ColdwaterMovies like Coldwater
- Key Features:
- Abuse of power, Survival, Incarceration, Redemption, Corruption, Systemic abuse, Psychological manipulation, Violence-high
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Social issue dramas, Prison narratives, Crime drama enthusiasts, Character-driven stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Despair → Struggle → Resilience
Coldwater

A teenage boy is sent to a juvenile reform facility in the wilderness. As we learn about the tragic events that sent him there, his struggle becomes one for survival with the inmates, counselors, and the retired war colonel in charge.
Coldwater
A gritty coming of age thriller about a young girl sent to juvenile prison for the murder of her abusive step father. The film follows Anna Nix's journey into the dark world of an all girls jail where she discovers complex relationships, drugs, mental illness and her eventual search for redemption.

Juvenile delinquents are sent to a small British island after a fellow prisoner's death, where they must fight for survival.

Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.

Three juvenile delinquents arrive at a correctional center and are put under the care of an experienced guard.

An outer suburb of Paris, 1972. Gilles and Christine, both sixteen, are classmates and lovers who have become frustrated with the aloofness of their families and the general monotony of their lives. When the pair are caught shoplifting, Christine's father ships her off to a home for emotionally disturbed children, temporarily putting space between her and Gilles. Luckily for them, though, she escapes and the couple contemplate running away together.

In a youth correctional facility, Joe is preparing his return to society. But William’s arrival turns his desire for freedom into desire of another kind. Behind fences and cell walls, passions begin to play havoc with the need for liberty.

Freed after a lengthy term in a juvenile detention center, convicted child killer Jack Burridge finds work as a deliveryman and begins dating co-worker Michelle. While out on the road one day, Jack notices a distressed child, and, after reuniting the girl with her family, becomes a local celebrity. But when a local newspaper unearths his past, Jack must cope with the anger of citizens who fear for the safety of their children.

Follows the fate of Lyle, a violent adolescent who, in lieu of prison, is placed in a juvenile mental institution, where he encounters a group of equally troubled teens. This motley crew—abused, sexually confused, violent, and yet hanging on by their grit and anger—becomes Lyle's last lifeline as he fights to find meaning in a world that seems to defy understanding.

Jenny is sent to a women's reform school. It is run by evil warden Sutter and her henchwoman Edna. Jenny will stop at nothing to escape but she also has to deal with Charlie the bully.

Based on the true story of teenager James Burns who goes from a suburban street gang to a maximum-security prison cell surrounded by hardened criminals. He turns his life around in prison thanks to the unexpected friendship he forms with a convicted murderer who becomes his mentor.

The rough-hewn boss of a lumber crew courts trouble when he steps in to protect the youngest member of his team from an abusive father.

Under the leadership of their counselor, teenagers at a juvenile detention center gain self-esteem by playing football together. Based on a true story.

A family man convicted of killing an intruder must cope with life afterward in the violent penal system.

Powerful, uncompromising drama about two boys' struggle for survival in the nightmare world of Britain's notorious Borstal Reformatory.

In the near future, society collapses and water becomes scarce. When a greedy water baron starts violently clearing out survivors, Kendal, a 17-year-old teenager, fights the baron's henchman to keep a well open.

As punishment for drunken, rebellious behavior, a young white soldier is thrown into a stockade populated entirely by black inmates. But instead of falling victim to racial hatred, the soldier joins forces with his fellow prisoners and rises up against the insanely tyrannical and bigoted prison warden.

A teenage boy discovers the perpetrators of several brutal kidnappings in his home town.

A group of troubled teens are sent to a rehabilitation program housed in a remote camp on the island of Fiji. What their parents believe is a state-of-the-art deluxe institution in a beautiful natural environment turns out to be a prison-like boot camp where they are abused and brainwashed.

While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.

After being put on a supposedly uninhabited island as a form of behavioral rehabilitation, a high school senior finds that he's not alone on the island, and that getting discovered could be deadly.

Mick O'Brien is a young Chicago street thug torn between a life of petty crime and the love of his girlfriend. But when the heist of a local drug dealer goes tragically wrong Mick is sentenced to a brutal juvenile prison where violence is a rite of passage and respect is measured in vengeance.

A psychiatrist faces his past, present and future when he finds himself involved in the treatment of a young man recently released from prison for a murder committed when the boy was just 11 years old.

