The Virtual Corpse

Forty years after the abolition of the death penalty in France, voted on September 18, 1981, the guillotine remains in the collective imagination as the instrument of the death sentence. This machine, developed during the Revolution to render justice more equal, was presented as progress. Over time, opinion has been divided on the subject of the death penalty, the guillotine becoming the object of man's cruelty, a remnant of an archaic way of dispensing justice and fuelling the many debates around the death penalty and its abolition.

Scott Mills travels to Uganda where the death penalty could soon be introduced for being gay. The gay Radio 1 DJ finds out what it's like to live in a society which persecutes people like him and meets those who are leading the hate campaign.

On June 3, 1973, a man was murdered in a busy intersection of San Francisco’s Chinatown as part of an ongoing gang war. Chol Soo Lee, a 20-year-old Korean immigrant who had previous run-ins with the law, was arrested and convicted based on flimsy evidence and the eyewitness accounts of white tourists who couldn’t distinguish between Asian features. Sentenced to life in prison, Chol Soo Lee would spend years fighting to survive behind bars before journalist K.W. Lee took an interest in his case. The intrepid reporter’s investigation would galvanize a first-of-its-kind pan-Asian American grassroots movement to fight for Chol Soo Lee’s freedom, ultimately inspiring a new generation of social justice activists.

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Interviewing an increasingly mentally unstable Wuornos, Broomfield captures the distorted mind of a murderer whom the state of Florida deems of sound mind - and therefore fit to execute. Throughout the film, Broomfield includes footage of his testimony at Wuornos' trial.

The hanging of child murderer, William Carr

Errol Morris's unique documentary dramatically re-enacts the crime scene and investigation of a police officer's murder in Dallas.

This documentary recounts the dysfunctional state of the death penalty in the state of California by revisiting the crimes, arrest, trials and appeals of Lawrence Bittaker, a convicted serial killer who has been on death row at San Quentin since 1981.

Explores the realities of death-row inmates inside Huntsville (Texas) Unit, a prison with the highest number of executions in 1997. Features interviews with prisoners, guards, officials, lawyers and victims' family members.

Documentary about the jurors in a murder trial who handed out the death sentence to the defendant, and how their attitudes have changed 20+ years later.