The beat of New Bell Prison

“A hell of a prison” is how Steve Happi, music producer and former inmate, describes New Bell Central Prison in Douala, Cameroon. Built for 800 people, it now holds nearly 6,000, making it one of the most overcrowded prisons in Africa. A new documentary about the jail takes us into a parallel world: a place with its own rules, a marketplace, inmates working as “security”, even a “taxi service” — runners carrying messages through the prison's labyrinth. Many inmates sleep on the concrete yard, under the stars or in the rain.

In New Bell, there's daily fighting, robbery and dealing. And a constant struggle over food. "Food means war," says one prisoner, caught in the scrum for a portion of rice.

That's just one scene from “Jail Time Records”, which won three awards at Tribeca Film Festival 2026 in New York. But for all its brutality, the film tells a quieter, more hopeful story. It chronicles how inmates founded Jail Time Records in 2018 — creating a recording studio and music label inside the prison. Since then, New Bell's most talented inmates have reached international audiences, including Empereur, a gang leader feared both inside and outside the prison who is one of the film's three musical protagonists. His Afro-house video “Sa Ngando”, shot inside the jail, already has nearly 50,000 views on YouTube. The track appears on the album Jail Time Vol. 1 and is sung in a mix of languages — French, English, Douala, Fulfulde, Bamun, Bassa and Sango.

The film was directed by Dione Roach and Steve Happi — a first feature for both. Happi, a music producer, spent two years as an inmate in New Bell and built the recording studio there. Roach, an Italian artist and NGO employee, had previously run dance and art projects inside its high-security walls. Executive producers include New Zealand Oscar-winner Taika Waititi and British singer Rita Ora.

In total Happi and Roach spent six years gathering footage, including intimate scenes of Stone, one of the protagonists, trying in vain to get in touch with his young daughter Maira by phone. “It's been so long. She needs to hear my voice from time to time, so she doesn't forget her father.”

Another stand-out scene shows a big Jail Time Records concert in the New Bell courtyard, with music blasting across the yard and prisoners dancing alongside guards and visitors.

“Suddenly it wasn't just about the music any more — it was about life”

But conditions in the prison meant the film was hard to make, Roach explained. “Picture an overcrowded place in a country with few resources: brutally hot and humid, cramped and with constant noise — you have to get creative,” she said. “But the film pulled a lot of people in. Suddenly it wasn't just about the music any more — it was about life.”

And its humanity and pacy narative won viewers over at Tribeca Film Festival 2026, where it won Best Documentary, the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director, and Best Cinematography in a Documentary.

It follows the fates of three inmates: Stone, Transporter and Empereur. We see them their day-to-day, negotiating violence, food queues, emotional prison visits, as well as performing and recording music.

At the heart of the plot is the small, improvised Jail Time Records studio: a sweltering recording booth in a room with brightly muraled walls, and a single laptop.  The artists sweat, struggle and give it their all. “It's our one chance to make it big on the outside,” one inmate tells another. Or, as Steve Happi puts it, “music is our lantern for a better future.”

The Jail Time Records label has gone from strength to strength: in 2023 it opened a studio in MACO, a prison located in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, followed by an arts centre at the newly built Ngoma prison in Cameroon.

And the New Bell inmates have gained fans as far afield as South Africa, the US and Argentina. But the musicians know all too well that life behind bars is only one of their challenges. As one  Jail Time Records artist sings: “Prison is prison. But you're not careful after you're out, you'll just end up back inside.”