Arrested for credit card fraud, Dennis (Marcel Schultt) is sent to a prison where inmates either give in to the drug dealers or run the risk of being raped. From his cell window, he spots an older black prisoner Mike (Mike Sale) and immediately falls in love with the muscular hunk. Though their first encounters are tentative, a passionate romance develops. They face hostile prison officials and inmates in their attempts to become a loving couple. "Gefangen" reveals bizarre characters (a gay guard who enjoys watching the lovers in their private moments) and a painful prison bureaucracy that shows how inmates negotiate with prison guards in order to have time together.
Filmed entirely in an abandoned German jail, "Gefangen" boldly confronts romance and sex within the prison system. It's a fierce story of love behind bars featuring intense drama, steamy romance and attractive men. There are many full frontal nudity scenes, not much of a plot, and the ending doesn't make sense. This was made by Cazzo Productions, the producers of hard-core gay porn for All Worlds Video in the U.S.--so to some extent it's a soft-core love story. The language often jumps from English to German and back in the same conversation. Christian Messer composed the original music, and Jörg Andreas and Peter Oehl wrote the screenplay. Jörg Andreas directed. This powerful and provocative German drama has the English title "Locked Up".
