World War Two and a group of American soldiers reside in the infamous Stalag 17, a German prison camp designed to hold the most rebellious of inmates. It soon becomes apparent that there is a traitor amongst them and the most obvious choice is a cynical, opportunistic fellow prisoner, always on the scam and the only man on nodding terms with their German captors. Stalag 17 is classic war time drama, tense and claustrophobic, with William Holden justifiably winning an Oscar for his performance in find out more...

An epic family drama spanning three generations of a Jewish family, who moved from a rural village to the city, became wealthy, respected, bourgeois and/or radicalised and Hungarianised, set against a backdrop of the final days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, World War 1, the rise of fascism, the Holocaust and the Communist era. A tour-de-force performance by Ralph Fiennes in various reincarnations, especially as the character who won a fencing gold medal for Hungary in the 1936 Olympics, in th find out more...

Fascinating, factually based story of an anti-social double murderer, Robert Stroud, who used his years in the world's toughest prison to transform himself into a world-renowned ornithologist. Superb performances all round but Karl Malden is particularly riveting as the sadistic prison governer. find out more...

It's 1942 and eight-year-old Bruno knows nothing of Germany's Final Solution and the Holocaust, only that his father was promoted and he has been moved from a comfortable home in Berlin to a house in a desolate area. Here there is nothing to do and no one to play with, that is until he meets Shmuel, a boy who lives a strange parallel existence on the other side of a wire fence, and who, like the other people there, wears a uniform of striped pyjamas. Bruno's friendship with Shmuel takes him from find out more...

Guinness restores the morale of British PoWs by building a bridge which is of military value to the Japanese, and then attempts to thwart the RAF's destruction of it! A classic film which swept 7 Oscars including "Best Picture". find out more...

Colditz was the P-O-W camp where the Germans put the bad boys, the prisoners, Brits of course, who repeatedly tried to escape. This is their story; a first class tale with British stiff-upper-lips to the fore, nationalistic but heroic. find out more...

Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch is the king of counterfeiters and lives a sweet life of cards, booze and women. Eventually Salomon's luck runs out when he's arrested and thrown into a Nazi concentration camp, but it's not long before his exceptional skills are spotted and he is coerced into a counterfeit operation on a gargantuan scale; a plan to help finance the war effort and flood the British and American economies with fake currency. For the first time in his life Salomon finds himself in a mo find out more...

The greatest prisoner of war adventure of them all. Behind the barbed wire fences of Stalag Luft the Allies plan a mass break-out by digging three tunnels. Discovery by the Germans when only one is completed means the chances of escape are thin. Yet 76 make the attempt in this epic adventure.

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An ex-SS officer, now a hotel porter, meets by chance a young woman who was previously his prisoner in a concentration camp. Unwillingly drawn together again they resume their sado-masochistic relationship. A compelling, though morally ambiguous, study in dominance and submission. find out more...

Adapted from a story by Stephen King, this is the best prison movie you'll ever see. A city banker's life is changed forever when he receives a double life sentence in the notorious Shawshank prison. Freeman is superb as the old-timer who befriends him. A powerfully uplifting tale with a twist. find out more...