Missing Young Woman (2001)

Director:
Lourdes Portillo

IMDB

Synopsis:
Ciudad Juarez is a Mexican city which is near El Paso, TX, on the opposite side of the U.S./Mexico border. Since the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Ciudad Juarez has become a hub for international manufacturing, with a number of American firms opening plants there to take advantage of the city's large work force and wages far lower than their American counterparts would claim. However, Ciudad Juarez has also become known for something other than business -- since 1994, over 200 women have disappeared in the city, and a large number of them have been later found brutally murdered and left in shallow graves in the desert on the outskirts of town. Missing Young Woman is a documentary that examines this chilling crime spree, and the inability (or lack of inclination) of police to find the culprit. For some time, the police had pointed to an Egyptian immigrant as a likely suspect, but that man went behind bars -- and the killings and disappearances failed to stop. Director Lourdes Portillo also explores the theory that the arrival of American industry into Ciudad Juarez may have some link to the murders. Missing Young Woman was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011)

Director:

Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky

IMDB

Review:

Long awaited third sequel is here. After nearly 20 years spent in prison for the crime(s) they did not commit, Jason Baldwin, Damien Wayne Echols and Jessie Miskelly are free by plaguing guilty to the crime. This is by far the most interesting documentary of the Paradise Lost serial as the information that is presented to the viewer is simply incredible. I could write tons of text about it and but I won't simply because I want you to experience it for yourself. Don't miss this gem of cruel reality.

Tattooed Tears (1979)

Director:

Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill

IMDB

Review:

Before he became an onscreen documentary provocateur, Nick Broomfield got his start with this made for PBS look at life in the California Youth Authority. It was quite a coup for Broomfield to get access to the Authority, and this remains an extremely powerful, disturbing, and moving document. Focusing on a handful of incarcerated youngsters, including kids in jail for glue sniffing and B.B. gun use, the film is a raw depiction of a dehumanizing penal system that crushes the hopes and dreams of at risk teenagers.

Talhotblond: (2009)

Director:
Barbara Schroeder

IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1370889/

Review:
This doc is SUPERB! If you miss it you will regret it for sure. The movie details an Internet love triangle which resulted in internet homicide, in a case called the “Internet Chatroom Murder”. Thomas Montgomery, a 47-year-old married man, who pled guilty to murdering his co-worker, 22-year-old Brian Barrett. The two men were involved in a love triangle with “Jessi”, a beautiful 17 year old (screen name: talhotblond) that neither one of them have never met! Real masterpiece with so much details and a truly complex story that keeps you needled down on your chair while watching!

Stevie (2002)

Director:
Steve James

IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0334416/

Review:
In 1995 Director Steve James returned to rural Southern Illinois to reconnect with Stevie Fielding, a troubled young boy he had been an 'Advocate Big Brother' to ten years earlier. He began a film, a search, to discover not only what had happened to Stevie over the past ten years but to understand the forces that had shaped his entire life. Part way through the filming, Stevie is arrested and charged with a serious crime that tears his family apart. What was to be a modest profile turns into a intimate four and half year chronicle of Stevie, his broken family, the criminal justice system and the filmmaker himself, as they all struggle with what Stevie has done and who he has become.