Best movies like Little Senegal
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Passionné par l'histoire de son peuple, Alloune, un vieux guide du musée africain "La Maison des Esclaves" à Gorée, part en pèlerinage pour retrouver les descendants de ses ancêtres aux Etats-Unis. Cet émouvant voyage va le mener des côtes de Caroline du Sud au quartier de Harlem où vit la communauté africaine, Little Senegal. Alloune, animé par l'idée de réunir sa famille par delà les siècles et les frontières, remonte jusqu'à une lointaine cousine, Ida, qui ignore tout de son passé. Le vieil homme croise également les chemins de son neveu Hassan, chauffeur de taxi clandestin, de sa fiancée Biram, d'Eileen, enceinte et fugueuse, et de Karim, qui cherche à faire un mariage blanc pour obtenir la carte verte. Tous les quatre comprennent mal la quête d'Alloune.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 437
Genere: Drama
Country: Algeria, France, Germany
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, sincere
Best tv shows and movies like Little Senegal (2000):
Similar in 84%
London River (2009)
Plot Summary:
After traveling to London to check on their missing children in the wake of the 2005 London terror attacks on the city, two strangers come to discover their respective children had been living together at the time of the attacks.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Mystery
Country: UK, France, Algeria
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, realistic, psychological, tense, captivating, sincere, serious, emotional
Similar in 89%
Blue Eyes (2009)
Plot Summary:
Before his compulsory retirement, on his last day of work, Marshall, JFK airport's chief Immigration officer, detains a group of Latin Americans and expose them to a series of humiliating situations. Blinded by prejudice, Marshall ends up by causing the death of a young Brazilian. After a period in prison, Marshall goes to Brazil, deadly ill and in a desperate search in order to purge his guilt. In his quest, he is guided by Bia, a young prostitute.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 551
Genere: Drama
Country: Brazil
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: realistic, thought provoking, touching, serious, psychological, sincere, contemplative, gloomy, independent film
Similar in 83%
Chocolate (1988)
Plot Summary:
A young French woman returns to the vast silence of West Africa to contemplate her childhood days in a colonial outpost in Cameroon. Her strongest memories are of the family's houseboy, Protee - a man of great nobility, intelligence and beauty - and the intricate nature of relationships in a racist society.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, West Germany, Cameroon
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, contemplative, psychological, sincere, atmospheric, thought provoking, serious, erotic, sentimental
Similar in 87%
Hold Back (2012)
Plot Summary:
Paris, today. Dorcy, a young black Christian, wants to marry Sabrina, a young North African. It what would be a simple matter if it weren't for the fact that Sabrina has 40 brothers and that this easygoing wedding has crystallized a taboo still rooted in the mentalities of the two communities: no marriages between Blacks and Arabs. Slimane, the elder brother, and guardian of traditions, will oppose this union in every way possible.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 233
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 78 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, realistic, contemplative, tense, thought provoking
Similar in 75%
Sankofa (1993)
Plot Summary:
A self-absorbed Black American fashion model on a photo shoot in Africa is spiritually transported back to a plantation in the West Indies where she experiences first-hand the physical and psychic horrors of chattel slavery, and eventually the redemptive power of community and rebellion as she becomes a member of a freedom-seeking Maroon colony.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 784
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Ghana, Burkina Faso, UK, Germany, Ethiopia
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: inspirational, independent film, thought provoking, serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 78%
Bamako (The Court) (2006)
Plot Summary:
Melé is a bar singer, her husband Chaka is out of work and the couple is on the verge of breaking up... In the courtyard of the house they share with other families, a trial court has been set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF whom they blame for Africa's woes... Amidst the pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard. Chaka does not seem to be concerned by this novel Africa's desire to fight for its rights.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Mali, USA
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, captivating, social, biting, allegory, suspense
Similar in 85%
ABCD (1999)
Plot Summary:
The only goal of an ageing Indian-American widow is to see her son and rebellious daughter (described as an American Born Confused Desi or ABCD) married off to respectable Indian families.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 324
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: multicultural, independent film, sincere, clever, touching, serious, realistic, talky
Similar in 89%
White Mama (1980)
Plot Summary:
A poor, elderly white woman living in a tenement in a black ghetto is befriended by a neighborhood boy, and the two of them form a mutually beneficial relationship: he provides her companionship and protection, and she becomes the mother he never had.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 783
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, touching, serious, realistic
Similar in 88%
Mother of George (2013)
Plot Summary:
A story about a woman willing to do anything and risk everything for her marriage.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Nigeria, USA
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: realistic, touching, serious, psychological, captivating, visually stunning, sincere, independent film
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Adanggaman (2000)
Plot Summary:
In West Africa during the late 17th century, King Adanggaman leads a war against his neighboring tribes, ordering his soldiers to torch enemy villages, kill the elderly and capture the healthy tribesmen to sell to the European slave traders. When his village falls prey to one of Adanggaman's attacks, Ossei manages to escape, but his family is murdered except for his captured mother. Chasing after the soldiers in an effort to free her, Ossei is befriended by a fierce warrior named Naka.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 197
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Switzerland, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Italy
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: disturbing, thought provoking, serious, suspenseful, tense, atmospheric, captivating, realistic, contemplative, baroque
Similar in 87%
Mad Ship (2013)
Plot Summary:
A Scandinavian immigrant, driven to madness by ruined dreams and the tragic death of his wife, embarks on a quixotic mission to build a homemade ship and sail out of the prairie dust bowl at the height of the Great Depression.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 237
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, sincere, touching, period piece
Similar in 75%
America So Beautiful (2001)
Plot Summary:
This film follows the odyssey of a group of Iranian immigrants in Los Angeles, trying to find their place in America amidst the unfolding of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 195
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: sincere, uplifting, touching, sentimental, independent film, serious, realistic
