Crime & Punishment

Crime & Punishment

Crime, fictionalized or “true”, the go-to zone of our streaming world. While we pick through evidence and revel in mystery in our own special ways, OVID also makes space for some other angles — including the blatant injustices of our punishment industries (WHEN JUSTICE ISN’T JUST, AMERICA’S BRUTAL PRISONS...) or the stories of a choice few defendants who might have got away (THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER, THE PINOCHET CASE….).

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Crime & Punishment
  • Mafioso, Into the Heart of Darkness

    Directed by Mosco Levi Boucault • Documentary • 2022 • 52 minutes

    They claimed to be “men of honour”. In reality, they were killers for the Cosa Nostra (Sicily). Arrested in the early 1990s, they chose to work with the Italian justice and obtained the status of “pentiti” (state witnesses). Three...

  • Let the Fire Burn

    Directed by Jason Osder • Documentary • 2013 • 95 minutes

    In the astonishingly gripping Let the Fire Burn, director Jason Osder has crafted that rarest of cinematic objects: a found-footage film that unfurls with the tension of a great thriller. On May 13, 1985, a longtime feud between the city ...

  • The Shooting on Mole Street

    Directed by Mosco Boucault • Documentary • 1998 • 90 minutes

    On March 1, 1996, 15-year-old Shafeeq Murrel was killed on the street in South Philadelphia — innocently caught in the crossfire between rival pairs of crack dealers out for revenge. Shafeeq’s murder was one of 435 in Philadelphia that...

  • Ok, Joe!

    Directed by Philippe Baron • Documentary • 2024 • 52 minutes

    After the landing of the Allied forces in 1944, writer Louis Guilloux was recruited as an interpreter for the American army. He would soon be confronted with the dark side of liberation: the rapes and murders committed by American sold...

  • Robe of Gems

    Directed by Natalia López Gallardo • Drama • With Nailea Norvind, Antonia Olivares • 2022 • 117 minutes

    In the midst of a silent divorce, Isabel (Nailea Norvind) leaves the city with her two children for her family's abandoned country house. She soon discovers that the sister of her housekeeper,...

  • Roubaix, Police Department, Ordinary Business

    Directed by Mosco Boucault • Documentary • 2007 • 87 minutes

    A teenage runaway. A stabbing spree during a Christmas dinner that leaves multiple casualties. A series of sexual assaults in a subway station. This is the “ordinary business” that police in the working class northern French town of Ro...

  • South

    Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 1999 • 70 minutes

    Inspired by her love of William Faulkner and James Baldwin, renowned director Chantal Akerman had planned to produce a meditation on the American South. However, just days before she was to begin filming, James Byrd, Jr. was murdered ...

  • Tribal Justice

    Directed by Anne Makepeace • Documentary • 2017 • 87 minutes

    TRIBAL JUSTICE is a feature documentary about a little known, underreported but effective criminal justice reform movement in America today: the efforts of tribal courts to create alternative justice systems based on their traditions. ...

  • Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery

    Directed by Arne Birkenstock • Documentary • With Wolfgang Beltracchi, Henrik Hanstein, Sofia Komarova • 2015 • 93 minutes

    For nearly 40 years, Wolfgang Beltracchi fooled the international art world and was responsible for the biggest art forgery scandal of the postwar era. An expert in art hist...

  • Obscene

    Directed by Daniel O'Connor, Neil Ortenberg • Documentary • With Barney Rosset, Amiri Baraka, Lawrence Ferlinghetti • 2007 • 97 minutes

    OBSCENE is the definitive film biography of Barney Rosset, the influential publisher of Grove Press and the Evergreen Review. He acquired the then fledgling Gro...

  • Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?

    Directed by Travis Wilkerson • Documentary • 2018 • 90 minutes

    “In 1946, my great-grandfather murdered a black man named Bill Spann and got away with it.” So begins Travis Wilkerson’s critically acclaimed documentary, Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?, which takes us on a journey through the Ame...

  • Stealing Rodin

    Directed by Cristóbal Valenzuela Berríos • Documentary • 2017 • 80 minutes

    In the style of Exit Through the Gift Shop, Stealing Rodin is a critical and humorous statement about Art and the market around it. The documentary traces the story of Luis Onfray’s artistic and criminal act. In 2005, the...

