Best movies like A Gathering of Old Men
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A regular day in a Louisiana sugarcane plantation changes course when a local white farmer is shot in self defense. A group of old, black men takes a courageous step by coming forward en masse to take responsibility for the killing of a white racist, whom one of their members has shot. As the sheriff confronts the suspects, the young plantation owner stands alone in her daring defense of this group of men, provoking racial tension that makes a compelling drama.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 749
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, West Germany
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative
Best tv shows and movies like A Gathering of Old Men (1987):
Similar in 77%
Smith! (1969)
Plot Summary:
When the Indian Jimmyboy is accused of murder of a white man, he flees onto the ranch of Smith, who's well known for his tolerance for Indians, since he was raised by the old Indian Antoine. Smith helps Jimmyboy against the mean Sheriff and promises to speak for him in court, thus persuading him to surrender himself to the police.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 274
Genere: Drama, Family, Western
Country: USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 84%
Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years (1999)
Plot Summary:
Tells the story of Sadie and Bessie Delany, two African-American (they preferred "colored") sisters who both lived past the age of 100. They grew up on a North Carolina college campus, the daughters of the first African-American Episcopal bishop, who was born a slave, and a woman with an inter-racial background. With the support of each other and their family, they survived encounters with racism and sexism in their own different ways. Sadie quietly and sweetly broke barriers to become the first African-American home-ec teacher in New York City, while Bessie, with her own brand of outspokenness, became the second African-American dentist in New York City. At the ages of 103 and 101, they told their story to Amy Hill Hearth, a white New York Times reporter who published an article about them. The overwhelming response launched a bestselling book, a Broadway play, and this film.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 327
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 81%
Captive Heart: The James Mink Story (1996)
Plot Summary:
James Mink is a black man in Canada who has built a very successful livery business, and enjoys a white wife and a beautiful daughter, Mary. An excellent match is arranged with an American businessman, but when he takes his new wife Mary across the border his true character emerges - he sells her into slavery. James and Elizabeth must go to Virginia to rescue their daughter.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 265
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: uplifting, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, christian film
Similar in 78%
The Intruder (1962)
Plot Summary:
A man in a gleaming white suit comes to a small Southern town on the eve of integration. He calls himself a social reformer. But what he does is stir up trouble--trouble he soon finds he can't control.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: grindhouse, independent film, psychotronic, neo noir, political, controversial, cult classic, tense, sincere, thought provoking
Similar in 90%
As Summers Die (1986)
Plot Summary:
Set in a sleepy Southern Louisiana town in 1959, a lawyer, searches for justice as he volunteers to help a black woman whose property is being threatened by the Holts, the first family of the town, after she refuses to sell her valuable land.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 853
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: political, touching, serious, captivating, realistic, independent film
Similar in 77%
Timepiece (1996)
Plot Summary:
Set in the 1940's, James Earl Jones as an an old clockmaker faces racism and is tried for murder when the racist is killed. However, Kevin Kilner comes forward and claims to have commmitted the crime in self defense. All the while, Kilner's family life is in disarray with various crises including his daughter catching meningitis.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 514
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic
Similar in 81%
Blind Faith (1998)
Plot Summary:
in 1957 an African-American criminal lawyer (Courtney B. Vance) defends his nephew, who faces the death penalty for murdering a white boy. Charles S. Dutton, Kadeem Hardison, Garland Whitt and Lonette McKee costar in this drama of racial and social tensions.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 662
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, independent film, serious, realistic
Similar in 84%
The Sky Is Gray (1980)
Plot Summary:
Drama - From Ernest J. Gaines, author of "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," comes a deceptively simple, yet emotionally complex tale of a young boy's discovery of what it's like to be black in Louisiana during the 1940's. James, the boy in question, has a raging toothache that necessitates a trip to the dentist. His mother (played by Emmy-winner Olivia Cole), accompanies James to town on an eye-opening odyssey where the boy gains valuable insights into poverty, racism - and his own sense of pride. With an exciting musical score by Webster Lewis, this multi-award winning film explores a child's discovery that the world is a complicated place... where things are never truly black or white... only shades of gray. - Olivia Cole, James Bond III, Margaret Avery.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 81
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 46 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 80%
10,000 Black Men Named George (2002)
Plot Summary:
In the 1920s, the rights of American workers to join a labor union was still considered an open question, and African-Americans were routinely denied their civil and economic rights. 10,000 Black Men Named George, the title, refers to the fact Pullman porters were often called "George" by white passengers, which was considered a racial slur.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 349
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, captivating, disturbing, tense, sincere, serious, realistic, contemplative, entertaining
Similar in 90%
Whitewash: The Clarence Brandley Story (2002)
Plot Summary:
