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The Rosenbergs: Atomic Spies

Based on testimony by Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, the Rosenbergs are arrested by the FBI. The couple is accused of passing secret information about the atomic bomb to the USSR. Though the Rosenbergs maintain their innocence from the start, the media and public opinion seem to have condemned them from day one. The trial does nothing to change this and ends in a death sentence. On Friday June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed in the electric chair. Julius first, then Ethel. 30 years later, the truth finally comes out. Declassified FBI archives reveal that Ethel was not guilty of being a spy; she was merely married to one. Julius did indeed commit espionage for the Soviet Union, though primarily as a recruiter, nothing at all like the fictional James Bond. This documentary, made entirely of archival footage and animated illustrations, offers a tale of espionage as well as a complex family tragedy.

2025

Free Chol Soo Lee

On June 3, 1973, a man was murdered in a busy intersection of San Francisco’s Chinatown as part of an ongoing gang war. Chol Soo Lee, a 20-year-old Korean immigrant who had previous run-ins with the law, was arrested and convicted based on flimsy evidence and the eyewitness accounts of white tourists who couldn’t distinguish between Asian features. Sentenced to life in prison, Chol Soo Lee would spend years fighting to survive behind bars before journalist K.W. Lee took an interest in his case. The intrepid reporter’s investigation would galvanize a first-of-its-kind pan-Asian American grassroots movement to fight for Chol Soo Lee’s freedom, ultimately inspiring a new generation of social justice activists.

2022

Vraies gueules d'assassins

2022

La guillotine, une invention bien française

Forty years after the abolition of the death penalty in France, voted on September 18, 1981, the guillotine remains in the collective imagination as the instrument of the death sentence. This machine, developed during the Revolution to render justice more equal, was presented as progress. Over time, opinion has been divided on the subject of the death penalty, the guillotine becoming the object of man's cruelty, a remnant of an archaic way of dispensing justice and fuelling the many debates around the death penalty and its abolition.

2021

Robert Badinter, la vie avant tout

In September 2021, France will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty. A decision so strong that it will symbolize, in itself, the first seven years of François Mitterrand. For Robert Badinter, it was the fight of a lifetime, rooted in a personal history marked by the rejection of injustice, which began after the arrest of his father by the Gestapo in 1943. A story told through archives and by his family and closest friends.

2021

10 mai 1981 : Changer la vie ?

Fourty years ago, in May 1981, with François Mitterrand's election, some people were letting themselves dream about a better life while others were predicting the coming of soviet tanks upon the Champs-Élysées. If we gladly remember the turning point of austerity in 83, there were also the wage rises, the fifth week of paid leave, the abolition of death penalty, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, or the advent of independent radio stations. Rare archives and accounts by those who were at the heart of this story give an overview of it and shed light on lesser-known aspects.

2021

Freedom for Asia Bibi

Depicts the case of religious persecution suffered by the Christian Pakistani Asia Bibi (Aasiya Noreen), falsely accused of blasphemy in 2010 by a Pakistani court and was sentenced to death by hanging. In October 2018, the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her based on insufficient evidence, though she was not allowed to leave Pakistan until the verdict was reviewed. She was held under armed guard and was not able to leave the country until 7 May 2019; she arrived in Canada the next day.

2018

Death and the Judge

The documentary, " Death and the Judge", revolves around Iran's most famous criminal judge, Azizmohammadi. He served as a criminal judge for 45 years and issued about 4500 death sentences; a record in not only Iran, but also the world. This documentary looks into his personal and professional life as he is followed within his home with his family, in the court of law, and in his retirement days. The ultimate purpose of the documentary is to deduce the role of death in the judge's life as he either takes life away from criminals or death comes to his loved ones. During his retirement, he is once again given the choice between the life and death of a person, despite no longer being a judge.

2018

My Dad's on Death Row

This documentary explores two horrific stories. With haunting interviews with the killers, plus emotional exchanges with the daughters.

2016

The Devil and the Death Penalty

This documentary recounts the dysfunctional state of the death penalty in the state of California by revisiting the crimes, arrest, trials and appeals of Lawrence Bittaker, a convicted serial killer who has been on death row at San Quentin since 1981.

2012

Into the Abyss

We do not know when and how we will die. Death Row inmates do. Werner Herzog embarks on a dialogue with Death Row inmates, asks questions about life and death and looks deep into these individuals, their stories, their crimes.

2011

The World's Worst Place to Be Gay?

Scott Mills travels to Uganda where the death penalty could soon be introduced for being gay. The gay Radio 1 DJ finds out what it's like to live in a society which persecutes people like him and meets those who are leading the hate campaign.

2011

Executing the Insane: The Case of Scott Panetti

Scott Panetti was tried for the capital murder of his parents-in-law on September 8, 1992 in Gillespie County, Texas. He was subsequently sentenced to death on September 22, 1995. Panetti has an extensive history of mental illness, including schizophrenia, manic depression, auditory hallucinations and paranoia. Panetti was hospitalized, both voluntarily and involuntarily for mental illness fourteen times in six different hospitals before his arrest for capital murder in 1992. Following his conviction, Panetti’s former wife, and daughter of the victims, Sonja Alvarado, filed a petition stating that Panetti never should have been tried for the crimes as he was suffering from paranoid delusions at the time of the killings.

2007

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

2005

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Interviewing an increasingly mentally unstable Wuornos, Broomfield captures the distorted mind of a murderer whom the state of Florida deems of sound mind -- and therefore fit to execute. Throughout the film, Broomfield includes footage of his testimony at Wuornos' trial.

2003

The Virtual Corpse

Documentary about the first human to donate his body to science so that it could be studied in the form of a 3D database of the entire anatomy that is available to view online. Convicted killer Joseph Paul Jernigan donated his body to science shortly before he was executed in 1993 and this documentary examines what took place after his death by lethal injection.

2003

The Execution Machine: Texas Death Row

Explores the realities of death-row inmates inside Huntsville (Texas) Unit, a prison with the highest number of executions in 1997. Features interviews with prisoners, guards, officials, lawyers and victims' family members.

1997

Procedure 769: The Witnesses to an Execution

Procedure 769 is the document that lays down how a prisoner is to be executed. For the first time in 25 years the procedure was again followed in California, USA. On April 21, 1992, just before 6 am, Robert Harris stepped into the bright green light. All witnesses had a valid reason to watch. For one is was a democratic duty, another wanted to see justice served, some wanted to help the condemned in the last moments of his life. They all looked at the same: a dying man. Yet each saw different things happen.

1995

The Thin Blue Line

This unique documentary dramatically re-enacts the crime scene and investigation of a police officer's murder in Dallas.

1988

The Last Judgement

A man is facing a trial for murdering a Latvian union leader, which more likely than not will end with a death sentence. A close-up look at his emotional journey through the trial, imprisonment and beyond.

1987