To escape her abusive boyfriend, Kat joins a wilderness expedition with a group of women, all of whom are struggling with the uncertainty of life. What was supposed to be an opportunity for personal discovery quickly becomes a fight for survival, forcing each one to discover the strength within themselves that they didn't even know they possessed. While being brazenly chased by a pack of predators, the strong quickly set themselves apart from the weak. In a battle of will, stamina, and heart, these very virtues present themselves at the most crucial moment. With death looming, each is left with what is truly important - the strength within oneself.

Two teenage boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and help him reunite with his lover and escape an avenging family and their armed posse.

The R of the title stands for the young protagonist, Rune, fearlessly played by Pilou Asbæk. Imprisoned for violent assault, he's a cocky, good-looking young man placed in the hardcore ward, where his survival depends on quickly learning the prison's parallel world of rules, honor, and obligations. R also stands for Rachid, a young Muslim prisoner who becomes Rune's friend and accomplice, defying the rigid racial stratifications among the inmates.

Because he wanted to protect his little brother, Teddy, a young man without a history, is accused of the murder of his father and sent to a closed educational center, waiting for his trial for parricide. He then plunges into a brutal universe of which he does not know the rules.

When the experienced guide Vic accompanies the city boy Alan and his three friends on their first wilderness experience, he not only hopes to teach the four boys lessons about the wilderness, but about themselves. Vic pushes them to the limit. Soon after alienating the boys, Vic finds himself in desperate need of help and must rely on his students in order to survive.

Years of carrying out death row executions have taken a toll on prison warden Bernadine Williams. As she prepares to execute another inmate, Bernadine must confront the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is sanctioned to kill.

A 17-year-old girl uses her wits, survival skills, and compassion to fight for her life, and those of her fellow classmates, against a group of live-streaming school shooters.

A young man who was sentenced to 7 years in prison for robbing a post office ends up spending 30 years in solitary confinement. During this time, his own personality is supplanted by his alter ego, Charles Bronson.

A high school swim champion with a troubled past enrolls in the U.S. Coast Guard's 'A' School, where legendary rescue swimmer Ben Randall teaches him some hard lessons about loss, love, and self-sacrifice.

An unfortunate and naive girl is set up by her boyfriend and convicted of drug smuggling. She is sent to a women's correctional facility where she must constantly struggle to survive.

10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

An abused 15 year old is charged with a murder that carries the death penalty in this fact-based story.

Following his release from a brutal stretch in prison for crimes he didn't commit, Mo is struggling to adapt to life on the outside. When his world collides with Doris, a mysterious woman with a violent past, he decides to risk his newfound freedom to keep her in his life.

Through his work at a morgue, an incarcerated young man trying to build a new life starts to come to terms with the crime he committed.

After being sent to a youth detention centre, 18-year-old Andrej has to fight for his place within the group of inmates while getting closer to Željko, their informal leader, and struggling to keep his repressed secret in the dark.

An impoverished teen seeking to escape the clutches of a human trafficker must weigh living up to his moral code against his struggle to survive.

A young man becomes convinced that the solution to all his problems is to live in jail, and he will do whatever it takes to get it.

A serial killer kidnaps a young boy after murdering his mother, then raises him to be his accomplice. After years in captivity, the boy must choose between escaping or following in his captor's bloody footprints.

Sara is a teen girl who is looking forward to her 18th birthday to move away from her controlling father Don. But before she could even blow out the candles, Don imprisons her in the basement of their home.

In the Old West, a 17-year-old Scottish boy teams up with a mysterious gunman to find the woman with whom he is infatuated.

An elite squad of Navy SEALs, on a covert mission to transport a prisoner off a CIA black site island prison, are trapped when insurgents attack while trying to rescue the same prisoner.

A hardened convict and a younger prisoner escape from a brutal prison in the middle of winter only to find themselves on an out-of-control train with a female railway worker while being pursued by the vengeful head of security.

A group of teenagers suffer a terrible accident during a joy ride and get trapped at the bottom of a ravine.

After a violent encounter, Roy finds Rocky and sees something in her eyes that prompts a fateful decision. He takes her with him as he flees to Galveston, an action as ill-advised as it is inescapable.

A troubled and bullied high school student fights against judgement from his community after threatening to bomb the football team.

Handed over to foster care by his mother—who's unwilling to give up permanent custody—the now-adolescent François understands that nothing in life is permanent, and his increasingly erratic actions reflect this knowledge.

