Best movies like Conrack
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A young, white teacher is assigned to an isolated island off the coast of South Carolina populated mostly by poor black families. He finds that the basically illiterate, neglected children there know so little of the world outside their island.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: deep, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, touching, feel good, serious, realistic
Best tv shows and movies like Conrack (1974):
Similar in 75%
A Child Is Waiting (1963)
Plot Summary:
Dr. Matthew Clark is the head of a state institution for mentally retarded children. Jean Hansen, a former music teacher anxious to give her life some meaning, joins the staff of the hospital. Jean, who tries to shelter the children with her love, suspiciously regards Clark's stern training methods. She becomes emotionally involved with 12-year-old Reuben Widdicombe, who has been abandoned by his divorced parents.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: sincere, uplifting, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, intellectual, social, sad, sentimental
Similar in 81%
Sounder (1972)
Plot Summary:
The Morgans, a loving and strong family of Black sharecroppers in Louisiana in 1933, face a serious family crisis when the husband and father, Nathan Lee Morgan, is convicted of a petty crime and sent to a prison camp. After some weeks or months, the wife and mother, Rebecca Morgan, sends the oldest son, who is about 11 years old, to visit his father at the camp. The trip becomes something of an odyssey for the boy. During the journey he stays a little while with a dedicated Black schoolteacher.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: emotional, sentimental, touching, realistic, thought provoking, gothic, social, southern gothic, sincere, uplifting
Similar in 85%
The Beat (1988)
Plot Summary:
A new kid moves into a tough neighborhood controlled by gangs, and tries to teach them poetry.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 220
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, touching, realistic, independent film, gloomy
Similar in 82%
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 81%
A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich (1977)
Plot Summary:
Faced with the harsh reality of growing up in the ghetto, 13-year old Benjie (Larry B. Scott) turns to heroin to escape. After Benjie hits rock bottom, his mother (Cicely Tyson) and her boyfriend (Paul Winfield) must sacrifice to help him overcome his dependency. Directed by Ralph Nelson, this heartwarming drama tackles the battle of a troubled youth, his struggles with addiction, and the impact felt by those around him.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 360
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: independent film, serious, realistic
Similar in 78%
Walkout (2006)
Plot Summary:
Walkout is the true story of a young Mexican American high school teacher, Sal Castro. He mentors a group of students in East Los Angeles, when the students decide to stage a peaceful walkout to protest the injustices of the public school system. Set against the background of the civil rights movement of 1968, it is a story of courage and the fight for justice and empowerment.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, sincere, captivating, political, informative, thought provoking, freeze frame
Similar in 84%
Shackles (2005)
Plot Summary:
An aspiring teacher (Hughley) takes the one job he's offered, a position at a school inside a prison.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: realistic, touching, captivating, suspense, semi serious
Similar in 87%
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%
Halls of Anger (1970)
Plot Summary:
An all-black inner city school has to become an integrated school. Few dozen white kids are transfered there, but the black students are aggressively opposed to this. The school then approaches a tough black teacher for help.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 425
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: black and white, independent film, sincere, thought provoking, bleak, serious, realistic, black cinema
Similar in 87%
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 90%
Our America (2002)
Plot Summary:
The true story of two African-American teen radio reporters and their documentary investigation of a notorious child murder.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 304
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, emotional, realistic, controversial, sincere, bleak
Similar in 79%
Life of a King (2013)
Plot Summary:
Life of a King is the true story of one man's mission to give inner city kids of Washington DC something he never had - a future. After being incarcerated for eighteen years, Eugene Brown established the Big Chair Chess Club to get kids off the streets and working towards lives they never believed they were capable of. This is his inspirational story.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sincere, uplifting, rough, touching, psychological, thought provoking, captivating, spiritual, serious, realistic
Similar in 77%
Beyond the Blackboard (2011)
Plot Summary:
Inspired by a true story, “Beyond the Blackboard” is about a 24-year-old first-time teacher who makes a difference in the lives of the homeless children she teaches in a shelter’s makeshift classroom. Set in 1987 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this movie tells the story a brand-new teacher and Mom who is given a tougher than expected teaching job and winds up teaching homeless children in a school that is housed in a room and called, literally, The School with No Name. She has some personal prejudicial hurdles to cross before she is able to be a true teacher for these children and of course there are hurdles like the lack of books and supplies.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Family
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: uplifting, touching, serious, emotional, inspirational, realistic, learning
Similar in 79%
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 83%
Cheaters (2000)
Plot Summary:
In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: sincere, clever, serious, realistic, offbeat
Similar in 80%
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 75%
Behavior (2014)
Plot Summary:
Meet Chala, an eleven year-old boy with a hard life and strong respect for Carmela, his sixth grade teacher. The pair develops a solid bond, but after Carmela suffers an accident, things get complicated….
