Best movies like Neds
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
NEDs (Non Educated Delinquents) is the story of a young man’s journey from prize-winning schoolboy to knife-carrying teenager. Struggling against the low expectations of those around him, John McGill changes from victim to avenger, scholar to NED, altar boy to glue sniffer. When he attempts to change back again, his new reality and recent past make conformity near impossible and violent self determination near inevitable.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, France, Italy
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing, atmospheric, gloomy, biting, hood, sad
Best tv shows and movies like Neds (2010):
Similar in 77%
Wild Bill (2011)
Plot Summary:
Out on parole after 8 years inside Bill Hayward returns home to find his now 11 and 15 year old sons abandoned by their mother and fending for themselves. Unwilling to play Dad, an uncaring Bill is determined to move on.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: captivating, rough, touching, suspenseful, sexy, family saga, hood, crime drama, cult classic, indie film
Similar in 78%
Bloody Kids (1980)
Plot Summary:
The slender premise springs from the actions of two listless 11-year-old boys, the cold, manipulative Leo, and his weaker, more impressionable friend, Mike. Contemptuous of the fallible police force (Mike has already filched a police hat from an accident scene), the boys arrange a staged knife fight outside a football stadium with the aid of a bag of stage blood and a real blade.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 305
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: offbeat, tense, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing, wild
Similar in 88%
Boulevard Nights (1979)
Plot Summary:
A focus on life in a gang, Boulevard Nights portrays the dangers of street violence. Richard Yniguez plays a young Chicano who tries to get out of the gang, but he keeps finding himself drawn back into it.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 740
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: hood, hispanic, crime drama, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing, biting, suspense
Similar in 87%
Made in Britain (1982)
Plot Summary:
Trevor sometimes-violent skinhead with no regard for authority, and would rather spend his time stealing cars than sitting in the detention centre to which he is sent. His social worker, Harry Parker, tries to do his best, but Trevor is only interested when there’s something that he can get out of it. The authorities within the centre try to make Trevor conform to the norms of society, but he takes no notice, and would rather speak in a torrent of four-letter words and racial abuse.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 76 min
Plot tags: disturbing, controversial, cult classic, powerful, terrifying, rough, bleak, serious, captivating, realistic
Similar in 86%
Awaydays (2009)
Plot Summary:
On the Wirral in the grim early years of Margaret Thatcher's premiership, the opportunities for thrill seeking young men looking to escape 9 to 5 drudgery are what they've always been: sex, drugs, rock n' roll, fashion, football and fighting.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, suspenseful, tense, bleak, realistic, gloomy, cult film
Similar in 84%
Clash (2009)
Plot Summary:
"Engwkentro" follows two teenage brothers attempting to escape an unnamed city controlled by an iron-fisted mayor. They must first break away from the cycle of crime, while trying to run from rival gang leaders and the state's murderous vigilantes.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 108
Genere: Drama
Country: Philippines
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: tense, rough, serious, disturbing, bleak, realistic
Similar in 79%
The Rose Seller (1998)
Plot Summary:
13-year-old Monica leads a street life, making her living by selling flowers to couples in local nightspots, she is joined by 10-year-old Andrea who runs out of her house after her mother beats her.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Colombia
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: social, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 81%
Barbarians (2014)
Plot Summary:
"Barbarians" is a teenage drama about coming of age in a world where there is no opportunity. A portrait of a young generation growing up in a society of lost values.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 627
Genere: Drama
Country: Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: sincere, rough, serious, realistic, tense, bleak
Similar in 85%
Bo (2010)
Plot Summary:
Fifteen year old Deborah meets Jennifer who steers her into a career as an escort. Under the alias Bo she begins a new life that she cannot handle and starts a downward spiral that only she can end.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, rough, captivating, realistic, erotic, sad, bleak
Similar in 82%
Five Star (2014)
Plot Summary:
After John’s absent father is struck by a stray bullet, Primo takes it upon himself to verse the young boy in the code of the streets—one founded on respect and upheld by fear. A member of the Bloods since the age of twelve—both in the film and in reality—the streets of Brooklyn are all Primo has ever known. While John questions whether or not to enter into this life, Primo must decide whether to leave it all behind as he vows to become a better husband and father. Set during those New York summer weeks where the stifling heat seems to encase everything, Five Star plunges into gang culture with searing intensity. Director Keith Miller observes the lives of these two men with a quiet yet pointed distance, carefully eschewing worn clichés through its unflinching focus. Distinctions between fiction and real life remain intentionally ambiguous, allowing the story of these two men to resonate beyond the streets, as they face the question of what it means to be a man.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 569
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, psychological, captivating, sexy, hood, tense, sincere, rough, bleak
Similar in 81%
Johnny (1999)
Plot Summary:
Johnny, the megalomaniac leader of a group of squeegee kids, finds a video camera and pushes his followers into "acting" out increasingly dangerous "scenes".
