based on Greco-Roman mythology, Évasion, Road movies, Buddy films, Films based on Greco-Roman mythology
Actors George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Chris Thomas King, Holly Hunter

Three convicts, Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney), known as Everett, Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and Delmar O’Donnel (Tim Blake Nelson) escape from a chain gang and set out to retrieve the $1.2 million that Everett buried. The three get a lift from a blind man driving a handcar on a railway. He tells them that they will find a fortune, but not the one they seek. The trio make their way to Pete’s cousin Wash’s house. They remove their chains and sleep in the barn, but Wash betrays them and they are woken by policemen led by Sheriff Cooley, who have them surrounded. The police try to smoke them out, but Wash’s son rescues them.

, 1h59
Directed by Ken Burns
Origin USA
Genres Documentary, Crime
Themes Prison films, Documentary films about law, Documentary films about historical events, Documentaire sur une personnalité, Documentary films about cities, Films about capital punishment

, 1h
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Documentary
Themes Prison films, Documentary films about law, Documentary films about law enforcement
Actors Louis Theroux

, 52minutes
Directed by Arnold Shapiro
Origin USA
Genres Documentary
Themes Prison films, Documentary films about law, Documentary films about law enforcement
Actors Peter Falk, Danny Glover

Le documentaire, filmé dans la prison d'État de l'East Jersey, raconte la vie d'un groupe de jeunes délinquants qui rencontrent des condamnés à perpétuité, qui font en sorte de les effrayer (d'où le titre Scared Straight!) pour leur éviter la prison.

, 2h37
Directed by Bimal Roy
Genres Drama, Romance
Themes Prison films
Actors Nutan, Ashok Kumar, Dharmendra, Tarun Bose, Asit Sen, Sulochana

The film is set in a prison in around 1934 in pre-Independence India, where Kalyani is serving life imprisonment prison for committing a murder, and we learn the circumstances of her crime in flashback as she divulges it to the jailor. The film is set in Bengal in the 1930s, during the British Raj, where Kalyani (Nutan) is the daughter of the postmaster (Raja Paranjpe) of the village, who falls in love with a freedom fighter, Bikash (Ashok Kumar), who later leaves her in the village promising to come back but never does. The society treats them harshly. Broken by her father's misery and that of her own, Kalyani moves to the city, to the singing of the sad song "O Jaanewale Ho Sake To Laut Ke Aana". In the city she works as a caretaker of an obnoxious and mentally unstable woman, who turns out to be the wife of Bikash. Kalyani learns that her father came to the city looking for her and died in an accident. That prompts her to poison her lover's wife, identifying her as the cause of her miseries in a moment of insane rage. Director Bimalda captures her emotions as she resolves to commit the crime, with light and darkness falling on her face due to a welder's torch and the thumping of Iron in the background, and the ambient sounds as she inches towards the decision, pumping vigorously into a kerosene stove, without uttering a single word through it all. And subsequently confesses to the crime with equal passion.

, 30minutes
Genres Documentary
Themes Prison films, Documentary films about law, Documentary films about law enforcement

, 40minutes
Origin USA
Genres Documentary
Themes Prison films, Documentary films about law, Documentary films about law enforcement

, 2h16
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Biography, Historical, Crime
Themes Prison films, Films about capital punishment
Actors Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Rafe Spall, Tim Blake Nelson

Après des études à l'université Harvard, Bryan Stevenson est promis à une brillante - et lucrative - carrière d'avocat. Il décide cependant de se rendre en Alabama pour défendre des personnes condamnées à tort. Il est aidé par Eva Ansley, une militante du coin. L'une de ses premières affaires est celle de Walter McMillian, condamné à mort en 1987 pour le meurtre très médiatisé d’une jeune fille de 18 ans. Bryan va être pris dans la complexité des manœuvres juridiques et politiques, tout en luttant contre des actes racistes.

, 2h26
Directed by Héctor Babenco
Origin Bresil
Genres Drama
Themes Medical-themed films, Prison films, Films about sexuality, LGBT-related films, Transgender in film, LGBT-related films, HIV/AIDS in film, LGBT-related film
Actors Rodrigo Santoro, Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos, Caio Blat, Milton Gonçalves, Lázaro Ramos, Aílton Graça

This episodic story is set in São Paulo's notorious prison Carandiru, one of Latin America's largest and most violent prison systems.

