Punishment Park

Increasingly Peter Watkins’ most cited film, Punishment Park assumes even greater pertinence today, not least in light of the state violence openly practised around the world.

  • Director

    Peter Watkins

  • With

    Patrick Boland, Kent Foreman, Carmen Argenziano

  • USA 1970. 89min

  • Digital

  • Certificate

    15

A fictional detention system challenges potential subversives to either surrender to detention or undergo a physically punishing ordeal in the heat of the American desert. Viscerally intense, the mobile camerawork taking us into the brutal heart of sanctioned state violence, Punishment Park sees Watkins work with actors who in their own lives have been critical of the system of governance, pushing the envelope of fiction and reality.

William Fowler