The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 American prison drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the 1982 Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The film tells the story of banker Andy Dufresne, who is sentenced to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murders of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. Over the following two decades, he befriends a fellow prisoner, contraband smuggler Ellis "Red" Redding, and becomes instrumental in a money laundering operation led by the prison warden Samuel Norton. William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, and James Whitmore appear in supporting roles.
Midnight Express is a 1978 prison drama film directed by Alan Parker and adapted by Oliver Stone from Billy Hayes's 1977 memoir of the same name. The film centers on Hayes, a young American student, who is sent to a Turkish prison for trying to smuggle hashish out of the country. The film's title is prison slang for his escape attempt. The cast also features Irene Miracle, John Hurt, Bo Hopkins, Paul L. Smith and Randy Quaid.
Kingston Penitentiary is a former maximum security prison located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, between King Street West and Lake Ontario.
Each winner of the 1978 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.
East Jersey State Prison is a medium-security prison operated by the New Jersey Department of Corrections in Avenel, Woodbridge Township, New Jersey. It was established in 1896 as Rahway State Prison, and was the first reformatory in New Jersey, officially opening in 1901. It housed 1,227 inmates as of 2020.
Roger "Mad Dog" Caron was a Canadian robber and the author of the influential prison memoir Go-Boy! Memories of a Life Behind Bars (1978). At the time of publishing, Caron was 39 years old and had spent 23 years in prison.
Pixote: a Lei do Mais Fraco is a 1980 Brazilian crime drama film directed by Héctor Babenco. The screenplay was written by Babenco and Jorge Durán, based on the book A Infância dos Mortos by José Louzeiro. The film is a docudrama account of Brazil's lower classes youth exposure to organized crime and police corruption.
The Montreal World Film Festival, commonly abbreviated MWFF in English or FFM in French, was an annual film festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada from 1977 to 2019. Founded and run throughout its lifetime by Serge Losique, it was the only competitive film festival in North America accredited by the FIAPF..
The Ohio State Reformatory (OSR), also known as the Mansfield Reformatory, is a historic prison located in Mansfield, Ohio in the United States. It was built between 1886 and 1910 and remained in operation until 1990, when a United States Federal Court ruling ordered the facility to be closed. While this facility was seen in a number of films, TV shows and music videos, it was made famous by the film The Shawshank Redemption (1994) when it was used for most scenes of the movie. The Ohio State Reformatory is currently open to tourists.
John Herbert was the pen name of John Herbert Brundage, a Canadian playwright, drag queen, and theatre director best known for his 1967 play Fortune and Men's Eyes.
Stephen Reid was a Canadian criminal and writer, who was a member of the notorious Stopwatch Gang and was also convicted twice of bank robbery. Reid served time in over 20 prisons in Canada and the United States.
The Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW) is a state prison for women owned and operated by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in Marysville, Ohio. It opened in September 1916, when 34 female inmates were transferred from the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. ORW is a multi-security, state facility. As of July 2019, 2,394 female inmates were living at the prison ranging from minimum-security inmates all the way up to one inmate on death row. It was the fifth prison in the United States, in modern times, to open a nursery for imprisoned mothers and their babies located within the institution. The Achieving Baby Care Success (ABC) program was the first in the state to keep infants with their mothers.
Fifty Dead Men Walking is a 2008 English-language crime thriller film written and directed by Kari Skogland. It is a loose adaptation of Martin McGartland's 1997 autobiography of the same name. It premiered in September 2008, and stars Jim Sturgess as McGartland, a British agent who went undercover into the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), and Ben Kingsley as Fergus, his British handler.
The Munich International Film Festival is the largest summer film festival in Germany and second only in size and importance to the Berlinale. It has been held annually since 1983 and takes place in late June or early July. The latest festival was held from June 23 to July 2, 2022. It presents feature films and feature-length documentaries. The festival is also proud of the role it plays in discovering talented and innovative young filmmakers. With the exception of retrospectives, tributes and homages, all of the films screened are German premieres and many are European and world premieres. There are a dozen competitions with prizes worth over €250,000 which are donated by the festival's major sponsors and partners.