  • The Trials of Henry Kissinger

    Directed by Eugene Jarecki • Documentary • With Henry Kissinger, Brian Cox, Amy Goodman, Alexander Haig, William Safire, Seymour Hersh • 2002 • 80 minutes

    Featuring previously unseen footage, de-classified documents, and revealing interviews with Kissinger supporters (Alexander Haig, Brent Scowc...

  • About Executing Eichmann

    Directed by Florence Jammot • Documentary • 2014 • 60 minutes

    On December 15, 1961 in Jerusalem, Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death for crimes against the Jewish people and against humanity. While this judgment was met with consensus on a national level, some spoke out against it. On May 29, ...

  • This Stolen Country of Mine (w/ Fernando Villavicencio)

    Directed by Marc Wiese • Documentary • With Paúl Jarrín Mosquera, Fernando Villavicencio • 2022 • 93 minutes

    Chinese mining in Ecuador’s mountains sets the stage for an epic battle between eco-guerrillas and a corrupt government in an intensely dramatic documentary.

    This Stolen Country of Mine ...

  • Though I Am Gone

    Directed by Hu Jie • Documentary • 2007 • 68 minutes

    Pioneering filmmaker Hu Jie uncovers the tragic story of a teacher beaten to death by her students during the Cultural Revolution.

    In 1966, the Cultural Revolution exploded throughout China, as Mao's Red Guards persecuted suspected Rightists....

  • Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island

    Directed by Heidi Hutner • Documentary • 2023 • 77 minutes

    In this thrilling feminist documentary, indomitable women fight back against the nuclear industry to expose one of the worst cover-ups in U.S. history.

    RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island is an award-winning film about the 1979 ...

  • Excellent Cadavers

    Directed by Marco Turco • Documentary • 2006 • 92 minutes

    Based on the book by Italian-American author Alexander Stille and featuring the photos of Sicilian photojournalist Letizia Battaglia, EXCELLENT CADAVERS chronicles the recent history of the Mafia and its integral—and seemingly ineradicabl...

  • Seduced and Blackmailed

    Directed by Aldo Gugolz and Romeo Regenass • Documentary • 2012 • 51 minutes

    Helg Sgarbi, a Swiss man with a radiant smile, tries to extort 14 million Euro from BMW’s major shareholder Susanne Klatten by threatening to publish intimate photos. 

    Susanne Klatten however, isn't afraid: the richest...

  • Red Squad

    Directed by Steven Fischler, Joel Sucher, Howard Blatt and Francis Freedland • Documentary • 1972 • 45 minutes

    An investigative (but frequently humorous) documentary on the surveillance activities of the New York City Police Department's Bureau of Special Services, known as the Red Squad.

  • Next Time I'll Aim for the Heart

    Directed by Cédric Anger • Drama • With Guillaume Canet, Ana Girardot, Jean-Yves Berteloot • 2016 • 111 minutes

    Cédric Anger, once a critic for Cahiers du Cinéma, wrote and directed this chilling chronicle of notorious serial killer Alain Lamare (here renamed Franck Neuhart and played by Guillau...

  • Latin Kings: A Street Gang Story

    Directed by Jon Alpert • Documentary • 2003 • 75 minutes

    Assembled by DCTV co-founder, award-winning documentarian Jon Alpert, LATIN KINGS: A STREET GANG STORY follows the notorious New York gang's ex-leader, Antonio "King Tone" Fernandez. Under house arrest at the time of filming, Fernandez ins...

  • Art and Craft

    Directed by Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman and Mark Becker • Documentary • With Mark A. Landis • 2014 • 90 minutes

    Mark Landis has been called one of the most prolific art forgers in US history. His impressive body of work spans thirty years, covering a wide range of painting styles and periods ...

  • Tell No One

    Directed by Guillaume Canet • Drama • With Francois Cluzet • 2006 • 125 minutes

    Tell No One is based on Harlan Coben’s international best selling thriller about pediatrician Alexandre Beck, who still grieves the murder of his beloved wife Margot Beck eight years earlier. When two bodies are foun...