When Women Kill

Sister Hearts

March 2018 •English

Maryam Henderson-Uloho spent thirteen years in prison in Louisiana, seven in solitary confinement. After her release she struggled to find housing or employment. She began selling secondhand goods out of a suitcase on a street corner in New Orleans. In just three years, she grew her business to a brick-and-mortar thrift store—one that also provides housing and employment for other formerly-incarcerated women. She calls those women—and her store—Sister Hearts.

Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street

March 2000 •English

The film follows a simple structure, and shows the drug-related degradation of five youths (Jake, Tracey, Jessica, Alice, Oreo) during the course of three years. The film depicts drug-related crimes and diseases: prostitution, male prostitution, AIDS, and lethal overdoses.

Born in Evin

October 2019 •German

Follows filmmaker and actress, Maryam Zaree, on her quest to find out the violent circumstances surrounding her birth inside one of the most notorious political prisons in the world.

In Paradisum

September 1993 •Estonian

In Paradisum relates two disturbing stories simultaneously. The female narrator tells her personal tale of imprisonment as the wife of the notorious Estonian serial killer, Andreas Hanni. Although her story is bizarre, it touches familiar themes that run throughout modern life: the desire to be loved and the fear of being alone. Pille Hanni's tale unfolds over cinema vérité images of life in several Estonian prisons. At times the images reflect in a literary way the events of the narration, yet they are representations and impressions, rather than traditional documentary style footage of the people involved. This opens the story to a more general interpretation, often with unsettling results. The parallel contents reveal, at two levels of story and social organisation, how the bizarre and inhuman can be tolerable and even addictive in the face of our fears.

Debut

November 2017 •Russian

The soulless atmosphere of a women's penitentiary destroys the prisoners' personality, kills all femininity in them. The film looks at the rationality of the long prison terms for women with children.

Women Behind Bars with Trevor McDonald

September 2013 •English

Trevor McDonald goes to Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana to speak with some of the women that live there.

Cages

July 2017 •Portuguese

The final months of pregnancy and the first ones after the birth of a baby are unique experiences in a woman's life. And when this daily life is lived inside a prison?

Like a Rose

Invalid date •English

A short documentary from 1975 about two women serving 25 years in a Missouri penitentiary. Made with an all-female crew.

Ashley Smith : Out of Control

January 2010 •English

Ashley Smith was a troubled 19-year-old when she choked herself to death at Ontario's Grand Valley Institution for Women. Her death made national headlines and led to a scathing report by Canada’s federal prison ombudsman. Incarceration for Ashley began at a youth detention centre in New Brunswick. Her crime: she had tossed crabapples at a mailman. Her one-month sentence stretched to almost four years, served in five provinces. With the prison videotapes and exclusive access to Smith’s parents, along with a fellow inmate, this documentary exposes a system that fails the many Ashley Smiths still incarcerated in Canadian institutions.

Free CeCe

June 2016 •English

This film confronts the culture of violence surrounding trans women of color. It is told through the voices of Laverne Cox and Cece McDonald.

Women's Prison

April 1965 •Persian

Women's Prison recounts the life of the prisoners and the problems their families encounter in their struggle to survive. Here again filmmaker Kamran Shirdel employs the cinema verité style. The interviews with the prisoners, social workers and teachers serve as commentaries for "constructed" documentary images.

Máma z basy

September 2017 •Czech

Die Kinder sind tot

March 2004 •English

A documentary exploring a crime that shocked Germany in the summer of 1999.

Of Monsters and Skirts

January 2008 •Catalan

Libertad, Enriqueta, Maricarmen and Albert evoke the years when their mothers and his aunt stayed in Les Corts jail, times of innocence, hopelessness and distress. Their childhood stories inmmerse us in a world whose main characters are memories, oblivion and the passing of time.

Caged Hearts

March 1996 •English

Kate and Sharon kill a man in self defense and are framed by the justice system. They are put in prison and forced into prostitution. With the help of their defense attorney, they devise a plan to bust out of prison and hopefully expose the group of corrupt politicians, judges, lawyers, etc. who put them there in the first place.

Caged Fear

May 1991 •English

After a jewelry theft Tommy Lane can hardly free. His girlfriend Kristen has less luck and is arrested. She's sentenced to jail in an ill-reputed female prison in Oklahoma. Tommy doesn't let her down; he manages to get into the prison - on the other side of the bars - to force the ruthless director to let her go.

Chained Heat 2001: Slave Lovers

January 2001 •English

There is no possibility of escape from slavery in the New Territories: the choice is simple, the mine slave mines or love slave.

Thunder County

January 1974 •English

Four women escape from a prison and wind up stranded in a swamp with a lecherous redneck after them. Meanwhile, an federal agent tracks a ring of heroin smugglers through the same swamp.

Mujer de cabaret

April 1991 •Spanish

Alicia Conde is famous and successful cabaret singer is going to marry Octavio and quit her career. But this Octavio turns to be a gambler and in a few months he loses all family's fortune. Alicia decided to come back to that cabaret and sing again. The cabaret owner Don Lalo wants her to be his love and his girlfriend Elena finds out about it. She kills him and makes people and police think that Alicia is guilty for this murder. Being imprisoned Alicia must find a prove that she's innocent. And the only prove is a VHS with the record of that murder which was stolen from Elena by her ex-lover. Alicia goes through beatings, humiliation, takes drugs and finally faces with Elena and her ex-lover to get the prove of her innocence...

Double Jeopardy

September 1999 •English

Libby Parsons, wrongly convicted for her husband Nick's murder, thinks he is still alive and wants to settle the score and find their son. As she has been tried for the crime, she cannot be re-prosecuted if she finds and kills Nick.