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 168
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: independent film, rough, thought provoking, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 89%
All the Invisible Children (2005)
Plot Summary:
Seven short films - each one focused on the plight of a different child protagonist.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: anthology, touching, atmospheric, rough, serious, captivating, neorealism, realistic, independent film
Similar in 83%
Harmony Lessons (2013)
Plot Summary:
During a medical examination, 13-year-old Aslan is humiliated in front of a load of his fellow pupils. The incident unleashes his latent personality disorder. Plagued by self-doubt, he strives for cleanliness and perfection and is obsessed with trying to control everything around him. His compulsion draws Aslan, who lives with his grandmother in a village in Kazakhstan, into increasingly difficult situations. He abhors the way most of his fellow pupils are held in the sway of a criminal scheme, in which Bolat, one of Aslan’s tormentors, is also involved. Bolat blackmails the younger children into paying him protection money; he has nothing but contempt for ostracised Aslan.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 994
Genere: Drama
Country: Kazakhstan, Germany, France
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, serious, disturbing, gloomy
Similar in 76%
After Lucia (2012)
Plot Summary:
Alejandra and her dad Roberto have just moved to town. She is new at school, he has a new job. Starting over is sometimes complicated when you have left so much behind.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico, France
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: disturbing, serious, realistic, suspense, political, social, sad, teen, transgressive, bleak
Similar in 82%
Sebbe (2010)
Plot Summary:
Duct tape, electrical cables, trigger, explosives. Sebbe never planned to build a bomb. It just happened. Sebbe is 15 years old and lives with his mother in an apartment that is too narrow. He does his best. He never strikes back. Sebbe loves his mother because he knows nothing else. In the junkyard the dream is alive, and in the hands of Sebbe, dead objects come to life. Here he has the power to create. Here he is free - but alone. His isolation grows as his world shrinks, until one day he is completely isolated with no other than his mother. And when she falls, everything falls.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 79 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, captivating, realistic, tense, mind bending, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 86%
Brother (2014)
Plot Summary:
Giorgi is 16 years old when he discovers another world through American films forbidden in all Soviet Union until then. Since the post-revolutionary chaos in his home town, Tbilisi, Giorgi has wanted to have succeeded by following the path of his idols: Tony Montana and Vito Corleone. He has almost reached his goal when he is confronted with a dilemma; how can he stop his little brother who is 12 years old to follow his path when he could become a famous pianist? All this in a world that only knows chaos.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 265
Genere: Drama
Country: Georgia, France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, touching, serious, captivating, stylized, gloomy, entertaining
Similar in 81%
War (2014)
Plot Summary:
Fifteen-year-old Matteo is attractive, albeit somewhat girlish and frail. The whole world is against him. He has no friends and his parents seem to live in a different universe. The pressure increases as his awkward attempts to win his father’s respect fail. One night two men carry him off: his parents send him to a remote alp, where he is forced to spend the summer working hard on a family farm. When Matteo arrives on the alp, a surprise awaits him.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 279
Genere: Drama
Country: Switzerland
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, disturbing, sincere, bleak
Similar in 76%
Young Girls in Black (2010)
Plot Summary:
Noémie and Priscilla, two teenage girls from working class backgrounds, cultivate the same violence, the same contempt of the world. They are a source of serious concern for family and friends, who sense them capable of going to extremes. Noémie has already tried to kill herself once when with the work of German Romanic writer Kleist ringing true to her, convinces equally unhappy best friend Priscilla to make a suicide pact. The two of them can see no reason to go on living but the practicalities and opportunity to go through with that plan is harder than they envisage.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 210
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: tense, emotional, realistic, contemplative, psychological, sincere, serious
Similar in 90%
Without Destination (2002)
Plot Summary:
Sin Destino follows the life of a 15 year old Mexican boy, Francisco, as he struggles to survive on the streets. His primary source of income is money raised by prostituting himself to men for sex, and the film implies that this learned behaviour has arisen as a result of a contact with a single man when Francisco was 9 years old. This man, Sebastien, is an "artist" who initially claimed to want to photograph the boy, but it is clear that their relationship at one time extended far beyond that of photographer/model.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 220