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Cuba
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, touching, inspirational, bleak, biting, suspense
Similar in 90%
The Explosive Generation (1961)
Plot Summary:
Peter Gifford is a likable, dedicated schoolteacher that teaches a senior life skills class. When student Janet Sommers brings up the topic of sex and dating, he asks students to write questions on the topic, and will cover them in the next class. The parents get wind of what Gifford is about to do, notify the principal, and he warns Peter not to read the questions in class. Gifford decides to go against this and is suspended. The whole student body protests, and the administration gets worried on what to do.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 414
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, sexual, psychotronic, sexy
Similar in 84%
Up the Down Staircase (1967)
Plot Summary:
Sylvia Barrett is a rookie teacher at New York's inner-city Calvin Coolidge High: her lit classes are overcrowded, a window is broken, there's no chalk, books arrive late. The administration is concerned mainly with forms and rules (there's an up and and a down staircase); bells ring at the wrong time. Nevertheless, she tries. How she handles the chaos and her despair in her first semester makes up the film: a promising student drops out, another sleeps through class, a girl with a crush on a male teacher gets suicidal, and a bright but troublesome student misunderstands Sylvia's reaching out. A discussion of Dickens, parents' night, and a mock trial highlight the term. Can she make it?.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: esoteric, independent film, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Won't Back Down (2012)
Plot Summary:
Two determined mothers, one a teacher, look to transform their children's failing inner city school. Facing a powerful and entrenched bureaucracy, they risk everything to make a difference in the education and future of their children.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: touching, uplifting, realistic, serious, emotional, inspirational
Similar in 85%
To Sir, with Love II (1996)
Plot Summary:
Mark Thackeray (Poitier) is a West Indian, who in the 1967 film had taken teaching in a London East End school. He spent twenty years teaching and ten in administrative roles. He has taught the children of his former pupils, but is now retiring.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: political, sincere, uplifting, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 88%
To Sir, with Love (1967)
Plot Summary:
Idealistic engineer-trainee and his experiences in teaching a group of rambunctious white high school students from the slums of London's East End.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 20000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: touching, inspirational, educational, sentimental, realistic, social, retro, political, hood, black and white
Similar in 78%
Knights of the South Bronx (2005)
Plot Summary:
A business man decides that he wants to teach school in the inner city and chooses a tough school in the South Bronx. He teaches the children how to play the game of chess, and along the way they learn a lot about life.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: uplifting, touching, serious, realistic, spiritual
Similar in 88%
Red Like the Sky (2006)
Plot Summary:
A nearly sightless boy is sent to a school for blind children, where he secretly discovers the possibilities of the recorded sound.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: uplifting, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative, educational, fairy tale, factual
Similar in 79%
Norma Rae (1979)
Plot Summary:
Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: inspirational, political, touching, philosophical, feel good, sad, aesthetic, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking
Similar in 85%
Lean on Me (1989)
Plot Summary:
When principal Joe Clark takes over decaying Eastside High School, he's faced with students wearing gang colors and graffiti-covered walls. Determined to do anything he must to turn the school around, he expels suspected drug dealers, padlocks doors and demands effort and results from students, staff and parents. Autocratic to a fault, this real-life educator put it all on the lin.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: inspirational, feel good, hood, realistic, motivational, political, non fiction, sincere, atmospheric, rough
Similar in 89%
The Ron Clark Story (2006)
Plot Summary:
Matthew Perry is real-life inspiration Ron Clark, a passionate and innovative teacher who leaves his small hometown to teach in one of Harlem's toughest schools. But to break through to this students, Clark must use unconventional methods, including his ground-breaking classroom rules, to drive them toward their potential.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 12000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: uplifting, serious, emotional, realistic, inspirational, touching, teen, indie film, learning
Similar in 86%
Stand and Deliver (1988)
Plot Summary:
Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 22000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: inspirational, sentimental, uplifting, touching, realistic, hispanic, motivational, intellectual, spiritual, political
Similar in 78%
Finding Forrester (2000)
Plot Summary:
Gus van Sant tells the story of a young African American man named Jamal who confronts his talents while living on the streets of the Bronx. He accidentally runs into an old writer named Forrester who discovers his passion for writing. With help from his new mentor Jamal receives a scholarship to a private school.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 89000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 136 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, feel good, uplifting, sincere, inspirational, psychological, philosophical, intense, motivational
Similar in 75%
The Emperor's Club (2002)
Plot Summary:
William Hundert is a passionate and principled Classics professor who finds his tightly-controlled world shaken and inexorably altered when a new student, Sedgewick Bell, walks into his classroom. What begins as a fierce battle of wills gives way to a close student-teacher relationship, but results in a life lesson for Hundert that will still haunt him a quarter of a century later.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, inspirational, emotional, contemplative, sincere, serious, educational, philosophical, feel good