Best movies like Riding the Bus with My Sister
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A woman spends time with her developmental disabled sister after the death of their father.
IMDB Rating: 3.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: touching, emotional, realistic, serious, cult film
Best tv shows and movies like Riding the Bus with My Sister (2005):
Similar in 83%
Little Chenier (2006)
Plot Summary:
LITTLE CHENIER: A CAJUN STORY is the story of a young man who lives a simple life on a houseboat in the Louisiana bayou with his mentally handicapped brother until one is accused of a crime in the small town.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 609
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 90%
My Brother (2006)
Plot Summary:
"My Brother" is an inner city story of two impoverished boys, Isaiah and James. James is developmentally disabled. Their mother, L'Tisha, finds herself in a tragic situation. Dying of tuberculosis, she desperately tries to get her two boys, eight and eleven at the time, adopted together. Finding that only Isaiah can be adopted. L'Tisha makes the only choice she feels she can make; creating an unbreakable bond of love between the boys, and hoping that bond will get them through life. Her prayers are answered as the boys overcome impossible odds on their way to adulthood, staying as close as ever as young men dealing with life's obstacles.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 360
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, touching, heartfelt
Similar in 84%
Jewel (2001)
Plot Summary:
In the 1940s a 40-year-old woman with five healthy children gives birth to a girl with Down's syndrome.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 387
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, UK, USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 89%
We Were the Mulvaneys (2002)
Plot Summary:
Based on the novel by the same name, We Were the Mulvaneys is a sensitive portrayal of one family's journey as they face conflict, fear, tragedy and ultimately, themselves.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 599
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, touching, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 86%
Hell (2005)
Plot Summary:
Three sisters share a connection to a violent incident from their childhood reunite to for the chance to come to terms with their past.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Italy, Belgium, Japan
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, touching, erotic, islamic, bleak, non-linear
Similar in 86%
The Memory Keeper's Daughter (2008)
Plot Summary:
During a blizzard in 1964, Dr. David Henry delivers his son Paul with the help of nurse Caroline. But when Henry realizes his wife is also carrying a girl with Down syndrome, he hands the second child over to Caroline without his wife's knowledge. Henry's fateful decision yields grave consequences for his family over the next 20 years.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: emotional, touching, realistic, sad, gloomy, serious
Similar in 77%
The Grief of Others (2015)
Plot Summary:
The Ryries have suffered a loss: the death of a baby just fifty-seven hours after his birth. Without words to express their grief, the parents, John and Ricky, try to return to their previous lives. The couple's children, ten-year-old Biscuit and thirteen-year-old Paul, responding to the unnamed tensions around them, begin to act out in exquisitely idiosyncratic ways. But as the family members scatter into private, isolating grief, an unexpected visitor arrives, and they find themselves growing more alert to the hurt, humor, warmth, and burdens of others—to the grief that is part of every human life but that also carries within it the power to draw us together.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 279
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, disturbing, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 79%
My Sister's Keeper (2002)
Plot Summary:
Two sisters take a journey of discovery and reconciliation based on the memoirs of Margaret Moorman. Christine has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and must rely on others for support even though she longs for and independent and ordinary life. When her mother dies, her sister Judy becomes responsible for her care. The two are left to face the struggles of finding common ground.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 456
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: uplifting, sentimental, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, captivating, feel good
Similar in 89%
Union Square (2011)
Plot Summary:
A reluctant reunion of two estranged sisters. One is on the verge of marriage; the other is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Both struggle with truths they're hiding from each other - and from themselves. Jenny has rejected her tumultuous family and cut off communication, seeking a more ordered life far from her roots in the Bronx. And she's almost ready to commit to her longtime fiancé when her sister Lucy - the personification of all that Jenny has been trying to flee - surprises her at a critical time. Lucy and Jenny's combustible reunion brings both of them to unforeseen places, shattering and reconstructing the worlds they have both carefully constructed.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 591
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, emotional, realistic, talky, independent film
Similar in 78%
Constellation (2005)
Plot Summary:
Constellation chronicles the lives and loves of an African-American family in the deep South as they are forced to come to terms with a tumultuous past marked by an unrequited interracial affair. The film explores the way in which the family patriarch must confront his demons amidst the changing racial fabric of society and his own family.
