With unprecedented access, this documentary paints an intimate, complex portrait of kids in jail. The film raises difficult yet vital questions about at-risk youth and young offenders, and asks: Should we be doing more to help them?

Böttcher made his graduation film about young people who had become delinquent in a youth work yard in Thuringia. Already here a striking feature of his later films becomes apparent: Jürgen Böttcher gives his protagonists a lot of space; he approaches them without prejudice, empathetically and carefully. In addition, his curiosity can be felt in the life situations and stories of his characters.

An urgent, heart-breaking investigation into the young lives changed forever by under-age prostitution and exploitation.

Out-of-control teens across America were sent to a therapy camp in the harsh Utah desert. The conditions were brutal, but the staff were even worse.

This film takes a candid, inside look at the world of juvenile delinquency. We are shown the tough existence on the streets of Montreal, but it could be any city in North America. Some boys as young as ten years of age talk about their lives of crime, the things that are important to them, and the hopes they hold for the future.

In the 1960s, the suburbs were meant to be modern havens for newcomers from rural France, Portugal, Spain, North Africa, and Africa, helping rebuild post-war France. Large housing complexes symbolized this ideal, offering comfort, heating, and electricity. But by the 1980s, disillusionment set in as economic crisis, unemployment, poverty, crime, racism, and police violence took hold. Mohamed Bouhafsi tells the story of a dream that didn’t last.

Young people who have to survive without a home base are helped on their way to a life on their own two feet at Wonen Met Kansen. Little by little, with trial and error, but with the rock-solid confidence that the supervisors have in them.

A young man comes out of a reform school properly reformed, but life outside will bring him to the underworld again. His second reform will be short-lived.