A deep cover operative awakens to find himself imprisoned on a submarine. With the help of a fellow prisoner and an amateur agent, he must race against the clock to escape the vessel and expose who set him up.

Six people, each of them is on the road to self-destruction. They wake up in cells in a surreal facility, without knowing how they got there or why.

Bobby tries to save himself and his best friend when they are kidnapped on their way home from school.

Neto is a middle class teenager living a normal life. After his father finds a marijuana cigarette on his pocket, he is sent to a mental institution, where he gets to know a completely absurd and inhumane reality in which people are devoured by a corrupt and cruel system.

19-year-old Eric, arrogant and ultra-violent, is prematurely transferred to the same adult prison facility as his estranged father. As his explosive temper quickly finds him enemies in both prison authorities and fellow inmates — and his already volatile relationship with his father is pushed past breaking point — Eric is approached by a volunteer psychotherapist, who runs an anger management group for prisoners. Torn between gang politics, prison corruption, and a glimmer of something better, Eric finds himself in a fight for his own life, unsure if his own father is there to protect him or join in punishing him.

Forced underground by the next ice age, a struggling outpost of survivors must fight to preserve humanity against a threat even more savage than nature.

An African American male is imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement after being found guilty of murdering his wife, as he's haunted by internal demons and his dead wife, and pushed to the breaking point by an abusive female guard.

A young woman held in captivity discovers the realities of truth and lies in the outside world.

A sailor prone to violent outbursts is sent to a naval psychiatrist for help. Refusing at first to open up, the young man eventually breaks down and reveals a horrific childhood. Through the guidance of his doctor, he confronts his painful past and begins a quest to find the family he never knew.

A Marine veteran working as a school janitor tries to mend his relationship with his son after a divorce. When his son is killed by a police officer found innocent without standing trial, he takes matters into his own hands.

A prisoner in a state-of-the-art penitentiary begins to question the purpose of the emotion-controlling drugs he's testing for a pharmaceutical genius.

A hardened cop tries to unravel the past to discover whether a violent teenager was responsible for the murder of his family. A confused fifteen-year-old runaway becomes enthralled with the young man.

A withdrawn young man, Leland Fitzgerald is imprisoned for the murder of a mentally disabled boy, who also happened to be the brother of his girlfriend, Becky. As the community struggles to deal with the killing, Pearl Madison, a teacher at the prison, decides to write about Leland's case. Meanwhile, others affected by the murder, including Becky and her sister, Julie, must contend with their own problems.

When their drug abusing mother is released from prison determined to rebuild their family, Rey kidnaps his younger brother Oliver and escapes their desert home for the California coast.

A slightly dystopian vision of LA, we follow three disaffected teenagers, Jessie, Calvin and Nicky, all victims of extreme childhoods, running supreme hedonistic riot as they try to work out a way in life.

Two high school students become stranded on a tropical island and must rely on each other for survival. They learn more about themselves and each other while falling in love.

While exploring the neighboring woods, 13-year-old John discovers an unfinished bunker — a deep hole in the ground. Seemingly without provocation, he drugs his affluent parents and older sister and drags their unconscious bodies into the bunker, where he holds them captive. As they anxiously wait for John to free them from the hole, the boy returns home, where he can finally do what he wants.

A dispossessed, violent man's life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. Successively deprived of parents and homes and with few other ties, he descends to the level of a cave dweller and falls deeper into crime and degradation.

When their plane crashes, 25 schoolboys find themselves trapped on a tropical island, miles from civilization.

A man wakes up inside a room to discover he's a prisoner sent into space to form Earth's first colony, and worse - his cell mate Alana is hell bent on destroying everything.

Grace, a compassionate young supervisor at a foster care facility, helps at-risk teens. But when a new charge dredges up memories of her own troubled past, Grace's tough exterior begins eroding.

Eva, an idealistic prison officer, is faced with the dilemma of her life when a young man from her past gets transferred to the prison where she works. Without revealing her secret, Eva asks to be moved to the young man’s ward – the toughest and most violent in the prison. Here begins an unsettling psychological thriller, where Eva’s sense of justice puts both her morality and future at stake.

Four divers are stuck deep underwater in a vessel after a freak storm destroys their ship. Will they survive?

Fifteen-year-old Mia is in a constant state of war with her family and the world around her. When she meets her party-girl mother’s charming new boyfriend Connor, she is amazed to find he returns her attention, and believes he might help her start to make sense of her life.

