There are three things Angola will do to a man. Number one: it will bring you to the crossroads of a turning point. Number two: it will harden you. Number three: it will kill you. So tells Eugene Tannehill, inmate of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, the largest maximum security prison in the United States. With six complexes on over 18,000 acres and known as the Farm, it holds approximately 5,000 inmates, roughly 85% of whom will die there. Shot over the course of three years, the film follows six men sentenced to life imprisonment. With Wilbert Rideau, the best-known inmate and now a respected journalist, and Warden Burl Cain as our guides through the cells, dormitories, hospital, cemetery, and work fields, we are offered an eye-opening tour of one of the most infamous prisons in America. Prison life at Angola as seen through the subtle revelations of inhabitants who may never experience freedom again bears an uncanny resemblance to plantation life.