Captive Beauty (2011)

CAPTIVE BEAUTY is a feature-length documentary about four female inmates raised on the streets of Pablo Escobar's Medellin, Colombia. Jailed for murder, kidnapping, revolution, and con-artistry, these women are brought together by a surreal beauty pageant held inside the prison walls. The week-long pageant transforms the prison into colorful and controlled mayhem, and serves as a jumping off point to explore the contestants' lives. Leave the prison to meet their ex-boyfriends. Visit their hometowns. Walk with their victims through the scenes of their crimes. Combining intimate pageant footage from inside the prison, with home videos, family photos, and provocative interviews with their friends, families, and enemies, CAPTIVE BEAUTY brings these women's stories to life. It is a tale both universal and entirely unique, sexy and brutal, where themes of innocence and femininity are turned on their heads and the criminal, for a day, becomes queen.