Based on the true story of Clarence Brandley, a black man wrongly accused in 1980 of the murder of a 16-year-old white high school girl named Cheryl Ferguson. Brandley worked at Conroe High School, where Ferguson was visiting as a member of the Belleville High School volleyball team. Three days after her body was discovered, Brandley was arrested as the murderer. Jew Don Boney, a popular activist and Houston city council member, leads the fight to uncover the truth about the Ferguson murder. Mike DeGeurin, a Texas attorney, is brought in to act as the head defense attorney for Brandley, and is joined by a former minister, Jim McCloskey. The lawyers discover that not only is there a complete lack of evidence against Brandley, but the District Attorney, James Keeshan, has been strategizing with the presiding judge. After nine years in prison, three trials and a stay of execution that saved Brandley's life, justice finally prevails as Brandley is granted his freedom.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 165
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: disturbing, emotional, realistic, suspenseful, tense, serious
Similar in 87%
Blood Done Sign My Name (2010)
Plot Summary:
A drama based on the true story in which a black Vietnam-era veteran is allegedly murdered by a local white businessman who is later exonerated. The plot focuses on the role of a local high school teacher and the civil unrest that followed the acquittal.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 635
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: disturbing, serious, captivating, realistic, thought provoking, tense, bleak, contemplative, entertaining
Similar in 85%
A Raisin in the Sun (2008)
Plot Summary:
Dreams can make a life worth living, but they can also be dashed by bad decisions. This is the crossroads whare the Younger family find themselves when their father passes away and leaves them with $10,000 in life insurance money. Should they buy a new home for the family? Perhaps a liquor store? While no choice is easy, life on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s is even harder.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, emotional, uplifting, touching, serious, family saga, captivating, realistic
Similar in 84%
White Water (2015)
Plot Summary:
White Water is the story of a 7 year-old black kid in segregated 1963 Opelika, Alabama who becomes obsessed with the desire to taste the water from the "white's only" drinking fountain and sets out on a quest to do the unthinkable: drink from it.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 209
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: touching, sentimental, serious, suspenseful, realistic
Similar in 87%
Once They Marched Through a Thousand Towns (1981)
Plot Summary:
A dramatization of the controversial trial concerning the right for Neo-Nazis to march in the predominately Jewish community of Skokie.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 409
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: political, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, bleak, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 87%
American Violet (2008)
Plot Summary:
A young single mother of four living in a small Texas town. Arrested during a drug raid and accused of a crime she didn't commit, Dee goes against the wishes of her mother, Alma, and rejects the plea-bargain that would free her from jail, but brand her as a felon for life. As word begins to spread that similar incidents are occurring in poor communities all across the country, Dee realizes that there are more mothers out there like her, and decides to take a stand against powerful district attorney Calvin Beckett. Now, despite being well aware of District Attorney Beckett's fierce reputation, Dee enlists the aid of ACLU attorney David Cohen and former narcotics officer Sam Conroy in overcoming the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that, if not navigated with the greatest of caution, now threaten to destroy her life. With the custody of her children on the line, one brave mother wages a valiant battle to strike at the very heart of the corrupt Texas justice system.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: sentimental, rough, serious, sincere, realistic, uplifting, detective, hood, crying, inspirational
Similar in 82%
Jasper, Texas (2003)
Plot Summary:
In 1998, three white men in the small town of Jasper, Texas, chained a black man to the back of their pickup truck and dragged him to his death. This film relates that story and how it affected all of the residents of the town, both black and white.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 750
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, realistic, disturbing, freeze frame
Similar in 87%
Heavens Fall (2006)
Plot Summary:
Successful New York attorney Sam Leibowitz travels to the South in 1933 to defend nine young black men accused of raping two women on an Alabama freight train.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: serious, sincere, disturbing, independent film, uplifting, emotional, realistic
Similar in 84%
A Stranger in the Kingdom (1999)
Plot Summary:
A Vermont town in the 1950's hires a new minister based on his war record and capable presentation, but then are shocked when he shows up and is a black man. Things go completely wrong for.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 224
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: independent film, sincere, atmospheric, thought provoking, serious, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 84%
Shadrach (1998)
Plot Summary:
In 1935, 99-year-old former slave Shadrach asks to be buried on the soil where he was born to slavery, and that land is owned by the large Dabney family, consisting of Vernon, Trixie and their seven children, and to bury a black man on that land is a violation of strict Virginia law.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, emotional, independent film, sincere, serious, realistic, light, road movie, sexy
Similar in 84%
A Lesson Before Dying (1999)
Plot Summary:
In the 1940's South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing a a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince school teacher go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: powerful, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 85%
Spinning Into Butter (2007)
Plot Summary:
A hate crime on the campus of a New England college puts the school's dean (Parker) in a position where she has to examine her own feelings about race and prejudice, while maintaining her administration's politically correct policies.
