Attica

In 1971, over 1,200 inmates at Attica Correctional Facility seized control of the prison, took 42 hostages, and demanded to be treated like human beings.

Stanley Nelson's Oscar-nominated documentary uses never-before-seen surveillance footage and interviews with surviving inmates, families of hostages, and negotiators to reconstruct five days that ended in massacre. The inmates presented 28 demands for basic dignity: adequate medical care, religious freedom, more than one roll of toilet paper per month. After negotiations stalled, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state police to retake the prison. That's when the killing began.

Fifty years later, the same racial disparities, dehumanizing conditions, and abuse of power persist in America's prison system.