IMDB Rating: 4.4
IMDB Votes: 687
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, psychological, touching, captivating, uplifting, sincere, serious, independent film
Similar in 80%
Virginia (2010)
Plot Summary:
A sheriff sees his state senate bid slide out onto the ice when his daughter begins to date the son of a charming but psychologically disturbed woman with whom the sheriff has engaged in a two-decade-long affair.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, emotional, realistic, touching, serious, teen, independent film
Similar in 88%
Profoundly Normal (2003)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true story. Donna Lee Shelby (Kirstie Alley), a mentally retarded girl who lives in Forest Haven, an institution for the developmentally disabled, meets Ricardo Thornton (Delroy Lindo), a fellow resident. When Forest Haven is closed by a court order, Donna and Ricardo venture into the real world on their own. Their friendship and dependency on each other blossoms into love. They marry and have a child together, who does not suffer from mental retardation.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 360
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, sentimental, sincere, uplifting, touching, realistic
Similar in 79%
A Streetcar Named Desire (1995)
Plot Summary:
Blanche Dubois goes to visit her pregnant sister and husband Stanley in New Orleans. Stanley doesn't like her, and starts pushing her for information on some property he know was left to the sisters. He discovers she has mortgaged the place and spent all the money, and wants to find out all he can about her. Even more friction develops between the two while they are in the apartment together.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 156 min
Plot tags: disturbing, psychological, touching, serious, emotional, atmospheric, realistic
Similar in 77%
God's Ears (2008)
Plot Summary:
Noah Connelly is a boxer with a tireless opponent: Autism. But when he meets a dancer named Alexia, the two discover together that the toughest fight may be not be of the body, but of the heart.
IMDB Rating: 8.5
IMDB Votes: 86
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, sexy, humorous, sexual
Similar in 79%
All You Need (2001)
Plot Summary:
Beth's life was going backwards. Her husband suddenly walks out on her, she has an alcoholic mother, an ambivalent father and so she decides to begin making a change by going back to school in order to take charge of her life.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 146
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: touching, emotional, realistic, semi serious, talky
Similar in 75%
Carry Me Home (2004)
Plot Summary:
A widow named Harriet and her two children Carrie and Brian are living in rural New York in 1947 and are still recovering from the death of Harriet's husband killed in World War II. Carrie is a tomboy and hangs around with boys and they have their own clubhouse. Carrie and her friends make mischief and taunt their mentally challenged neighbor Charlie by stealing one of his puppies. Harriet meets a man named Bernard and begin a courtship, but Carrie is furious that her mother is dating Bernard and wants it to stop. The jealousy and anger of Carrie raises to a fever pitch when Carrie and her friends destroy their neighbor Mr. Grizzle's garden and pour sugar into his tractor. Grizzle then takes Charlie's other puppies away from him and then Grizzle's barn is destroyed by fire. Carrie learns it's time for her to grow up and make amends with her mother and her neighbors for the grief and pain she caused them.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 229
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 77%
Sex & the Single Mom (2003)
Plot Summary:
Jess Gradwell and her teenage daughter boast a superclose relationship. When it comes to sex, however, Mom won't stand for anything less than premarital celibacy. So she gets a pretty healthy dose of her own medicine when she winds up getting pregnant from a brief encounter with a newly single doctor! This new situation poses a major challenge to the mother-daughter dynamic. Tune in to see if Jess and her daughter can rise to the occasion.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 571
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, sexual, sexy
Similar in 79%
Amy & Isabelle (2001)
Plot Summary:
In 1971, in the small town of Shirley Falls, in Maine, the odd and lonely secretary Isabelle Goodrow raises her teenager daughter Amy alone. She has only two friends in her job among her gossiper colleagues. When her overprotected daughter is seduced by her mathematic teacher Peter Robertson, the world of Isabelle falls apart. She becomes lost and loses her confidence on Amy, spoiling their relationship. Their bond gets tied again when Isabelle discloses her inner secrets from the past to Amy.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 472
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, sexual, sexy
Similar in 79%
Now, Forager (2012)
Plot Summary:
Lucien and Regina are foragers - they gather wild mushrooms and sell them to New York restaurants. They live simply, according to the seasons. When Regina seeks more stability, their marriage is put to a test.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 224
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Poland
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, culinary, gloomy, independent film
Similar in 78%
The Glass Menagerie (1987)
Plot Summary:
A son longs to escape from his stifling home, where his genteel mother worries about the future prospects of his lame, shy sister.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: psychological, touching, melancholic, sentimental, serious, gothic, sad, sincere, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 83%