Similar in 84%
Amexicano (2007)
Plot Summary:
A look at the bond between an illegal immigrant and a blue-collar Italian-American from Queens.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 299
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, humorous, independent film
Similar in 89%
My Australia (2011)
Plot Summary:
City of Lodz in Poland, after the Second World War. Two brothers, Tadek and Andrzej, grow up without a father, and their mother, so busy at work, does not notice when the boys join a rowdy and anti-Semitic organization.Only when during a fight one of the boys gets hurt, she realizes what is going on. Then she decides to leave Poland together with her family and go to... Australia. At the end of the trip it comes out that the goal was not to reach Australia but Israel. Boys become aware of their and their family roots.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 101
Genere: Drama
Country: Israel, Poland
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, realistic
Similar in 77%
The Valley of Tears (2012)
Plot Summary:
Marie, a Canadian editor specialized in testimonies of Genocide survivors, starts to receive anonymous large envelopes with the narrative of Ali, a young Palestinian who grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon. Intrigued, Marie investigates the origin of these envelopes and finds out who is the anonymous writer. This is how she establishes a connection with Joseph, a Lebanese worker hired to paint the offices. A strange relation develops between these two persons who come from very different worlds. But after a while, Joseph abruptly disappears and Marie, overwhelmed by the mission fallen on her, starts a journey into the past, through a small village in Lebanon, in the heart of a bloodthirsty culture were lies the key of all the enigmas.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 630
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 83%
Choco (2012)
Plot Summary:
A young woman raising alone her children while her husband gets drunk but when she breaks free nothing will be the same.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 292
Genere: Drama
Country: Colombia
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, realistic, touching, gloomy
Similar in 82%
The Negro (2002)
Plot Summary:
A black teenager vandalizes a racist lawn ornament.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 519
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: tense, sincere, serious, disturbing, thought provoking, realistic
Similar in 86%
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 79%
When Day Breaks (2012)
Plot Summary:
The story of a retired music professor, Misha Brankov, who under unusual circumstances discovers his true origins. At the place where once stood a Nazi concentration camp for Jews during World War II, a metal box filled with documents is found. It was buried by an inmate Isaac Weiss in the year 1941. The professor finds out that his real parents, the Weiss's, gave him away to their friends, the Brankovs, just before they were taken into the camp. Inside the box there is an unfinished musical score, called "When day breaks", composed by the inmate Isaac Weiss. Searching for the truth about himself and his origins, Misha discovers the little-known truth about Judenlager Semlin camp, one of the worst Nazi execution sites in the heart of contemporary Belgrade. At the same time, the professor's obsession is to complete the composition, started by his father, and to perform it on the site of the former camp... which he, after many vicissitudes, finally succeeds.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 860
Genere: Drama
Country: Serbia, France, Croatia
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 80%
Grigris (2013)
Plot Summary:
A 25 year old young man with dreams of becoming a dancer despite the fact that he's paralyzed from the waist down. His dreams are shattered when his uncle falls seriously ill. To save him, he decides to go work for petrol traffickers.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 590
Genere: Drama
Country: Chad, France, Belgium
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: touching, sincere, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 83%
Macondo (2014)
Plot Summary:
A drama centered on an 11-year-old Chechnyan refugee living in Vienna whose life is thrown into disarray when a friend of his deceased father materializes.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 310
Genere: Drama
Country: Austria
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 76%
Red Leaves (2014)
Plot Summary:
An Ethiopian immigrant, sets out on a journey through his children's homes after losing his wife. Coming to know some of life's harsh new realities, he tries to survive in his own way.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 47
Genere: Drama
Country: Israel
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, tense
Similar in 81%
Live and Become (2005)
Plot Summary:
In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Israel, Belgium, Italy
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, psychological, serious, contemplative, sexy, indie film, realistic, gloomy, cult film
Similar in 85%
Max & Lenny (2014)
Plot Summary:
Max and Lenny is the story of a friendship between two girls fighting for survival in a northern area of Marseille.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 51
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic
Similar in 81%
A Storm in Summer (2000)
Plot Summary:
Set in 1969, Abel Shaddick, a crotchety deli owner, has a grudge against virtually everyone in his upstate New York town of Fairview, particularly against his slacker nephew Stanley who lives behind the shop. Without telling his uncle, Stanley agrees to put up a needy city kid for the summer as part of a charity program run by rich debutante Gloria. Abel immediately vetoes the plan, but it is too late. The kid, young Herman Washington, is already on his way.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 507
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, uplifting, feel good, emotional, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 81%
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 75%
A House Divided (2000)
Plot Summary:
In the aftermath of the terrible Civil War which has devastated the South, Amanda America Dixon returns home to find she has become the sole heir to a vast cotton plantation. But the dreadful secret which has blighted her life threatens to deprive her of the birthright which her beloved father David had struggled for so long to create. Raised by her father and grandmother to be the perfect white Southern Belle, Amanda's true mother was a black slave Julia. Confronted with the forces of greed and bigotry, Amanda has to face not only the hatred of a racist world, but the complex truth of a family whose lives have been built on a lie.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 287
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, suspenseful, period drama
Similar in 88%
Under the Starry Sky (2013)
Plot Summary:
The debut feature from Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Dyana Gaye charts the interconnected destinies of three far-flung sojourners across three continents. A quiet drama, about the anxieties of negotiating journeying to foreign countries and making a place for oneself in the world.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 92
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium, Senegal
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic
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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%
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