The Best Prison-Movies

Distrust and uncertainty arise when four long-term inmates cautiously induct a new prisoner into their elaborate prison-break scheme.

A banker convicted of uxoricide forms a friendship over a quarter century with a hardened convict, while maintaining his innocence and trying to remain hopeful through simple compassion.

Stories of crime, revenge, love, and friendship at the Carandiru Penitentiary, the largest prison in Latin America.

Based on the true life experiences of poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, the film focuses on step-brothers Paco and Cruz, and their bi-racial cousin Miklo.

The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.

A laid-back Southern man is sentenced to two years in a rural prison, but refuses to conform.

An Irish man's coerced confession to an I.R.A. bombing he did not commit results in the imprisonment of his father as well. Meanwhile, a British lawyer fights to clear their names and free them.

Norwegian winter, early 20th century. On the boys home Bastoy, a new inmate leads the boys to a violent uprising against a brutal regime. How far is he willing to go to attain freedom?

A man serving a sentence in a minimum-security prison. Life in the jail is rigid and organized, eventually leading all of the cell-mates to abandon their individuality.

A delinquent Muslim man struggles to get by in prison until he is taken under the wing of a powerful mob boss, but his gradual rise through the organization's ranks brings him in conflict with his mentor.

In a North African military prison during World War II, five new prisoners struggle to survive in the face of brutal punishment and sadistic guards.

A surly convicted murderer held in permanent isolation redeems himself when he becomes a renowned bird expert.

The story of two men on different sides of a prison riot -- the inmate leading the rebellion and the young guard trapped in the revolt, who poses as a prisoner in a desperate attempt to survive the ordeal.

Rune has to spend the next two years in Horsens State Prison. Being the prison for the most violent men, he also has to survive it with its violent dog-eat-dog rules.

Chicago crime kid, Mick O'Brien, is sent to reform school after accidentally killing a rival's kid brother.

Three juvenile delinquents are sentenced to a correctional facility where they encounter gang violence, death, and harassment from staff and other inmates.

A convicted arsonist looks to manipulate a parole officer into a plan to secure his parole by placing his beautiful wife in the lawman's path.

Irish republican Bobby Sands leads the inmates of a Northern Irish prison in a hunger strike.

Locked up for killing an intruder in self-defense, a family man must cope with life in the violent penal system.

A death row guard learns that a gentle giant in his charge possesses a mysterious gift.

Based on the real-life prison break of two political captives, Escape From Pretoria is a race-against-time thriller set in the tumultuous apartheid days of South Africa.

Alcatraz is the most secure prison of its time. It is believed that no one can ever escape from it, until three daring men make a possibly successful attempt at escaping from one of the most infamous prisons in the world.

A French convict in the 1930s befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence in the South American penal colony on Devil's Island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.

A young man who was sentenced to seven years in prison for robbing a post office ends up spending three decades in solitary confinement. During this time, his own personality is supplanted by his alter-ego, Charles Bronson.

The true story of an English boxer incarcerated in one of Thailand's most notorious prisons as he fights in Muay Thai tournaments to earn his freedom.