Fly Away (2011)
Plot Summary:
The poignant yet humor filled story about a single mother of a teenager severely impacted by autism, forced to reckon with her daughter's future. As her child becomes an adult, what used to work, no longer does. What will sustain her daughter, and herself? A parent-child love story, when love means letting go.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 374
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, emotional, serious, captivating, realistic, independent film
Similar in 86%
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2007)
Plot Summary:
The film follows Mr. Shi, a retired widower from Beijing. When his only daughter, Yilan, who lives in Spokane, Washington and works as a librarian, gets divorced, he decides to visit her to help her heal. However, Yilan is not interested. She tries keeping an emotional distance but when this finally fails she begins physically avoiding her father. He confronts her about an affair with a married Russian man and she, in turn, lets loose about all the gossip she'd heard as a young girl about his alleged affair with a female colleague back in China.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: serious, thought provoking, touching, realistic, emotional, contemplative
Similar in 80%
Fifteen and Pregnant (1998)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true story, 15 year old Tina Spangler discovers she is pregnant. Her choices are abortion, adoption, or a lonely, exhausting life as a single parent. Abandoned by her boyfriend, she turns to her mother. Tina discovers although it has torn her world apart, her pregnancy could re-unite her shattered family and help her find her true purpose in life.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, psychological, sincere, talky, ridiculous
Similar in 79%
A Day Late and a Dollar Short (2014)
Plot Summary:
When irascible matriarch Viola Price learns that her next asthma attack will likely kill her, she is determined to fix her fractured family before she leaves this world.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 732
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, sentimental, captivating, uplifting, touching, serious
Similar in 84%
Losing Chase (1996)
Plot Summary:
An intimate and turbulent relationship develops between Chase, a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown and Elizabeth, the caretaker employed to look after her.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 909
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: independent film, emotional, sincere, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative, sentimental, sexy, feel good
Similar in 89%
The Autumn Heart (1999)
Plot Summary:
When a school bus driving woman (Tyne Daly) has a heart attack, she makes one request of her three daughters (Ally Sheedy, Marla Sucharetza, Marceline Hugo) - she wants them to find their long lost brother, who was taken away by their father (Jack Davidson) 16 years ago. What they discover is that while they have struggled, their father has become a wealthy man and their brother is in school at Harvard.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 230
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: independent film, sincere, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative, talky, gloomy
Similar in 88%
Almost a Woman (2002)
Plot Summary:
A young woman named Esmeralda and her family move to New York from a rural area of Puerto Rico. The transition is difficult due to the many challenges she and her family face.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 156
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, hispanic
Similar in 84%
Mommy Is at the Hairdresser's (2008)
Plot Summary:
Summer 1966. It's time to enjoy the summer holiday, total freedom. Teenage Élise discovers that the sudden departure of her mother completely disrupts the family. Her brother Coco seeks solace in the garage, building a super racing car. Her youngest brother Benoît throws himself into his own inner world. The father seems absolutely knocked out by the situation. Élise decides to take control of her family, in an eloquent attempt to save them. With the assistance of flourishing nature around her, she stands on the threshold of an incomparable summer.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 922
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: emotional, sentimental, touching, serious, realistic, disturbing, sexy, sincere, captivating, sexual
Similar in 84%
Hunger Point (2003)
Plot Summary:
Meet the Hunters your typical all-American family: two committed parents and two lovely daughters. However, looks can be deceiving because this family is plagued by the nit-picking comments of an overzealous mother determined to keep her daughters thin. The results of this mother's tyranny is unimaginable. This movie really captures the dangers of eating disorders like no other. Based on the best-selling book of the same name.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 655
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: psychological, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 77%
The Best Day of My Life (2002)
Plot Summary:
The Best Day of My Life is the story of a dysfunctional family as seen through the eyes of young Chiara (Maria Luisa De Crescenzo) who is about to receive her first communion. The family includes matriarch Irene (Virna Lisi) and her three grown up children.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, UK
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, realistic, sentimental, captivating, serious, emotional, gloomy, sexual, sexy