Best movies like A Life Interrupted
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
After Debbie Smith was raped, she didn't take the law into her own hands. She wrote the law... Based on a true story. In 1989, Debbie Smith was living a quiet life as a housewife with her police officer husband, Rob and their two kids, but one day it's all shattered. While her husband slept upstairs, Debbie was dragged from her kitchen in broad daylight and brutally raped in the woods. After going through the dehumanizing rape-kit, she waited with fear and paranoia. Six years later, her rapist was caught through a chance DNA test. After learning how many rape-kits go untested and how long women wait to get justice, Debbie makes it her mission so no one women will suffer the long wait to get justice.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 270
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Thriller
Country: Canada
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: rough, emotional, realistic, disturbing, thought provoking, bleak, serious
Best tv shows and movies like A Life Interrupted (2007):
Similar in 89%
Student Seduction (2003)
Plot Summary:
Christie Dawson always wanted to be the "cool" teacher. But her world is shaken up after a pupil's crush spirals out of control and he sexually assaults her. Suddenly, her colleagues, neighbors and even her hubby are wondering whether she crossed the line and tempted her student. But school isn't out for Christine just yet she's gonna fight back, and big time!.
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 862
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: Canada, USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 89%
I Am Slave (2010)
Plot Summary:
Based on the real-life experiences of Mende Nazer, the story unfolds as twelve-year-old Malia, daughter of champion wrestler Bah, is abducted from her Sudanese village in the Nubar Mountains by pro-government Arab militia and sold into slavery to a woman in Khartoum, who beats her for touching her daughter. After six years she is sent to London, where her name is changed, but her miserable life of servitude continues. Her passport is taken and she is told that her father will die if she goes to the authorities. Fortunately she meets a sympathetic person who seems to offer her the hope of escape and reunion with Bah ,back in Sudan. For all the film's optimism an end title states that there are around 5,000 'slave' workers currently in Britain.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: disturbing, thought provoking, serious, sincere, touching, realistic, bleak, inspirational
Similar in 85%
You Can't Take My Daughter (2020)
Plot Summary:
A young woman fights to keep her rapist from gaining custody of her daughter.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 497
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, suspense, disturbing
Similar in 89%
Sins of the Preacher (2013)
Plot Summary:
After the apparent suicide of her daughter, a woman tries to prove that her son-in-law killed her.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 343
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: disturbing, tense, enigmatic, captivating, suspense, rough, mind bending, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 84%
Violet Perfume: No One Is Listening (2001)
Plot Summary:
A poignant and moving urban drama, focusing on the growing problem of sexual assault in Mexico City. Director Sistach fictionalizes the true story of a friendship between two adolescent girls which is torn apart when one of them is brutally raped.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico, Netherlands
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, disturbing, rough, bleak, weird
Similar in 83%
Baby for Sale (2004)
Plot Summary:
A couple discover that the baby girl they're trying to adopt is being auctioned off to the highest bidder. The couple become part of a sting operation to bust the baby-selling ring.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 351
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: disturbing, sincere, thought provoking, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 83%
Heart of the Beholder (2005)
Plot Summary:
Based on the true story of a family who opened the first videocassette rental stores in St. Louis in 1980. The family was ruined by a corrupt prosecutor who had been blackmailed by a religious group because the family refused to remove Martin Scorsese's controversial film, "The Last Temptation of Christ", from their stores.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 408
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 75%
A Date with Darkness: The Trial and Capture of Andrew Luster (2003)
Plot Summary:
Andrew Luster, the heir to the Max factor fortune, is convicted of rape on 86 counts. This Lifetime original movie recounts the rapes committed by the infamous Andrew Luster and the women who brought him to justice.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 492
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, suspenseful, disturbing, bleak, captivating, realistic, sexual, detective, sexy
Similar in 84%
The Interrogation of Michael Crowe (2002)
Plot Summary:
The lives of Escondido, California residents Cheryl and Stephen Crowe change one morning when they find their twelve year old daughter Stephanie Crowe stabbed to death in her bedroom. As procedure dictates, the police take each member of the household away individually to be questioned, and the remaining children - fourteen year old Michael Crowe and adolescent Shannon Crowe - are taken into protective custody until Cheryl and Stephen can be cleared. The police end up placing much of their focus on the sullen Michael, who they question without counsel and without discussion with his parents. The tone of the police questioning is that they believe Michael did kill his sister, the police lying, harassing and coercing in the process. Under the barrage of questioning, Michael eventually confesses, as do two of his friends, both questioned under the same threatening tone. Cheryl and Stephen, who are finally made aware of the questioning and the confessions.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: psychological, disturbing, rough, serious, sincere, thought provoking, emotional, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 87%
Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1995)
Plot Summary:
The McMartin family's lives are turned upside down when they are accused of serious child molestation. The family run a school for infants. An unqualified child cruelty "expert" videotapes the children describing outrageous stories of abuse. One of the most expensive and long running trails in US legal history, exposes the lack of evidence and unprofessional attitudes of the finger pointers which kept one of the accused in jail for over 5 years without bail.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: depressing, political, clever, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing, talky
