Best movies like Take Me to the River

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Green Butterflies (2017)

Plot Summary:

Mateo is an intelligent boy who falls in love with Daniel, but when everyone reveals that relationship, Mateo is at a crossroads, and he will have to decide between fighting his adversities or giving up everything, even his life.

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Henry Gamble's Birthday Party (2015)

Plot Summary:

Henry Gamble's Birthday Party takes place over 24 hours at the birthday pool party of 17-year-old preacher's kid Henry Gamble. The party guests include adults and teenagers from his church, as well as Henry's "secular" friends, including the closeted young Logan, who has eyes for Henry.

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Little Accidents (2014)

Plot Summary:

In a small American coal town living in the shadow of a recent mining accident, the disappearance of a teenage boy draws three people together—a surviving miner, the lonely wife of a mine executive, and a local boy—in a web of secrets.

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Madeline's Madeline (2018)

Plot Summary:

Madeline has become an integral part of a prestigious physical theater troupe. When the workshop's ambitious director pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation rips out of the rehearsal space and through all three women's lives.

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Blackbird (2019)

Plot Summary:

A terminally ill mother invites her family to their country house for one final gathering, but tensions quickly boil over between her two daughters.

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Funny Boy (2020)

Plot Summary:

A student must navigate issues of sexuality, identity and family amid Sri Lanka's social turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s.

Similar in 78%

C'mon C'mon (2021)

Plot Summary:

Johnny and his young nephew forge a tenuous but transformational relationship when they embark on a cross-country trip to see life away from Los Angeles.

Similar in 77%

Angela (1995)

Plot Summary:

A ten year old girl named Angela leads her six year old sister, Ellie, through various regimens of 'purification' in an attempt to rid themselves of their evil, which she believes to be the cause of their mother's mental illness. Precocious, to say the least, Angela has visions of Lucifer coming to take her and her sister away, and one of her remedies for this is for them to remain within a circle of their dolls and toys until they see a vision of the virgin Mary come to them. But such thinking can only lead to an ending befitting of her own mental state.

Similar in 82%

Respiro (2002)

Plot Summary:

Grazia is a free-spirited mother-of-three married to shy fisherman Pietro and living on the idyllic but isolated island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea. She shows signs of manic depressive behavior — one moment she's laughing wildly and swimming half-naked in the sea, while the next she's curled in a ball on her bed. Out of her earshot, the adult members of her extended family vaguely discuss sending her to a facility of some sort in Northern Italy.

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Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006)

Plot Summary:

A lyrical telling of the coming of age of a 13-year-old boy who learns to cope with his new found sexuality and his unrequited love for the cool kid in school.

Similar in 87%

Spa Night (2016)

Plot Summary:

A young Korean-American man works to reconcile his obligations to his struggling immigrant family with his burgeoning sexual desires in the underground world of gay hookups at Korean spas in Los Angeles.

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Fair Haven (2016)

Plot Summary:

A young man returns to his family farm, after a long stay in ex-gay conversion therapy, and is torn between the expectations of his emotionally distant father, and the memories of a past, loving relationship he has tried to bury.

Similar in 85%

As I Lay Dying (2013)

Plot Summary:

Based on the 1930 classic by Faulkner, it is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest to honor her wish to be buried in the nearby town of Jefferson.

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The Dynamiter (2011)

Plot Summary:

All fourteen-year-old Robbie Hendrick ever wanted was a family. Yet as another Mississippi summer begins, his wayward mother has run off again fearing a breakdown and he's left to burn the days caring for his half brother, Fess. As the deep days and nights pass without her return and with older brother Lucas dangerously in their lives again, Robbie must face the fact that his dream of a family may only be a dream and he might just lose the only family he's ever had: Fess.

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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.

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Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)

Plot Summary:

This complex portrait of modern-day life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation explores the bond between a brother and his younger sister, who find themselves on separate paths to rediscovering the meaning of home.

Similar in 90%

Wildlife (2018)

Plot Summary:

14-year-old Joe is the only child of Jeanette and Jerry—a housewife and a golf pro—in a small town in 1960s Montana. Nearby, an uncontrolled forest fire rages close to the Canadian border, and when Jerry loses his job—and his sense of purpose—he decides to join the cause of fighting the fire, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves. Suddenly forced into the role of an adult, Joe witnesses his mother's struggle as she tries to keep her head above water.

Similar in 83%

12 and Holding (2005)

Plot Summary:

Three pre-adolescents with virginal and eager-of-signals naivety, hit headlong against monstrous and inhospitable loneliness, in the incandescent fire among the ashes of their own inocence.

Similar in 89%

Behind the Red Door (2003)

Plot Summary:

Set in New York and New England (but filmed in Newfoundland), Behind the Red Door stars Kyra Sedgwick as Manhattan-based photographer Natalie Haddad, who enjoys success with her strangely gloomy and foreboding camerawork. When her agent and best friend Julia (Stockard Channing) arranges for her to accept a lucrative contract with a Boston ad agency, Natalie discovers that she will be working for her own gay brother Roy (Kiefer Sutherland), whom she hasn't seen in a decade. Although Roy is insufferably snobbish and manipulative, he manages to exert a curious control over Natalie, forcing her to confront several disturbing, long-suppressed memories of her past (shown in black-and-white flashbacks). Before the film is over, Natalie is made to realize why Roy's behavior is so overbearing -- and also, the viewer learns just how intimately Julia is involved in the lives of both siblings.

Similar in 84%

Eighth Grade (2018)

Plot Summary:

Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.

Similar in 82%

Echo Park LA (2006)

Plot Summary:

As Magdalena's 15th birthday approaches, her simple, blissful life is complicated by the discovery that she's pregnant. Kicked out of her house, she finds a new family with her great-granduncle and gay cousin.

Similar in 81%

We the Animals (2018)

Plot Summary:

Manny, Joel and Jonah tear their way through childhood and push against the volatile love of their parents. As Manny and Joel grow into versions of their father and Ma dreams of escape, Jonah, the youngest, embraces an imagined world all his own.

Similar in 84%

James White (2015)

Plot Summary:

James White is a troubled twentysomething trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. As he retreats further into a hedonistic lifestyle, his mother's battle with a serious illness faces a series of setbacks that force him to assume more responsibility. With the pressure on him mounting, James must find new reserves of strength or risk imploding completely.

Similar in 76%

The Keys to the House (2004)

Plot Summary:

Meeting his handicapped son for the first time, a young father attempts to forge a relationship with the teenager.

Similar in 77%

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Plot Summary:

A coming-of-age story based on the best-selling novel by Stephen Chbosky, which follows 15-year-old freshman Charlie, an endearing and naive outsider who is taken under the wings of two seniors. A moving tale of love, loss, fear and hope - and the unforgettable friends that help us through life.