IMDB Rating: 4.4
IMDB Votes: 980
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic, disturbing, emotional, contemplative
Similar in 79%
Heart of Dixie (1989)
Plot Summary:
Set at a Southern college during the 1950s, three co-eds (Ally Sheedy, Virginia Madsen and Phoebe Cates) re-assess their values in light of the burgeoning civil rights movement.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 826
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: independent film, sincere, thought provoking, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative, nostalgic
Similar in 78%
Freedom Song (2000)
Plot Summary:
Freedom Song (2000) is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan. In the midst of the Freedom Summer, a group of high school students in the small town are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community. The young activists meet resistance not only from white southerners, but from their parents, who have experienced firsthand the violence that can result from speaking out.[1] As high school students band together with the support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they make strides in registering African-American voters and gaining awareness for their cause.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 891
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, captivating, emotional, political, tense, serious, realistic
Similar in 78%
Nightjohn (1996)
Plot Summary:
Charles Burnett directs this movie about John, a man of many talents, including one forbidden skill: he can read. When he teaches a young slave girl named Sarny to read and write, she learns an unforgettable lesson about the power of words and the true meaning of freedom. A wonderful movie about the power of literacy and the risk it took to educate slaves in the Ante-Bellum South before the heartbreak of the Civil War.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 433
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, uplifting, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative, learning
Similar in 82%
Sudie and Simpson (1990)
Plot Summary:
A television movie about the friendship that develops between a young white girl and an older black man in a racist, rural Georgia town during the 1940s.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 169
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 88%
The Rising Place (2001)
Plot Summary:
The close friendship of two young women, each of a different race, and their struggle to find purpose in their lives during this time of social injustice and world war.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 208
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, realistic
Similar in 86%
Mandela and de Klerk (1997)
Plot Summary:
Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine both received Emmy nominations for their performances in this made-for-TV movie. The plot follows Nelson Mandela's 27-year struggle to end apartheid.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 667
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: tense, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, disturbing, contemplative
Similar in 82%
The Least Among You (2009)
Plot Summary:
Black college graduate Richard Kelly reluctantly accepts a plea bargain requiring him to spend two semesters at an all-white seminary after he's wrongly accused of crimes committed during the 1965 Watts riots. Facing bigotry on all sides, he's close to cracking until he meets an elderly custodian who helps him navigate the trials of racism.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 176
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: uplifting, touching, captivating, emotional, thought provoking, serious, realistic, contemplative, independent film, period piece
Similar in 90%
Boycott (2001)
Plot Summary:
This made-for-TV movie dramatizes the historic boycott of public buses in the 1950s, led by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, realistic, political, talky
Similar in 76%
Harlan County War (2000)
Plot Summary:
A Kentucky woman whose mine-worker husband is nearly killed in a cave-in, and whose father is slowly dying of black lung disease, joins the picket lines for a long, violent strike.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 604
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, disturbing, rough, realistic, independent film, captivating, political, sincere, bleak, serious