Six sliders. No stars.
Nothing on this site is recommended because people liked it. Films are described by what they are (how heavy, how fast, how far from the real world), and you get the ones closest to what you asked for.
Neither of these is the better film. They are just at opposite ends.
45 films tagged prison
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Little-known
2025 · Drama
A lawyer takes on the case of a young woman from Tucuman, jailed after being accused of an illegal abortion, and runs into a legal system that wants her to lose. Court, paperwork, and a protest movement growing outside.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Ten years into a sentence for killing her sister, a woman who says she remembers almost none of it joins a criminologist's study of family crimes. Most of it is the two of them talking in a prison.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
In 1980 the writer Goliarda Sapienza is arrested for theft and meets two much younger women inside. The friendship the three of them build carries on after they get out.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A buttoned-up lawyer is called in by his boss to account for the client he has been helping, and the conversation ends with him in a prison cell. Adapted from a Mamet play, and it is two men talking at a time.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Crime
A divorced army veteran robs fast food restaurants by cutting in through their roofs, more than forty times, and after escaping prison hides out inside a toy store. Based on a true story and played as a comedy.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Musical
Argentina, 1983: a window dresser jailed for indecency shares a cell with a political prisoner and passes the days retelling him, scene by scene, the Hollywood musical she loves. It cuts between the cell and the musical she is describing.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Thriller
In 1977 Detroit, a factory worker is framed and sent to prison by the mobster who wants his girlfriend, and comes back for him. Almost no dialogue: a rock soundtrack and the fights carry it.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A homeless young man in London, in and out of trouble and struggling with addiction, comes out of prison and tries to put a life together with a social worker's help. It stays right with him, and slips now and then into something stranger.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
In 1937, at the height of Stalin's purge, a newly qualified Soviet prosecutor reads a letter smuggled out by a prisoner, goes to see the man, and sets off for Moscow to report what he was shown. Slow and formal: prison offices, a train, a lot of waiting.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A wounded Spanish soldier is taken prisoner in Algiers in 1575 and spends five years trying to escape, finding out he can tell a story. He is the young Cervantes, and the governor takes an interest.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A fishing captain from a village near Srikakulam strays into Pakistani waters during a storm and is arrested with twenty-two of his crew. Back home, the woman he loves works to get them out.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · War
A British pilot shot down over the Philippines in 1942 is thrown into a Japanese prison camp, where the officers make prisoners fight each other for their own entertainment. Most of it is the camp and the fights.
AI estimate, not yet described
2026 · Romance
Out on parole six years after the crash that killed her boyfriend, Kenna comes home to meet the daughter she gave birth to in prison, and his parents will not let her near. His old best friend is the only one who speaks to her.
AI estimate, not yet described
2000 · Animation
The hens on a Yorkshire chicken farm keep trying to get over the fence, and then a rooster who says he can fly drops in. Stop-motion, quick, and built exactly like a prison break film.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
In Oregon in 1933, a man is taken from his daughter and put in a brutal work camp, where the warden offers early release if he will carry gold out through the wilderness. It is a hard trip with a crew he cannot count on.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Thriller
After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, thousands of Poles are held in a former monastery and worked on until they break. It narrows to a pianist and the NKVD man assigned to him.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2008 · Drama
In the Maze prison in 1981, Republican inmates refuse to wear uniforms or wash, and one of them stops eating. Barely any dialogue, one very long conversation in the middle, and a lot of time in cells.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2018 · Romance
A young couple in 1970s Harlem are pulled apart when he is jailed for something he did not do, and her family sets about proving it. Slow, warm, and full of long held looks.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Family
A small bear with very good manners takes odd jobs around London to buy his aunt a birthday present, then loses it to a thief nobody believes exists. He keeps his temper and his marmalade habit throughout.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2024 · Drama
Two Black teenagers meet at a brutal Florida reform school in the early 1960s and get each other through it. It is shot almost entirely from inside their eyes, so you see what they see and little else.
AI estimate, not yet described
2003 · Thriller
A man is locked in one room for fifteen years without being told why, then let out with a few days to find whoever did it. Violent and strange, and it moves like something is chasing it.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Drama
A woman and her five-year-old son live in a single locked room, which is the only world he has ever known. Told from the boy's side of it, in a small space with two people.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2023 · Drama
Men in a maximum security prison put on plays, and this year they are writing their own comedy, with a new member who is not sure he wants in. Mostly rehearsals and talk, played by men who were actually there.
