Best movies like Fruitvale Station

Similar in 84%

Baby Boy (2001)

Plot Summary:

The story of Jody, a misguided, 20-year-old African-American who is really just a baby boy finally forced-kicking and screaming to face the commitments of real life. Streetwise and jobless, he has not only fathered two children by two different women-Yvette and Peanut but still lives with his own mother. He can't seem to strike a balance or find direction in his chaotic life.

Similar in 76%

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Plot Summary:

After her fiance is falsely imprisoned, a pregnant African-American woman sets out to clear his name and prove his innocence.

Similar in 81%

Queen & Slim (2019)

Plot Summary:

An exploration of America’s social and political climate through the lens of a genre-defying love story. The film centers on a black man and black woman who go on a first date that goes awry after the two are pulled over by a police officer at a traffic stop. They kill the police officer in self-defense and rather than turn themselves in, they go on the run.

Similar in 89%

Jungle Fever (1991)

Plot Summary:

A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.

Similar in 80%

Loving (2016)

Plot Summary:

The story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple, whose challenge of their anti-miscegenation arrest for their marriage in Virginia led to a legal battle that would end at the US Supreme Court.

Similar in 87%

Detroit (2017)

Plot Summary:

A police raid in Detroit in 1967 results in one of the largest citizens' uprisings in the history of the United States.

Similar in 84%

Higher Learning (1995)

Plot Summary:

Malik (Omar Epps) is an African-American student attending on a track scholarship; academics are not his strong suit, and he goes in thinking that his athletic abilities will earn him a free ride through college. Fudge (Ice Cube), a "professional student" who has been at Columbus for six years so far, becomes friendly with Malik and challenges his views about race and politics in America.

Similar in 89%

The Hate U Give (2018)

Plot Summary:

Raised in a poverty-stricken slum, a 16-year-old girl named Starr now attends a suburban prep school. After she witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend, she's torn between her two very different worlds as she tries to speak her truth.

Similar in 79%

Poetic Justice (1993)

Plot Summary:

In this film, we see the world through the eyes of main character Justice, a young African-American poet. A mail carrier invites a few friends along for a long overnight delivery run.

Similar in 88%

Menace II Society (1993)

Plot Summary:

Menace II Society is a coming of age tale detailing the summer after its protagonist Caine (Tyrin Turner) graduates from high school. This is Caine's story, which details real life in today's tough inner city.

Similar in 82%

Boyz n the Hood (1991)

Plot Summary:

Boyz n the Hood is the popular and successful film and social criticism from John Singleton about the conditions in South Central Los Angeles where teenagers are involved in gun fights and drug dealing on a daily basis.

Similar in 83%

South Central (1992)

Plot Summary:

A man is put to prison for 10 years. Coming out of prison he wants to live a normal life and stop with crime but his son has yet followed the criminal path of his father.

Similar in 86%

Crown Heights (2017)

Plot Summary:

When Colin Warner was wrongfully convicted of murder, his best friend Carl King devoted his life to proving his innocence.

Similar in 76%

Just Mercy (2019)

Plot Summary:

The powerful true story of Harvard-educated lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who goes to Alabama to defend the disenfranchised and wrongly condemned — including Walter McMillian, a man sentenced to death despite evidence proving his innocence. Bryan fights tirelessly for Walter with the system stacked against them.

Similar in 80%

Ali (2001)

Plot Summary:

In 1964, a brash, new pro boxer, fresh from his Olympic gold medal victory, explodes onto the scene: Cassius Clay. Bold and outspoken, he cuts an entirely new image for African Americans in sport with his proud public self-confidence and his unapologetic belief that he is the greatest boxer of all time. Yet at the top of his game, both Ali's personal and professional lives face the ultimate test.

Similar in 75%

Crash (2004)

Plot Summary:

Los Angeles citizens with vastly separate lives collide in interweaving stories of race, loss and redemption.

Similar in 80%

Hustle & Flow (2005)

Plot Summary:

With help from his friends, a Memphis pimp in a mid-life crisis attempts to become a successful hip-hop emcee.

Similar in 82%

Blue Valentine (2010)

Plot Summary:

Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.

Similar in 77%

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Plot Summary:

Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer from Colorado, successfully manages to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan and become the head of the local chapter.

Similar in 88%

Straight Outta Compton (2015)

Plot Summary:

In 1987, five young men, using brutally honest rhymes and hardcore beats, put their frustration and anger about life in the most dangerous place in America into the most powerful weapon they had: their music. Taking us back to where it all began, Straight Outta Compton tells the true story of how these cultural rebels—armed only with their lyrics, swagger, bravado and raw talent—stood up to the authorities that meant to keep them down and formed the world’s most dangerous group, N.W.A. And as they spoke the truth that no one had before and exposed life in the hood, their voice ignited a social revolution that is still reverberating today.

Similar in 88%

Boys Don't Cry (1999)

Plot Summary:

Female born, Teena Brandon adopts his male identity of Brandon Teena and attempts to find himself and love in Nebraska.

Similar in 79%

The Great Debaters (2007)

Plot Summary:

The true story of a brilliant but politically radical debate team coach who uses the power of words to transform a group of underdog African American college students into an historical powerhouse that took on the Harvard elite.

Similar in 77%

Selma (2014)

Plot Summary:

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Civil Rights Act.

Similar in 86%

The Butler (2013)

Plot Summary:

A look at the life of Cecil Gaines who served eight presidents as the White House's head butler from 1952 to 1986, and had a unique front-row seat as political and racial history was made.

Similar in 88%

American History X (1998)

Plot Summary:

Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two thugs who tried to break into/steal his truck. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.

Similar in 89%

The Help (2011)

Plot Summary:

Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.

Similar in 88%

Notorious (2009)

Plot Summary:

NOTORIOUS is the story of Christopher Wallace. Through raw talent and sheer determination, Wallace transforms himself from Brooklyn street hustler (once selling crack to pregnant women) to one of the greatest rappers of all time; THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. Follow his meteoric rise to fame and his refusal to succumb to expectations - redefining our notion of "The American Dream.".

Similar in 84%

Malcolm X (1992)

Plot Summary:

A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the '50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.