A legendary but retired hit man lives in peace and isolation in the barren North American wilderness. When he rescues a woman from a snowmobiling accident, he soon discovers that she's harboring a secret that forces him to return to his lethal ways.

A bullied teenager who is locked up at a juvenile detention center due to an unexpected accident, meets a mixed martial arts champion to break through his own limits.

A young psychiatric intern unearths secrets about the mental health facility in which he works.

A teenager's weekend at a lake house with her father takes a turn for the worse when a group of convicts wreaks havoc on their lives.

Manuel Jordan is a man who is free after serving 23 years for killing a teenager during an attempted robbery. After nearly two decades of staring at his victim's face on a newspaper clipping in his cell, the newly paroled man seeks redemption. Instead, redemption—in the form of a mysterious minister and two needy women— finds him.

When a long list of shenanigans lands Tyler in hot water, he’s forced to suit up and spend his summer training for an elite junior lifeguard program.

A young boy stays with his aunt and uncle, and befriends his cousin who's the same age. But his cousin begins showing increasing signs of psychotic behavior.

Four friends travel to a lakeside cabin for a carefree weekend, but the fun turns into a nightmare when 3 of them end up locked in a hot sauna. Every minute counts and every degree matters as they fight for their lives in the heat up to 247°F.

A man with a troubled past is released on parole. He finds work as a church organist and develops a rewarding relationship with a priest and her young son. However, his past soon catches up with him.

The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.

A troubled veteran gets a chance at redemption by protecting a girl from an assassin after she witnesses a murder. Holding a shotgun with a single shell, he engages in physical and psychological warfare in a desperate fight for the girl's life.

A storm is coming. No one could predict it. No one can measure it. Now one family must survive it. You can't come in from the cold.

Lucas, a 14-year-old boy inducted into the gang life in Washington D.C., is determined that his 10-year-old brother won't follow the same path. When an Afghanistan war veteran comes into the neighborhood, an opportunity arises.

The story centers on paroled white supremacist who has just killed a cop, and takes a black family hostage. Within hours of being released from 14 years of solitary confinement in maximum-security Pelican Bay State Prison, Garrett Tully is on the run again. When he finds a house off a dirt road and takes a family hostage, he thinks the Aryan Brotherhood has his back–and his kidnap victims are black. The family’s patriarch, Mr. Walker, is a jaded ex-con who hates cops so much he disavowed his own son for becoming one. Seeing a familiar desperation in Tully, Walker refuses to call the authorities for help, causing familial tensions to escalate, and soon grave missteps are made.

Allied prisoners of various nationalities pool their resources to plan numerous escapes from an "escape-proof" German P.O.W. camp housed in a Medieval castle.

A day in the life of a group of teens as they travel around New York City skating, drinking, smoking and deflowering virgins.

When a prisoner transfer van is attacked, the cop in charge must fight those inside and outside while dealing with a silent foe: the icy temperatures.

Bill Baker, an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison, who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.

A young drug-addled writer approaching the bottom of his descent submits to two months of agonizing detox at a treatment center in Minnesota.

A young single mother is held captive along with her two children by a violent ex and must plot their escape before it’s too late.

A man has only three and a half days and limited resources to discover why he was imprisoned in a nondescript room for 20 years without any explanation.

Four prison inmates have been hatching a plan to literally dig out of jail when another prisoner, Claude Gaspard, is moved into their cell. They take a risk and share their plan with the newcomer. Over the course of three days, the prisoners and friends break through the concrete floor using a bed post and begin to make their way through the sewer system -- yet their escape is anything but assured.

A divorced dad and his ex-con brother resort to a desperate scheme in order to save their family's farm in West Texas.

A Viking boy is left behind after his clan battles a Native American tribe. Raised within the tribe, he ultimately becomes their savior in a fight against the Norsemen.

Jesse Stone and Captain Healy are shot during an unauthorized stake-out in Boston. Meanwhile, a cryptic letter sent from Paradise leads the mother of a kidnapped child to Stone. Though her son was declared dead, she hopes he will reopen the case.

A police officer who while responding to a violent hostage call, kills the African American suspect only to later learn of his innocence. Sensing this was a set-up, and facing repercussions, he must track down the person responsible while examining his own accountability and the ingrained racism which brought him to this point.