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: disturbing, psychological, atmospheric, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, surreal, gloomy, sexual
Similar in 80%
Life Hits (2006)
Plot Summary:
Christina is living in a suburb to Copenhagen. With her class mates Cecilie, Trine and Pernille she slacks her school work, living mostly for the weekends of gate crashing, getting drunk, experimenting with drugs and scoring guys. But her world is turned upside down when Cecilie's boyfriend Shaid starts hitting on her, and Cecilie mistakenly believes the two of them are making out.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Denmark
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, serious, realistic, captivating, independent film, sincere, disturbing
Similar in 85%
Over the Edge (1979)
Plot Summary:
The music of Cheap Trick, The Cars, and The Ramones highlights this realistic tale of alienated suburban youth on the rampage. Dillon makes his screen debut in this updated, well-done "Rebel Without a Cause." Shelved for several years, the movie was finally released after Dillon made it big. Sleeper with excellent direction and dialogue.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: offbeat, grindhouse, hood, cult classic, tense, rough, serious, realistic, disturbing, independent film
Similar in 77%
Ratcatcher (1999)
Plot Summary:
James Gillespie is 12 years old. The world he knew is changing. Haunted by a secret, he has become a stranger in his own family. He is drawn to the canal where he creates a world of his own. He finds an awkward tenderness with Margaret Anne, a vulnerable 14 year old expressing a need for love in all the wrong ways, and befriends Kenny, who possesses an unusual innocence in spite of the harsh surroundings.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 12000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: disturbing, bleak, crying, depressing, art house, atmospheric, stylized, controversial, independent film, inspirational
Similar in 86%
The Selfish Giant (2013)
Plot Summary:
A hyperactive boy and his best friend, a slow-witted youth with an affinity for horses, start collecting scrap metal for a shady dealer.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: sad, atmospheric, depressing, realistic, bleak, powerful, aesthetic, tense, serious, captivating
Similar in 76%
Blue Spring (2001)
Plot Summary:
Soon after being named the new leader of his high school's gang system, Kujo grows bored with the violence and hatred that surround him. He wants desperately to abandon his post… but his once-enviable position of power has a strange way of making him feel powerless.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: bleak, realistic, disturbing, serious, manga
Similar in 88%
Adulthood (2008)
Plot Summary:
After serving six years for killing his schoolmate, a young man learns that someone is out for revenge.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: hood, rough, serious, realistic, cult classic, gloomy, bleak
Similar in 87%
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 83%
The Class (2007)
Plot Summary:
An average guy of an Estonian high-school decides to defend his bullied classmate. This starts war between him and the informal leader of the class. As teenagers' honour is a touchy thing, everything ends in bloodshed.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 16000
Genere: Drama
Country: Estonia
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: serious, disturbing, tense, emotional, realistic, sad, crying, thought provoking, touching, brutal
Similar in 90%
Two-Legged Horse (2008)
Plot Summary:
A wealthy boy hires a poor child to carry him around like a horse.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 622
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran, France
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: serious, psychological, disturbing, bleak, art house, islamic, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 76%
Evil (2003)
Plot Summary:
Stockholm, the fifties. Though academically bright, violent pupil Erik Ponti is expelled from his state school with the headmaster’s words “there’s only one word for people like you – evil… what you need is a good thrashing, and more”. In fact already Erik frequently receives a ‘good’ thrashing at the hands of his sadistic stepfather – so he is packed off by his mother to boardingschool.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 41000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden, Denmark
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: psychological, disturbing, touching, rough, emotional, bleak, harsh, teen, realistic, serious
Similar in 84%
Kids (1995)
Plot Summary:
A controversial portrayal of teens in New York City which exposes a deeply disturbing world of sex and substance abuse. The film focuses on a sexually reckless, freckle-faced boy named Telly, whose goal is to have sex with as many different girls as he can. When Jenny, a girl who has had sex only once, tests positive for HIV, she knows she contracted the disease from Telly. When Jenny discovers that Telly's idea of "safe sex" is to only have sex with virgins, and is continuing to pass the disease onto other unsuspecting girls, Jenny makes it her business to try to stop him.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 83000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: disturbing, depressing, psychedelic, independent film, bleak, teen, rough, erotic, sexy, realistic