Malik is the anti-hero of this somewhat mystical mini-epic of a movie. Just turned adult, illiterate, lacking a clear-cut ethnic identity, he finds himself doing 6 years in a prison run on the inside by a violent Corsican gang with the connivance of corrupt staff. With the guidance of the ghost of a now dead inmate Malik learns not just to read and write but to deal with the power politics of gangsterhood and it is his success at the latter that allows him to emerge from prison... There is a s find out more...

Jimmy Boyle was a young Glaswegian hard man born into, and fully embracing, a life of crime. When Jimmy was imprisoned for murder his first reaction was rage, but while incarcerated he experienced an epiphany and embarked on a journey as far removed from his earlier infamy as it was possible to get. Based on Jimmy Boyle's own life ‘A Sense Of Freedom' is a powerful, often brutal, tale of redemption. find out more...

Precinct 13 is facing its last night as an active police station, only a skeleton staff is kept on, but then nobody is expecting any trouble, and as a blizzard rages outside everyone settles down for an uneventful evening. A prison bus, no longer able to cope with the weather conditions pulls up to the precinct, and discharges a motley selection of prisoners, one of them a recently convicted high profile ganglord. What follows is a lethally one sided siege, convicts and cops forced into an uneas find out more...

Sean Penn stars in this powerful and violent drama as the kind of kid who was always destined to end up in prison. When he inevitably does, it only serves to fuel his hatred and contempt for the system. Yet Penn still manages to win the viewer's sympathy in possibly his best performance ever. find out more...

 

A new prison officer finds himself in a desperate struggle for survival when he is mistakenly trapped inside as a riot unfolds. His only hope is to befriend one of the inmates leading the rebellion and pass himself off as one of those incarcerated. Cell 211 is a hard brutal action drama

 

find out more...

Based on the notorious Australian criminal Mark "Chopper" Read, the film works in flashback as Mark recounts from his prison cell his many (perhaps embellished) exploits, the vast majority of which involve a frequently fatal act of violence. 'Chopper' is both disturbing, gruesome and extremely funny, with a powerhouse central performance. Not for the faint hearted, but you'd probably already guessed that. find out more...

Sang-hwan's rebellious criminal behaviour finally lands him in juvenile prison. There, at what seems to be the lowest moment in his young life, a guard turns him towards boxing in the hope of safely channelling his rage at the world. find out more...

The story of a decent, successful, family man, convicted of murder for killing a burglar after he'd fled the premises, struggling to survive the violent penal system. Transferred, after a set up, to the extremely violent, no holds barred, SHU (23 hours a day in a concrete box, shackles, orders and no warnings) under the control of a corrupt, lieutenant and a ruthless sadistic guard, and with only the humanity of his zen-like multiple murderer cell-mate as comfort, our reluctant hero must learn t find out more...

A screwed-up runaway teenage girl accepts a lift from a Mr Nice Guy, but soon realises he's a notorious serial killer. Having left him for dead she is soon arrested and facing a lifetime in prison, escapes, only to meet the killer again. A high quality, brutally comic, thriller with attitude. Very dark and very good.

find out more...

Bobby Sands was the IRA member who led the 1981 Long Kesh hunger strike as part of a campaign to achieve the status of political prisoners and not that of criminals. The first section of film deals with daily prison life, the 'dirty' protest and the violence, the second is a long discussion on the meaning of life with a sympathetic priest and the third depicts the last weeks and death of a man voluntarily dying of starvation. find out more...