''Coldwater'' details the abuse of juvenile inmates in a privatized American wilderness reform facility. The film is a fictional narrative that utilizes research from a myriad of documented cases, government reports, news stories and interviews, to help showcase and explore the realities of institutional abuse and juvenile delinquency, as well as some of the larger social ills underlying them. ''Coldwater'' is a story of consequences, one that is told and experienced almost wholly from the perspective of the teenage characters involved.