, 1h52
Directed by Don Siegel
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Thriller, Action, Historical, Crime
Themes Prison films, Évasion, Se déroulant à Alcatraz
Actors Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan, Fred Ward, Jack Thibeau, Larry Hankin, Paul Benjamin

On January 18, 1960, Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood) arrives at the maximum security prison Alcatraz, having been sent there after escaping from several other prisons. He is sent in to meet the warden (Patrick McGoohan), who curtly informs him that no one has ever escaped from Alcatraz. Eventually he meets his old friends, bank robber brothers John and Clarence Anglin (Fred Ward and Jack Thibeau), and he makes the acquaintance of the prisoner in the cell next to his, car thief Charley Butts (Larry Hankin). Morris befriends numerous other inmates, including English (Paul Benjamin), a black inmate serving two life sentences for killing two white men in self-defense; the eccentric Litmus (Frank Ronzio) who keeps a pet mouse and calls himself Al Capone, and the elderly artist and chrysanthemum grower Doc (Roberts Blossom).

, 2h25
Directed by Norman Jewison
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Biography
Themes Prison films, Films about racism, Sports films, Martial arts films, Boxing films, Films about capital punishment, Le boxe anglaise
Actors Denzel Washington, Vicellous Reon Shannon, Deborah Kara Unger, Liev Schreiber, John Hannah, Dan Hedaya

The film tells the story of middleweight boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, whose conviction for a Paterson, New Jersey triple murder was set aside after he had spent nearly 20 years in prison. Narrating Carter's life, the film concentrates on the period between 1966 and 1985. It describes his fight against the conviction for triple murder and how he copes with nearly twenty years in prison.

, 1h53
Origin Espagne
Genres Drama, Thriller, Action
Themes Prison films
Actors Luis Tosar, Alberto Ammann, Antonio Resines, Marta Etura, Carlos Bardem, Fernando Soto

Juan Oliver wants to make a good impression at his new job as a prison officer and reports to work a day early, leaving his pregnant wife, Elena, at home. During his tour of the prison, an accident occurs that knocks him unconscious. He is rushed to the empty but visibly haunted walls of cell 211. As this diversion unfolds, convicts break free and hijack control of the penitentiary. Aware of the violence that is to come, the prison officers flee, leaving Juan stranded and unconscious in the heart of the riot. When Juan awakens, he immediately takes stock of the situation; in order to survive, he must pretend to be a prisoner.

, 2h14
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Origin France
Genres Drama, War, Romance
Themes French war films, Medical-themed films, Seafaring films, Prison films, Transport films, Films about psychiatry, Films about disabilities, Political films, Films about capital punishment
Actors Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Clovis Cornillac, Marion Cotillard, Dominique Pinon, Albert Dupontel

Five French soldiers are convicted of self-mutilation in order to escape military service during World War I. They are condemned to face near certain death in the no man's land between the French and German trench lines. It appears that all of them were killed in a subsequent battle, but Mathilde, the fiancée of one of the soldiers, refuses to give up hope and begins to uncover clues as to what actually took place on the battlefield. She is all the while driven by the constant reminder of what her fiancé had carved into one of the bells of the church near their home, MMM for Manech Aime Mathilde (Manech Loves Mathilde; a pun on the French word aime, which is pronounced like the letter "M". In the English-language version, this is changed to "Manech's Marrying Mathilde").

, 1h34
Directed by Jules Dassin
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Thriller, Noir, Crime
Themes Prison films
Actors Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, Ella Raines

On a dark, rainy morning at Westgate Prison, prisoners crammed into a small cell watch through the window as Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster) returns from his term in solitary confinement. Joe is angry and talks about escape. The beleaguered warden is under pressure to improve discipline. His chief of security, Capt. Munsey (Hume Cronyn), is a sadist who manipulates prisoners to inform on one another and create trouble so he can inflict punishment. The often drunk prison doctor (Art Smith) warns that the prison is a powder keg and will explode if they are not careful. He denounces Munsey's approach and complains that the public and government officials fail to understand the need for rehabilitation.