Similar in 77%
I Accuse (2003)
Plot Summary:
A chilling tale based on a real event in which a doctor stepped out of line and sexually assaulted a patient when drugged.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Canada
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, suspenseful, serious, realistic
Similar in 86%
Guilt by Association (2002)
Plot Summary:
Life is good for Susan, her two children and new boyfriend Russell. But life abruptly changes when she discovers her perfect boyfriend is a drug dealer. Realising the danger this could bring to her family she tells him to leave. Suddenly her house is raided and Susan is arrested as a co-conspirator in Russell's drug business. Her situation goes from bad to worse when she finds herself behind bars with violent criminals. How will she ever prove her innocence when the system seems against her? Guilt By Association is a disturbing story based on true events.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 490
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sincere, captivating, realistic, disturbing, thought provoking, bleak, serious, crying
Similar in 86%
The Boys of St. Vincent (1992)
Plot Summary:
The true story of boys being sexually abused at their orphanage ran by a religious community in Newfoundland.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: realistic, disturbing, bleak, sad, art house, sincere, rough, thought provoking, serious, emotional
Similar in 88%
Family Sins (2004)
Plot Summary:
Based on the true story of the Burt family who seemed normal, upstanding members of the community but were actually deeply embedded in crime. The matriarch took in foster children who were subsequently molested and abused by her husband and children and she kept a woman enslaved and imprisoned in the basement for over twenty years until the woman's daughter managed to get to Rhode Island Attorney General David Morwitz and expose the horrors taking place in the Burt household.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 895
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: realistic, disturbing, thought provoking, serious, bleak
Similar in 85%
To Kill a Priest (1988)
Plot Summary:
A young priest speaks out against the Communist regime in Poland and is killed for it.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: France, USA
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, rough, suspenseful, captivating
Similar in 82%
The Matthew Shepard Story (2002)
Plot Summary:
In a senseless act of hatred, openly gay college student Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998. This critically-acclaimed, moving film recounts the final days of Matthew's killers' trial—and the weeks leading to Matthew's death—with unnerving detail. Stockard Channing delivers an unforgettable, Emmy® Award-winning performance as Matthew's grieving mother, Judy, in a story of a murder that moved a nation to action. Also starring Law & Order's Sam Waterston.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, USA
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: realistic, disturbing, serious, detective, weeping, bleak, crying, queer cinema
Similar in 87%
Jump! (2007)
Plot Summary:
JUMP is a psychological drama revealing for the first time the extraordinary circumstances behind the unjust murder trial of the young Jew, Philippe Halsman, who would later become the most sought after celebrity portrait photographer of his generation.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 648
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Austria
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: serious, disturbing, contemplative, thought provoking, bleak, realistic, political
Similar in 85%
Dirty Hearts (2011)
Plot Summary:
In 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States and the Second World War was over. Right? Wrong. For eighty percent of the Japanese community in Brazil, Japan had won the war and defeat was nothing more than American propaganda. The few immigrants that accepted the truth were persecuted. Some were hunted down and assassinated - by their own countrymen - causing the start of a new, private war. Dirty Hearts is a thriller and love story told by the wife of one of the fanatics dedicated to preach Japanese victory. Little by little, she watches her husband, a hard-working immigrant, become an assassin and their love story fade away.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 681
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: Brazil, Japan
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: tense, bleak, serious, disturbing, rough, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 85%
She Fought Alone (1995)
Plot Summary:
All, including school administration and a friend, turn their backs on a girl who accused a classmate of rape.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: touching, sincere, realistic, disturbing, thought provoking, rough, serious, emotional, contemplative
Similar in 80%
A Cry for Help: The Tracey Thurman Story (1989)
Plot Summary:
Tracy Thurman was married to a man who abused her. But he continues to harass her after she gets a restraining order, and the police do little to help. When he brutally beats her and slashes her throat in front of police, she sues the city and the police department for failing to protect her.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: non fiction, sincere, rough, thought provoking, serious, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 78%
Woman Under Influence (2015)
Plot Summary:
"L'emprise" is the story of a drama, adapted from the moving book-witness "Acquitted", by Alexandra Lange. The story of a mother of four children, which is found in March 2012 in the dock of the foundations of Douai for the murder of her husband. How does a woman manage to kill the father of her children with a knife? During the three days of the trial, panting narrative takes us into the daily life of Alexandra, a mother that the society has failed to protect, neither she nor her children from the control of a monster she has loved. Through this incident that made headlines and upset the public, an event movie that raises the question of the balance of justice. Will she be heard?.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 287
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: psychological, thought provoking, suspense
Similar in 85%
Zuzu Angel (2006)
Plot Summary:
"Zuzu Angel" covers the last years of the famous Brazilian fashion designer in her doomed quest for justice in the case of her activist son Stuart's arrest, torture, murder and subsequent corpse disposal by the military forces in early 1970s Rio de Janeiro, during the darkest era of Brazilian military regime and media censorship. Not even the fact that she was a widely known public figure saved her from being killed in a car crash in 1976, in one of the regime's favorite elimination techniques (many other similar "car crashes" still have to be re-investigated).
