Prison Movies on Netflix, Plus Series and Documentaries
Sixteen prison films, series and documentaries on Netflix, from The Shawshank Redemption to 13TH, with what each is about and which to start with.
See The Shawshank Redemption if your Netflix has it, and The Platform if it does not. For a series, Orange Is the New Black has seven seasons waiting. For a documentary, 13TH explains the most in one sitting.
Whether you get Shawshank depends on where you live. It is one of four licensed titles here, with Miracle in Cell No. 7, Jigra and Prison Playbook, and those are the likeliest to be missing. Most of this list is Netflix originals, and Netflix says it holds worldwide rights to most of those. The titles below come from the catalogue Netflix serves in Nigeria, which changes every month and differs from country to country. Click a name and the page tells you if it is not available in your country.
Prison movies
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) has a banker convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. Inside, what keeps him going is hope and his friendship with Red, another lifer. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman star, Frank Darabont directs, and Netflix files it under classics and films based on books.
The setting of The Platform (2019) is a vertical facility, a tower in effect, and the food comes down through it from above. Whoever is near the top eats their fill. By the lower floors there is nothing left, and the people down there will not put up with it for ever. It is a Spanish thriller and a Netflix original, directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa, with English audio, Netflix’s “violent” tag and an 18+ rating. The Platform 2 (2024), from the same director, goes back to the same system of vertical cells and is on Netflix as well.
Netflix tags Miracle in Cell No. 7 (2019) a tearjerker, so plan accordingly. In this Turkish drama, a man with an intellectual disability is jailed over the death of a commander’s child and taken from his own daughter, and he has to show he did not do it. Aras Bulut İynemli leads.
Anyone who came looking for a prison escape film, or a Hindi one, wants Jigra (2024). Ankur is on death row abroad for something he did not do, and his sister Satya makes up her mind to get him out, whatever it takes. Alia Bhatt and Vedang Raina star and Vasan Bala directs.
Two more from India are Vadh 2 (2026, Hindi), about a guard and an inmate whose bond unravels after a crime inside a prison, and Sorga Vaasal (2024, Tamil with Hindi audio), about an ordinary man trying to survive a corrupt and brutal jail. The Hindi movies on Netflix page has more.
Prison series, from seven seasons to six episodes
A series’ year below is the one Netflix shows, that of its latest season.
For weeks of viewing, take Orange Is the New Black (2019): there are seven seasons of it, the most of any drama here. An old crime finally lands a well-off New Yorker in a women’s prison, and she has to work out fast who is on her side. Jenji Kohan created it and Taylor Schilling leads the cast, and Netflix files it under both drama and comedy.
Two are done in seven episodes or fewer. In Black Warrant (2025), a principled new officer starts work at Tihar Jail, sees how corrupt the place is, and promises himself he will put things right. It is in Hindi, runs to seven episodes, and Netflix lists it as based on a book. Zahan Kapoor leads; Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh created it. In Prison Cell 211 (2025), a Mexican series of six episodes, a human rights lawyer is caught in a prison riot and pretends to be an inmate to stay alive, with Diego Calva Hernández in the lead.
A fatal accident ties five women prisoners together in In the Mud (2026). The prison around them is corrupt and split between rival groups, and that puts all five in danger. This Argentinian series from Sebastián Ortega has two seasons.
Locked Up (2020) also has two seasons, by Netflix’s count. A young woman who trusted her boyfriend too much embezzles money for him, goes to prison for it and has to toughen up quickly. It is Spanish, with Najwa Nimri and Maggie Civantos.
Netflix tags Prison Playbook (2017) witty as well as gritty, which makes the Korean series the lighter choice among these dramas. A star baseball pitcher is about to make his major league debut when he is sent to prison, and has to learn how the place works. For an outright comedy, there is Hard Cell, a British mockumentary in six episodes about the governor of a women’s prison, created by and starring Catherine Tate.
Prison documentaries
13TH (2016) is the argument, and the place to begin if your question is how the system got this way. Ava DuVernay asks how African Americans came to be treated as criminals in such numbers and why the US prison population grew so fast, and puts the question to academics, campaigners and politicians.
Daughters (2024) is gentler, and at 13+ has the mildest rating of the sixteen. Four girls get ready to see their fathers again at a special dance held in a Washington DC jail. Natalie Rae and Angela Patton direct.
- Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons (2023): reporters check themselves in as prisoners in some of the most dangerous jails on earth and report from the inside, across seven seasons. Paul Connolly and Raphael Rowe are the names on the page.
- Unlocked: A Jail Experiment (2026): a sheriff runs an experiment that gives incarcerated men more say over life inside a correctional facility. Netflix lists two seasons.
- Time: The Kalief Browder Story (2017): six episodes on Kalief Browder, a Black teenager from the Bronx who spent three years in jail without being convicted of a crime.
- Jailbreak: Love on the Run (2024): a corrections officer in Alabama falls for a prisoner who is waiting to be tried for murder, and gives up everything to get him out.
There is plenty more in the same vein. I Am a Killer has six seasons of death row inmates giving their own accounts. Jailbirds and Girls Incarcerated follow women and teenage girls in American facilities, and Happy Jail goes inside the jail in the Philippines that became famous for a Michael Jackson dance video. The Quilters is a short film about inmates of a maximum-security prison in Missouri who make quilts for children in foster care.
Prison stories based on real cases
Time: The Kalief Browder Story and Jailbreak: Love on the Run both follow real cases. Among the dramas, Netflix lists Orange Is the New Black as based on real life, and the limited series When They See Us as based on the true story of five Harlem teenagers falsely accused of an attack in Central Park.
Prison Break, Wentworth and other gaps
Prison Break, the series many people think of first, has a Netflix page that says it cannot be watched in Nigeria. The Fear of 13 and The Stanford Prison Experiment have pages that say the same, and Shot Caller and Wentworth have no page there at all. Any of them may be in your country’s catalogue, so search before you give up.
If it is the crime more than the cell that interests you, see our list of gangster movies on Netflix.
