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.

Egypt, nicknamed "the mother of the world" by its people, is unrecognizable. Gigantic construction sites have sprung up in the desert at an exponential rate, including roads, bridges, and megaprojects on the Mediterranean coast. This new Egypt is an illusion: in 10 years, the population has sunk into unprecedented poverty. The regime shows no mercy to the poor. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the new pharaoh, and his army have set up a pyramid-shaped financial system, built on subsidies from major international institutions—including the European Union—and foreign investment. The most populous nation in the Arab world finds itself on the brink of collapse.
2025

An ex mobster reflects on love and loss after spending 32 years in prison.
2024

This documentary is about the Athens Ripper, but aims to address not only the rising tide of femicides in Greece, and how often these tragedies are overlooked, misrepresented, or forgotten by the media; but also raise awareness on sexual assault. Femicides are not isolated incidents. They are part of a broader pattern of violence against women, often driven by deeply ingrained misogyny; as well as violence towards men. All which are occurring more often than we might think. Often the media reduces victims' stories to shocking headlines, disregarding the warning signs, and the failures within a society that allow such tragedies to persist. We need to break the silence surrounding violence against women and men, and through this documentary, I hope to shed light not only on the past crimes of the Athens Ripper, but also on the issue of sexual assault that is occurring, right at our front door.
2024

Preschool to Prison is a compelling examination of how the United States public school system is built and operated like prisons. Zero-tolerance policies are used to justify suspension and arrests that set up a pathway to send children of color and children with special needs from school to prison. Children are being suspended, restrained, dragged, physically manhandled, and subsequently arrested for minor offenses such as throwing candy on a school bus. These personal accounts from people affected by the school-to-prison pipeline give riveting tales about the generational impact on society.
2023

America has a fascination with serial killers. Many of them are household names, Ted Bundy, John Wade Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer. But there is another group of serial killers with even higher body counts. However, chances are you've never heard of Samuel Little, The Grim Sleeper, or The Sunday Morning Slasher. Combined these men have 85 confirmed murders. There are no books, movies, or television shows about these killers. Why? Because they are black serial killers. Filmmaker Sean Reid explores black serial killers and the lack of public information and media representation about them. Reid interviews Allan Branson, a criminal justice professor. Branson discusses the history of African-American serial killers and the negative stereotypes and biases that have influenced their portrayal in the media.
2023

An LA serial killer goes silent for decades – but he was just warming up.
2021

New exclusive access and never before heard testimony gives a unique insight into the mind of America's most notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy. Breathtaking archive from the time and the voice of Bundy himself, reveals the monster inside the man.
2019

Out of State is the unlikely story of native Hawaiians men discovering their native culture as prisoners in the desert of Arizona, 3,000 miles, and across the ocean, from their island home.
2017

During a three-month period in 1888, a knife-wielding serial killer murdered six women on the streets of Whitechapel. Their throats were cut and their bodies horribly mutilated. He was never caught and his identity remains one of the world's greatest crime mysteries. In the years that have passed since Jack the Ripper's killing spree, many high-profile suspects have been suggested, yet the fact remains that none of them can be placed at any of the crime scenes. Now, journalist Christer Holmgren believes that he has found a suspect who can not only be linked directly to one of the murders but also whose daily routine could be consistent with all the other deaths
2014

Three boys, they all committed murder. After discovering their haunting faces and disturbing stories in a banned prison documentary from 1984, the filmmaker goes out to find them and discovers untold secrets and a Hungary he has never known.
2014

Four-time Emmy winner John Kastner was granted unprecedented access to the Brockville facility for 18 months, allowing 46 patients and 75 staff to share their experiences with stunning frankness. The result is two remarkable documentaries: the first, NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, premiered at Hot Docs in the spring of 2013 and follows the story of a violent patient released into the community. The second film, Out of Mind, Out of Sight, returns to the Brockville Mental Health Centre to profile four patients, two men and two women, as they struggle to gain control over their lives so they can return to a society that often fears and demonizes them.
2014
Retrospective documentary on the making of the low-budget horror film Prison (1987)
2013

An inside look at the notorious Sing Sing Correctional Facility, where one of the U.S.’s only in-prison college programs, Hudson Link, offers long-time inmates an education – and a new lease on life.
2011

Occurring from the mid-1970s to 1981, the Ripper committed 13 murders. Viewed as ritualistic in nature, they were done with extreme brutality as he mocked the police during their desperate hunt for him. The victims were primiarly prostitutes or poor girls, with a few working girls tossed in. Generally he would hit a victim on the head with a hammer, sexually assault the lady, mutilate her, and then redress/re-arrangement the clothing and cover the corpse with her own coat.
1999

The Big One is an investigative documentary from director Michael Moore who goes around the country asking why big American corporations produce their product abroad where labor is cheaper while so many Americans are unemployed, losing their jobs, and would happily be hired by such companies as Nike.
1997

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.
1996

Gory real-life footage of blood and guts on the German Autobahn, drug smugglers getting blown away, a parachutist landing in a crocodile pit, torture and murder in El Salvador, a PCP addict getting stoned, a videotaped rape/murder, a car thief getting ripped apart by two junkyard dogs, and much more.
1985
Between 1962 and 1966, sex murderer Jurgen Bartsch cruelly tortured and killed four children in an old air raid bunker in Germany. This documentary examines the personality of the killer who died in 1976 during voluntary castration surgery at the age of 30. Vilified by the press for his heinous crime, Bartsch also became a case study for famous found criminal psychologists like Alice Miller (who maintains that no one abuses without being abused as a child, and murderers tend to have their own childhood abuse denied by the adults around them). Bartsch never met his birth parents, he was raised in a clinic and later adopted by a cold, unaffectionate couple. By the age of 15, he tortured and killed his first child victim. This informative, fact-filled documentary provides enough details for viewers to come away with a broader understanding of the nature of the criminally insane and society's role in their formation.
1985

The film 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.
1965
