Beyond Punishment

Night and Fog

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Stranger with a Camera

In 1967 Canadian filmmaker Hugh O'Connor came with a crew to eastern Kentucky to make a film showing people from all walks of life in the United States. They finished the day by filming coal miners and their families in rental houses. As the filmmakers were leaving, Hobart Ison, the owner of the property, drove up and fired three shots, killing Hugh O'Connor. Elizabeth Barrett, from Kentucky herself, explores why this happened by trying to understand the people and culture of eastern Kentucky.

Last Days of Solitary

In 2011, Maine State Prison launched a pioneering reform program to scale back its use of solitary confinement. Bafta and Emmy-winning film-maker Dan Edge and his co-director Lauren Mucciolo were given unprecedented access to the solitary unit - and filmed there for more than three years. The result is an extraordinary and harrowing portrait of life in solitary - and a unique document of a radical and risky experiment to reform a prison. The US is the world leader in solitary confinement. More than 80,000 American prisoners live in isolation, some have been there for years, even decades. Solitary is proven to cause mental illness, it is expensive, and it is condemned by many as torture. And yet for decades, it has been one of the central planks of the American criminal justice system.

My Life Inside

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.

Rashawn's Desire: The Untold Story of Rashawn Brazell

RASHAWN'S DESIRE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF RASHAWN BRAZELL is a feature-length documentary film that closely examines the story behind the 2005 murder of 19-year-old Rashawn Brazell of New York City, whose dismembered body parts were found on a trackbed in a subway station in what one magazine referred to as the "most horrific murder since Jack the Ripper." Through in-depth examination of the sensational media coverage of the case and interviews with those who knew Rashawn best, the film tells the story of who Rashawn Brazell truly was, what likely led to the crime, the stalled investigation and one determined mother's continuing quest to find justice for her son.

Why Did You Kill Me?

The line between justice and revenge blurs when a devastated family uses social media to track down the people who killed 24-year-old Crystal Theobald.

Au nom de mon frère : les derniers jours de Samuel Paty

The documentary, devoted to the last days of the professor who was tragically beheaded by an Islamist terrorist. This film highlights the failings of the state and the national education system in this deeply disturbing case.

Truth and Lies: The Family Manson

ABC retells the dark, disturbing story of Manson — and his twisted cult of devoted followers he instructed to carry out a series of grisly homicides in 1969. In this two-hour documentary.

Tupac Assassination: Battle For Compton

The unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace still stir the public's imagination after 20 years. Yet law enforcement has been at a standstill to produce results. The producers of "American Federale" and the first two "Assassination" films, finally unravel the tangled cases and expose not only who may have done it, but also why these cases have never seen justice. Battle For Compton" is the story of "The Machine"; a group of high powered individuals with a very dark secret they killed to keep, and have spent the last 20 years hiding- hoping one day it will all go away- before they do.

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson

Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a legendary fixture in New York City’s gay ghetto and a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall, who along with fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera, founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. Structured as a whodunit, with activist Victoria Cruz cast as detective and audience surrogate, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson celebrates the lasting political legacy of Johnson, while seeking to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death.

Crimes of Honour

Throughout the Islamic world, each year hundreds of women are shot, stabbed, strangled or burned to death by male relatives because they are thought to have “dishonoured” their families. They may have lost their virginity, refused an arranged marriage or left an abusive husband. Even if a woman is raped or merely the victim of gossip, she must pay the price. Crimes of Honour documents the terrible reality of femicide – the belief that a girl’s body is the property of the family, and any suggestion of sexual impropriety must be cleansed with her blood. We meet women in hiding from their families, a brother who describes his reasons for killing the sister he loved, and a handful of women who have committed themselves to the protection of young women in danger of losing their lives.

The Mystery of Murder: A Horizon Guide

There are about 600 murders each year in the UK. So, what drives people to kill? Are some people born to kill or are they driven to it by circumstances? Michael Mosley delves into the BBC archives to chart scientists' progress as they probed the mind of the murderer to try to understand why people kill, and to find out whether by understanding murder we can prevent it.

Killed by Our Daughter: The McCullough Murders

Virginia McCullough murdered her parents and lived with their bodies for four years.

Nach dem Mord an Theo van Gogh

A Year Of British Murder

Between January 1st and 31 December 2017, 768 people died as a result of murder or manslaughter in Britain - approximately 14 people a week. This powerful and original film tells the stories of some of those cases, exploring the human cost of murder - the ordinary people whose lives are changed forever and the communities left to wrestle with the consequences. Filmed over 12 months, it follows families and friends from the immediate aftermath of the crime, through the court process, and as they try to rebuild their lives. These stories are shown alongside statistical analysis of homicide figures for Britain since the Millennium, which reveal that so far this century, the pattern of homicides has remained strikingly similar in terms of the profiles of victims and the circumstances of the killing. This urgent, unflinching and intimate film goes beyond individual incidents to ask what the patterns of murder in our time say about the state of Britain.

The American Hobo: History of the Railriding Worker

Ernest Borgnine, star of the classic train movie Emperor of the North, hosts and narrates this remarkable examination of the uniquely American Hobo.

Homicide Hunter: Never Give Up

The unsolved rape, mutilation and murder of young G.I. Darlene Krashoc has haunted Joe Kenda in the years since he turned in his gun and badge. Until a crack team of cold case cops uses Kenda’s groundwork to set a trap for a monster hiding in plain sight.

Murder by the Coast

In 1999, teen Rocío Wanninkhof is murdered. Her mother's ex-partner, Dolores Vázquez, is suspected. Did she do it? A second victim reveals the truth.

The Trial

Mihai Moldoveanu, a former Romanian army officer, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars for a crime he claims he did not commit. Following a long series of attempts to prove his innocence, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Moldoveanu's favor in June 2012. The documentary follows him after his provisional release and focuses on the referral of the case and the consequences of the new sentence, giving the viewer the role of a juror in a complicated and controversial lawsuit.

How Police Missed the Grindr Killer

The story of how police repeatedly allowed a serial murderer to slip through their fingers. Stephen Port date-raped and murdered four young gay men in East London within fifteen months and dumped all four bodies within a few hundred metres of each other. The film tells the story through eyes of the families of Port's victims, unpicking how the police failed to properly investigate each of the deaths in turn. The police's assumptions that these young gay men had died from self-inflicted overdoses of chem-sex drugs allowed Port to continue raping and killing innocent young men.