Dylan Mohan Gray is an Indian and Canadian filmmaker. His documentary feature film Fire in the Blood, premiered in competition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and went on to enjoy the longest theatrical run of any non-fiction film in Indian cinema history . An official selection at over 100 leading film festivals which was honoured with major awards and accolades worldwide, Fire in the Blood altered the global conversation around access to essential medicine, and in 2018 was named one of "26 landmark documentary films of the past seven decades" in a major retrospective curated by legendary documentarian John Pilger.
Omar August Pinson, also known as John Omar Pinson, was an American robber and murderer who was on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1950.
Edwin Alonzo Boyd: The Story of the Notorious Boyd Gang is a non-fiction book written by Brian Vallée. It was published in 1997 by Doubleday Canada. This work revolves around the life of notorious Canadian bank robber Edwin Alonzo Boyd and his role in the Boyd Gang. Vallée worked closed with Boyd in the writing of this book and spent considerable time interviewing Boyd about his memories of his criminal career.
The Old Man & the Gun is a 2018 American biographical crime film written and directed by David Lowery, about Forrest Tucker, a career criminal and prison escape artist. The script is loosely based on David Grann's 2003 article in The New Yorker titled "The Old Man and the Gun", which was later collected in Grann's 2010 book The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. The film stars Robert Redford, Casey Affleck, Danny Glover, Tika Sumpter, Tom Waits and Sissy Spacek. Redford, then 82 years old, announced his intent to retire from acting after completion of the film.
On Her Shoulders is a 2018 American documentary film. It was directed by Alexandria Bombach and produced by Hayley Pappas, Brock Williams and Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown under the banner of RYOT Films. The film follows Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad on her three-month tour of Berlin, New York, and Canada, as she met with politicians and journalists to alert the world to the massacres and kidnapping happening in her native land. In 2014, at the age of 19, Murad had been kidnapped with hundreds of other women and girls by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and held as a sex slave; she managed to escape. Also appearing in the film are Barack Obama, Ban Ki-moon, Murad Ismael, Simone Monasebian, Michelle Rempel, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Ahmed Khudida Burjus, Amal Clooney, and Luis Moreno Ocampo.
Destination Marfa is a 2021 American science fiction film written and directed by Andy Stapp and starring Tony Todd, Stelio Savante, Tracy Perez, Richard Riehle, and Neil Sandilands. In 2021 Andy Stapp was awarded Hollywood's Best First-Time Filmmaker The film is inspired by the legendary phenomenon of the Marfa lights which are a popular tourist attraction year round culminating with a celebration in the form of the Marfa Lights Festival. The film has won both domestically & internationally Best Writer x 2, Best Director x 6, Best Trailer x 2, Best Sci-fi feature x 7, Best Horror, Best Actor x 2, Best Editor x 2, Best Visual Effects x 2, Best Debut Film, Exceptional Merit in Film, International Platinum Film, Best Feature at European Cinema, Best Sound Design at European International, Best Producer, Honorable mention in Athens, Greece, and an Honorable Mention at Hollywood New Directors. Destination Marfa was in the top 5% success rate for selections at movie festivals in 2021 as well as 2022. It was selected at Manhattan, New York Filmfest, Toronto, Canada International Filmfest, Montreal, Canada Independent Filmfest, Los Angeles, California Scifi FilmFest, North Hollywood, California Cinefest, Athens, Greece, Miami, Florida, Seattle, Washington, Kilgore, Texas, International Filmfest in Italy, World Carnival Filmfest in Singapore, Ediplay Filmfest in Paris, France, Dubai, UAE, Colorado Springs, Colorado, West Virginia, Boston, Maryland, Reims, France, India, Newark, New Jersey, Las Vegas, Nevada, Austin, Texas, Italy, Stanley Kubrick Film Awards, Hollywood New Directors, and The So You Think You Can Direct/Act Competition in Delaware.
