Best Prison Camp Movies & TV Shows

First American film about the conflict between Jewish nationalists and the British in the creation of the state of Israel.

The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson , the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.

Based on real-life experiences, Tenko remains one of the most fondly remembered and acclaimed BBC dramas of the early 1980s. It follows a group of women, formerly comfortably well-off ex-pats living in Singapore, as they are captured by the Japanese during World War II.

During WWII an American soldier sent to Norway to help with the escape of a scientist working on the atomic bomb for the Germans. Before they can escape they are captured and sent to a POW prison camp in an alpine castle. Cook must find a way to escape with the scientist before the Gestapo discover the Norwegian's true identity and convinces the other prisoners to build a two person glider in which they plan to escape.

A physician sues a novelist for publishing statements implicating the doctor in Nazi war crimes.

General Candy, who's overseeing an English squad in 1943, is a veteran leader who doesn't have the respect of the men he's training and is considered out-of-touch with what's needed to win the war. But it wasn't always this way. Flashing back to his early career in the Boer War and World War I, we see a dashing young officer whose life has been shaped by three different women, and by a lasting friendship with a German soldier.

Hogan's Heroes is an American television sitcom that ran for 168 episodes from September 17, 1965, to July 4, 1971, on the CBS network. The show was set in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. Bob Crane starred as Colonel Robert E. Hogan, coordinating an international crew of Allied prisoners running a Special Operations group from the camp. Werner Klemperer played Colonel Wilhelm Klink, the commandant of the camp, and John Banner was the inept sergeant-of-the-guard, Hans Schultz. The series was popular during its six-season run. In 2013, creators Bernard Fein through his estate and Albert S. Ruddy acquired the sequel and other separate rights to Hogan's Heroes from Mark Cuban through arbitration and a movie based on the show has been planned.

New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg is on assignment covering the Cambodian Civil War, with the help of local interpreter Dith Pran and American photojournalist Al Rockoff. When the U.S. Army pulls out amid escalating violence, Schanberg makes exit arrangements for Pran and his family. Pran, however, tells Schanberg he intends to stay in Cambodia to help cover the unfolding story — a decision he may regret as the Khmer Rouge rebels move in.

A chronicle of the life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who was taken prisoner by Japanese forces during World War II.

In 1966, Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, captured, and, down to 85 pounds, escaped. Barefoot, surviving monsoons, leeches, and machete-wielding villagers, he was rescued. Now, near 60, living on Mt. Tamalpais, Dengler tells his story: a German lad surviving Allied bombings in World War II, postwar poverty, apprenticed to a smith, beaten regularly. At 18, he emigrates and peels potatoes in the U.S. Air Force. He leaves for California and college, then enlistment in the Navy to learn to fly. A quiet man of sorrows tells his story: war, capture, harrowing conditions, escape, and miraculous rescue. Where did he find the strength; how does he now live with his memories?

A 5-year-old girl embarks on a harrowing quest for survival amid the sudden rise and terrifying reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

A California commercial pilot sees a telecast in London of an interview with Sir Mark Lodden at his home. The Canadian is convinced that the baronet is a fraud, and he is actually a look-alike actor named Frank Welney.

The oldest son of a loving and strong family of black sharecroppers comes of age in the Depression-era South after his father is imprisoned for stealing food.

In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.

Island of Java, 1942, during World War II. British Major Jack Celliers arrives at a Japanese prison camp, run by the strict Captain Yonoi. Colonel John Lawrence, who has a profound knowledge of Japanese culture, and Sergeant Hara, brutal and simpleton, will witness the struggle of wills between two men from very different backgrounds who are tragically destined to clash.

The British inmates of a POW camp think they have an informer among them after several escape attempts fail. One of the prisoners constructs a dummy which they christen "Albert" and use at roll call in order to foil the German guards.

In early nineteenth-century France Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who failed to report to parole, is relentlessly pursued over a twenty-year period by Javert, an obsessive policeman.

Based on a true story, 'Under Jakob's Ladder' is a full-length feature film that takes place in the Soviet Union during 1938. Jakob, a former teacher who lost his job due to the new Communist system, can only stand by and watch as the world around him slowly disintegrates and fear and suspicion rule the day. Like most of the men in his village, he soon finds himself in a Soviet prison. But it is there that he discovers that the freedom he craves might actually be found within the walls of his cell.

A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L. Team 6 in May, 2011.

At the dawn of WWII, several men escape from a Russian gulag—to take a perilous and uncertain journey to freedom as they cross deserts, mountains and several nations.

A US Fighter pilot's epic struggle of survival after being shot down on a mission over Laos during the Vietnam War.

A group of POWs in a German prison camp during World War II play the German National Soccer Team in this powerful film depicting the role of prisoners during wartime.

A victim from World War II's "Death Railway" sets out to find those responsible for his torture. A true story.

Fly-on-the-wall treatment of an ordinary day in the life of a prisoner in Stalin's Gulag. Closely adapted from Solzhenitsyn's classic novel based on his own experiences. Shot entirely on location in northern Norway

Aging ex-con tries to stop his daughter from getting involved with shady characters.

