HBO Documentary Films

An unprecedented and enlightening look inside a youth-prison boot camp, ROCK AND A HARD PLACE focuses on the lives of a diverse group of incarcerated young people in Florida, each of whom are granted a second chance: the opportunity to trade an extensive prison sentence for a fresh start by completing the famed Miami-Dade County Corrections & Rehabilitation Department Boot Camp Program. This one-of-a-kind, 16-week program, which resembles military...

"The film takes an unsparing look at the lives of several young people in their early 20s gripped by heroin addiction, living a seemingly endless existence of getting high while cycling through stages of rehab, recovery and relapse. The film also chronicles the impact of the crisis on the community of Cape Cod" (container).

For more than a year, Sen followed New Delhi brothers Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad as they rescued birds of prey from the increasingly destructive effects of urban pollution. While charting the siblings' daily struggles and successes, he also documented their poetic reflections on humankind's relationship to the environment, the interaction of wildlife with the city, and India's explosions of anti-Muslim violence. Suffused with beauteous, sobering,...

In 2009, filmmaker Josh Fox learned his land was on top of the Marcellus Shale, a giant reservoir of natural gas that stretches across huge stretches of the northeast United States, and that he would be paid to lease his land for natural gas extraction. Fox documented his cross-country trek to find out if the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) is actually safe. What he unearthed was a discovery about a practice that is understudied...

"Nearly 20 years after the death of Princess Diana, her sons and heirs, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Prince Harry, look back on the life and work of their remarkable mother, and how her influence shaped their lives."--publisher description.

The Friedman's seem to be a typical family from affluent Great Neck, Long Island. One Thanksgiving, as the family gathers for a quiet holiday dinner, a police battering ram splinters the front door and officers rush inside. The police charge Arnold and his son Jesse with hundreds of shocking crimes. As police investigate, and the community reacts, the fabric of the family begins to disintegrate, revealing questions about justice, family and finally...

Traces the rise and fall of chess master Bobby Fischer, from isolated child to chess prodigy, global superstar, angry recluse, and fugitive from the law, featuring archival footage and interviews with those closest to him.

Chronicling this capital case from 1984-2004, filmmakers Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg painstakingly frame the judicial and emotional reponses to a chilling crime, and the implications surrounding Darryl Hunt's wrongful conviction.

The Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution and The Bill of Rights represent much more than the words used by America’s Founding Fathers to define a fragile, nascent country. They’re the living, breathing realization of America’s democratic ideal, the bedrock of a society that its people have built over nearly two-and-a-half centuries, and they provide a blueprint that is, was and will be a template for democracy around the world....

Interviews with perpetrators, witnesses, and victims examining the abuses that occurred in the fall of 2003 at the notorious Iraqi prison. Probes the psychology of how typical American men and women came to commit these atrocious acts.