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Brazil
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: disturbing, psychological, serious, suspenseful, thought provoking, captivating, realistic
Similar in 81%
Outlaw Prophet: Warren Jeffs (2014)
Plot Summary:
Cult leader Warren Jeffs rises to power in the polygamist Mormon sect once headed by his late father, but some of his wives fight back to bring him to justice. Based on a true story.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 972
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: rough, thought provoking, serious, factual, emotional, sad
Similar in 82%
Garrow's Law (2009)
Plot Summary:
The true tale of pioneering 18th century barrister William Garrow, who acted as counsel for the accused, introducing the concept of 'innocent until proved guilty' at London's Old Bailey.
IMDB Rating: 8.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: UK
Duration:
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, period piece, intellectual, dark, period drama
Similar in 90%
I Want to Live (1983)
Plot Summary:
The movie tells the story of a woman who struggles and fights to escape the gas chamber being condemned with capital punishment because of her participation in a hold up in which a person was killed.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 196
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: rough, thought provoking, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 81%
Gideon's Trumpet (1980)
Plot Summary:
True story of Clarence Gideon's fight to be appointed counsel at the expense of the state. This landmark case led to the Supreme Court's decision which extended this right to all criminal defendants.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, serious, captivating, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 84%
The Wronged Man (2010)
Plot Summary:
Janet Gregory, a single mother with a haunting past, is a paralegal struggling to overcome doubts about Calvin Willis, an African-American husband and father wrongfully accused of raping a neighborhood girl. Eventually convinced of his innocence, Janet takes Calvin's pro bono case and wages a dramatic and stormy 22-year battle with the justice system that ultimately redeems an unjustly accused man and cements a life-long friendship.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: emotional, serious, captivating, realistic, sincere, rough, bleak, disturbing
Similar in 80%
A Cry in the Dark (1988)
Plot Summary:
Based on the true story of Lindy Chamberlain: During a camping trip to Ayers Rock in outback Australia, she claims she witnessed a dingo taking her baby daughter, Azaria, from the family tent. Azaria's body is never found. After investigations and two public inquests, she is charged with murder. The case attracts a lot of attention, turning it into a media sideshow.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Australia, UK, USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: realistic, disturbing, tense, emotional, suspense, thought provoking, serious, sincere, sad, compassionate
Similar in 81%
Guilty (2011)
Plot Summary:
Investigates the corrupt judicial system under which Alain Mar'caux and his wife Edith were arrested on accusations of pedophilia horrific acts they never committed- and the years he spent fighting to get out of prison, clear his name and keep his family.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Crime, Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, disturbing, touching, sincere, serious, realistic, factual, social, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 86%
The Bang Bang Club (2010)
Plot Summary:
In the early to mid '90s, when the South African system of apartheid was in its death throes, four photographers - Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and João Silva - bonded by their friendship and a sense of purpose, worked together to chronicle the violence and upheaval leading up to the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as president. Their work is risky and dangerous, potentially fatally so, as they thrust themselves into the middle of chaotic clashes between forces backed by the government (including Inkatha Zulu warriors) and those in support of Mandela's African National Congress.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Canada, South Africa
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, rough, thought provoking, independent film