AI estimate, not yet described
2016 · Horror
A man with many personalities takes three teenage girls and locks them in a room underground, and they have to work out which of him they are talking to. Mostly a few rooms, one actor playing most of it.
AI estimate, not yet described
2019 · Horror
In a tower prison where a table of food is lowered floor by floor, the people at the top eat first and the people below get what is left. One cell, two men at a time, and it is not shy about the point.
AI estimate, not yet described
2010 · Animation
Andy is leaving for college, and his toys end up donated to a daycare full of children who play rough. Funny and fast for children, and heavier in places than you might expect.
AI estimate, not yet described
1998 · Drama
A former neo-Nazi comes out of prison set on pulling his younger brother back from the movement he helped build. Told in two strands, the present in colour and the past in black and white.
AI estimate, not yet described
1995 · Science fiction
A convict is sent back from a ruined future to find the source of the plague that emptied the surface, and wakes up in a psychiatric ward instead. It jumps between times and asks you to keep track.
AI estimate, not yet described
1971 · Science fiction
A teenage gang leader in a near-future Britain is caught and volunteered for a treatment meant to make him incapable of violence. Stylised and cruel, and funny in ways that are hard to sit with.
AI estimate, not yet described
2014 · Comedy
A famous hotel concierge between the wars takes on a new lobby boy, inherits a painting from a wealthy guest, and is accused of her murder. It is told as a story inside a story inside a story, at speed.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2018 · Science fiction
Convicts on a ship heading for a black hole are used for fertility experiments by the doctor travelling with them. Slow, cold and out of order, with a man and a baby alone on board.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
A mechanic is sure a customer is the man who tortured him in prison, takes him, and then starts asking others to confirm it. Mostly people arguing in a van.
AI estimate, not yet described
2012 · Musical
A paroled convict in nineteenth-century France breaks parole to raise another man's daughter, with a policeman after him for twenty years. Sung almost the whole way through.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Crime
Two West Virginia brothers plan to rob a NASCAR speedway during a race, with help from a safecracker who is still in prison. Relaxed and funny, with a real plan in it.
AI estimate, not yet described
2016 · Thriller
A woman wakes from a car crash in a locked underground bunker, where the man who put her there says the air outside will kill her. Nearly all of it is three people in a few small rooms.
AI estimate, not yet described
1984 · Crime
A Jewish gangster returns to New York after thirty-five years away, and the film moves between three periods of his life. Very long, and it does not signal the jumps.
AI estimate, not yet described
1975 · Drama
A convict fakes madness to serve his sentence in a hospital instead, and finds the ward run by a nurse who never raises her voice. All of it is the one ward.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2016 · Documentary
An argument that American mass incarceration runs directly from slavery through the wording of one constitutional amendment. Archive footage and interviews throughout.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2009 · Crime
A nineteen-year-old with no family and no schooling starts a six-year sentence, and the Corsican men who run the prison put him to work. It takes its time, and the violence is sudden and close.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2021 · Drama
A man who learned to count cards in a military prison moves between casinos, and a young man asks him for help with a revenge. Very still, and mostly hotel rooms.
AI estimate, not yet described
1999 · Drama
Guards on a 1930s death row take charge of an enormous condemned man who turns out to be able to do things nobody can explain. Very long, and openly sentimental.
AI estimate, not yet described
1994 · Drama
A banker sentenced to life for a murder he says he did not commit settles into a Maine prison over two decades. Narrated by the man who gets him things.
AI estimate, not yet described
1991 · Thriller
A trainee FBI agent is sent to interview an imprisoned psychiatrist for help catching a killer who is still working. The interviews are the film.
AI estimate, not yet described
2005 · Science fiction
In a Britain run by a single party, a masked man blows up the Old Bailey and promises to return in a year. Talky, theatrical and openly political.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Science fiction
Caesar loses his family to a colonel's raid and goes after him while his people try to reach the desert. Grim, slow, and told almost entirely from the apes' side.
AI estimate, not yet described