Movies Similar to American Jail

Rikers(2016)

This film from Bill Moyers is the first documentary to focus exclusively on people formerly detained in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island Jail. They tell their compelling stories direct to the camera, revealing the violent arc of the Rikers experience – from the trauma of entry to extortion and control by inmates, to oppressive corrections officers, violence and solitary confinement.

6.0

Parallel Lives(2021)

Born June 8, 1964, Frank Matter films four "twins", born the same day as him, but in other latitudes. Interweaving their life stories with rich archival material, the filmmaker links these Parallel Lives with elements from his own biography, to compose a fascinating fresco where intimate trajectories are part of the advent of the global village.

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Mama General(1997)

A film about poverty in a rich country: father, mother, seven children have made it out of the homeless asylum. The author met the Cologne family B. for the first time in 1976. Living with debts, installments, reminders, living with the certainty that the children will not fare any differently. For more than twenty years, between dreams and fears, the camera recorded two generations' fear of failure and hunger for middle class. A unique film chronicle from the "latest economic miracle" - between 1976 and 1997.

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Los posibles(2013)

Santiago Mitre co-directs his first movement following The Student together with choreographer Onofri Barbato. Although it would have been more accurate to say “his first film-story-adventure-movie-great movie following The Student”, the word movement fits perfectly in Los posibles, the most overwhelmingly kinetic work Argentine cinema has delivered in many, many years. The film deals with the adaptation of a dance show directed by Onofri together with a group of teenagers who came to Casa La Salle, a center of social integration located in González Catán, trying to find some refuge from hardship. Already entitled Los posibles, the piece opened in the La Plata Tacec and was later staged in the AB Hall of the San Martín Cultural Center. Now, it dazzles audiences out of a film screen, with extraordinary muscles and a huge heart: Los posibles is a rhapsody of roughen bodies and torn emotions. Precise and exciting, it’s our own delayed, necessary, and incandescent West Side Story.

7.0

Prisoners of the War on Drugs(1996)

From its beginning during the Reagan years through current times, the War on Drugs has left many victims stranded in the prison system. PRISONERS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS reveals life behind bars in the nation’s prisons. Each prisoner has his or her own story, but for most, the story is predictably similar; they have been criminalized for drugs or drug related offenses, locked up with easy access to substances, and given little opportunity for rehabilitation. This film provides an inside look at the prison system, its prisoners and a war on drugs we do not seem to be winning.

6.0

Is Love Racist? The Dating Game(2017)

Emma Dabiri looks at racism in Britain via the world of modern dating, love apps, and a national survey suggesting that young Britons could be more segregated than ever.

0.0

White Riot(2020)

Exploring how punk influenced politics in late-1970s Britain, when a group of artists united to take on the National Front, armed only with a fanzine and a love of music.

7.2

Open Secret(2025)

This riveting documentary investigates allegations of systemic racism and child sexual abuse in the New Hanover School District.

0.0

The Blinding of Isaac Woodard(2021)

In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind. The shocking incident made national headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the blatant injustice would change the course of American history. Based on Richard Gergel’s book Unexampled Courage, the film details how the crime led to the racial awakening of President Harry Truman, who desegregated federal offices and the military two years later. The event also ultimately set the stage for the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which finally outlawed segregation in public schools and jumpstarted the modern civil rights movement.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat, artiste absolu(2022)

The life and work of New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat have been marked by a long quest for identity, by his Haitian and Puerto Rican family origins and by a founding trip to Africa. To portray this major painter of the 20th century, who died in 1988 at only 27 years old, is also to evoke the place of black American artists in the conservative and racist America of the Reagan years.

6.0

Der Maler Philip Guston – Ein amerikanisches Leben(2023)

The extraordinary work of the American artist Philip Guston is a milestone in modern painting. Guston is one of the most discussed painters of his time and today a star of the younger generation of contemporary artists. ARTE is showing the documentary on the occasion of the major Guston retrospective at the Tate Modern in London.

8.0

Black Ice(2023)

This incisive, urgent documentary examines the history of anti-Black racism in hockey, from the segregated leagues of the 19th century to today’s NHL, where Black athletes continue to struggle against bigotry.

7.5

The Journey(1987)

Peter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves.

3.8

L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later(2017)

Documentary film exploring the lives of the people at the flashpoint of the LA riots, 25 years after the uprising made national headlines and highlighted the racial divide in America.

7.5

Land Without Bread(1933)

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

7.0

Megacities(1998)

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

6.8

America's Greatest Prison Breaks(2015)

A look at the prison breakout of Richard Matt and David Sweat from Clinton Correctional facility, as well as a look back at some of the most daring and ingenious prison breaks in American history.

6.0

The Fall of the I-Hotel(1983)

The Fall of the I-Hotel brings to life the battle for housing in San Francisco. The brutal eviction of the International Hotel's tenants culminated a decade of spirited resistance to the razing of Manilatown. The Fall of the I-Hotel works on several levels. It not only documents the struggle to save the I-Hotel, but also gives an overview of Filipino American history.

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Morte e Vida Severina(1977)

The story of Severino, a man who tries to escape the misery and the drought prevailing in the rural backcountry of the Northeast of Brazil. He heads for Recife, passing through desert and forest regions, expecting to find a better life.

6.6

My Life Inside(2007)

Rosa is a Mexican woman who, at the age of 17, migrated illegally to Austin, Texas. Some years later, she was jailed under suspicion of murder and then taken to trial. This film demonstrates how the judicial process, the verdict, the separation from her family, and the helplessness of being imprisoned in a foreign country make Rosa’s story an example of the hard life of Mexican migrants in the United States.

6.9