Sergeant-Major Charles Coward, a brave British soldier is captured by German forces during World War II. When he's thrown into a prisoner of war camp, he immediately plans his escape. Masquerading as a wounded German soldier, he makes it as far as the medical tent, where the deceived enemy forces award him the Iron Cross. Though he is ultimately discovered, he goes on to courageously pursue his freedom with a whimsical and undying audacity.

Small town lawyer, Harmon Cobb, defends a Nazi prisoner of war against murder charges. Set during World War II, Cobb has to contend with the difficulties of defending the devil when the town's only doctor (Barnard Hughes) dies while at "Camp Bremen" in the fictitious town of Bremen, Colorado.

A series of stories about the lives and loves of nine men in a Prisoner of War Camp over five years. Location shooting in the British occupied part of Germany adds believability. The main story is of Hasek (Redgrave) a Czech soldier who needs to keep his identity a secret from the Nazis, to do this he poses as a dead English Officer and corresponds with the man's wife. Upon liberation they meet and decide to continue their lives together. The other inmates' stories are revealed episodically.

As World War II rages, the elite Sixth Ranger Battalion is given a mission of heroic proportions: push 30 miles behind enemy lines and liberate over 500 American prisoners of war.

A young woman from a Catholic school and a young man from a nearby prison camp fall in love and run away together to escape the law, the church and their parents.

A group of English, American, Dutch and Australian women creates a vocal orchestra while being imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp on Sumatra during World War II.

Drama set in an Italian prisoner of war camp during World War 2, where a group of British soldiers find their plans for escape thwarted by a mysterious traitor in their midst.

British nurse Edith Cavell is stationed at a hospital in Brussels during World War I. When the son of a former patient escapes from a German prisoner-of-war camp, she helps him flee to Holland. Outraged at the number of soldiers detained in the camps, Edith, along with a group of sympathizers, devises a plan to help the prisoners escape. As the group works to free the soldiers, Edith must keep her activities secret from the Germans

A US submarine and its crew are captured by the Japanese on the eve of a major WWII battle.

Based on a real-life story, this drama focuses on a small group of Allied soldiers in Burma who are held captive by the Japanese. Capt. Ernest Gordon (Ciaran McMenamin), Lt. Jim Reardon (Kiefer Sutherland) and Maj. Ian Campbell (Robert Carlyle) are among the military officers kept imprisoned and routinely beaten and deprived of food. While Campbell wants to rebel and attempt an escape, Gordon tries to take a more stoic approach, an attitude that proves to be surprisingly resonant.

A downed American bomber crew quickly falls prey to the clever interrogation techniques of the Germans in this dramatic training film.

A group of Slave workers, drafted by the Nazis to help construct their coastal defences in 1944, are trapped in an underground bunker when the Allies land at Normandy on D-Day. They find huge stores of food, but not enough candles. The slow dying of the light parallels their increasing boredom, illness, and jealousy during their entrapment. Based on the Novel 'Le Blockhaus' by Jean Paul Clebert

Two UCLA coeds have engine trouble in small Southern town. When they spurn the local sheriff's advances he arranges for them to be taken to the women's prison on trivial charges (the judge is a cousin), where they must endure atrocities at the hands of the administrators of the prison and the prison guards.

A rebellious teenager navigates his way through the juvenile court system.

When U.S. B-24 bomber pilot Clair Cline is shot down and captured in northern Germany, one war ends and another begins -- to keep hope alive. Now behind Nazi barbed wire and oppression, Cline and his fellow POW's must find a way to bond together to not just survive but transcend their captivity. Inspired by true events.

French soldiers (Jean-Pierre Aumont, Gene Kelly) surrender to lying Nazis and are herded into a barbaric prison camp.

A group of Vietnam War veterans re-unite to rescue one of their own left behind and taken prisoner by the Vietnamese.

Ilsa is a warden at a Nazi death camp that conducts experiments on prisoners. Ilsa's goal is to prove that woman can withstand more pain and suffering than men and should be allowed to fight on the front lines.

During World War I, two American soldiers fight to escape the Germans while squabbling over a beautiful harem girl.

A nurse is taking an amnesia victim, who was imprisoned by the Japanese during WW II, to the United States in a plane piloted by Richard Denning. The passengers include a Japanese colonel on his way to Manila to face war-crime charges, and a couple who were married on the day they were liberated from a Japanese prison camp. During the flight, the colonel breaks away from his guards, causes the plane to go out of control, and it crashes into the sea. The survivors get into a rubber boat and go through a minor-league version of "Lifeboat, with no Alfred Hitchcock sightings, until Air-Sea Rescue pilot Jim Willis rides to the rescue.

The film portrays MacArthur's life from 1942, before the Battle of Bataan, to 1952, the time after he had been removed from his Korean War command by President Truman for insubordination, and is recounted in flashback as he visits West Point.

A Southern belle frees a Rebel officer and his men from a Union captain's Arizona fort.

This documentary was secretly and 'illegally' shot inside the prison camps, established during World War II by American authorities to detain US citizens of Japanese descent who were considered a potential threat to national security.

An anti-Nazi on the run and a young Jewish couple race across Europe trying to escape Hitler's ever powerful influence.

The first film to fully expose the humanitarian crisis of North Korea, this stylish, deeply moving documentary is centered around astonishing interviews with survivors of North Korea's vast and largely hidden prison camps, and interspersed with archival footage of North Korean propoganda films and original art performances.