Best movies like The Middle Passage
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A realistic look at the horrors of the slave trade, told entirely through the voice of a dead African slave whose spirit haunts the ocean route.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 135
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, Martinique
Duration: 78 min
Plot tags: sentimental, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, experimental
Best tv shows and movies like The Middle Passage (2000):
Similar in 87%
Ganga Zumba (1963)
Plot Summary:
The life of a runaway slave who founded the Quilombo dos Palmares, an outlaw community of Brazilian slaves.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 132
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Brazil
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
Ceddo (1977)
Plot Summary:
When King Demba War sides with the Muslims, the Ceddo kidnap his daughter, Princess Dior Yacine, to protest their forcible conversion to Islam.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Senegal, France
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Little Senegal (2000)
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
Similar in 77%
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 82%
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1965)
Plot Summary:
In the pre-Civil War South, a sadistic plantation-owner brutalizes his slaves to the point of them heaving no other choice but to rebel. Always obedient, peaceful and honest old slave Tom plays a central role in this tragedy.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 253
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany, France, Italy, Yugoslavia
Duration: 170 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Roots: The Gift (1988)
Plot Summary:
In December 1775, Cletus Moyer is a free black Northerner in colonial America, helping slaves escape captivity. In the days just prior to Christmas, a group of bounty hunters captures Moyer. Because of his capture, dozens of slaves who have already left their plantations are in danger of being captured as well. Moyer implores two slaves from a nearby plantation to take his place: Kunta Kinte, a Mandinka in his mid-twenties who was captured in what is now Gambia, and Fiddler, an elderly man who was born into slavery. Kunta is eager to help (and to escape himself), but Fiddler is unwilling, fearful of the consequences if they are caught.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 627
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: historical drama
Similar in 85%
The Emigrants (1971)
Plot Summary:
In the middle of the 19th century, Kristina and Karl-Oskar live in a small rural village in Smaaland (southern Sweden). They get married and try to make a living on a small spot of land. However, the small size of their land, the infertile soil, and some bad harvests makes it tough. One of their children even starve to death. Thus, they decide to emigrate to the U.S. They meet a group of farmers with their families planing the emigration under the leadership of a banned priest. They sell everything and embark for the U.S. The journey on the sailing ship is long and tedious. Some of the emigrants will never reach the New World.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Sweden
Duration: 191 min
Plot tags: epic, inspirational, romantic, sentimental, sincere, atmospheric, rough, uplifting, touching, serious
Similar in 75%
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 82%
Horses of God (2012)
Plot Summary:
The film follows two brothers over the course of a decade. While they begin as kids in search of thrills in the sprawling slums of Morocco’s Sidi Moumen, we witness their gradual, and ultimately shocking, radicalisation.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium, Tunisia, Morocco
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, disturbing, social, islamic, tense, bleak, suspenseful
Similar in 87%
Black Shack Alley (1983)
Plot Summary:
Martinique, in the early 1930s. Young José and his grandmother live in a small village. Nearly everyone works cutting cane and barely earning a living. The overseer can fine a worker for the smallest infraction. The way to advance is to do well in school. José studies hard and succeeds in an exam allowing him to attend school in the capital. With only a partial scholarship, the tuition is very costly. José and his grandmother move to Fort-de-France to make José's studies easier.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, Martinique
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic
Similar in 78%
The Price of Sugar (2013)
Plot Summary:
A story about two half-sisters life in the eighteenth century Suriname. There is Lynda, a white colonial and slave owner, and her slave Mini-Mini's. While Lynda is slowly embittered by the hard life in the colony, Mini-Mini gets a chance at her own happiness. The question is, if she dares to seize that chance, as this happiness is at the expense of her mistress and half sister?.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Netherlands, Germany, South Africa
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: touching, captivating, serious, realistic
Similar in 87%
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 76%
Heat Wave (1990)
Plot Summary:
A rookie black journalist investigates the tensions of the Watts section of Los Angeles in the bloody summer of 1965.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 213
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: tense, rough, thought provoking, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 88%
Race to Freedom: The Underground Railroad (1994)
Plot Summary:
A number of slaves risk their lives to escape their masters with their only help coming from the famous secret slave escape network.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 185
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Canada
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: political, edutainment, sincere, atmospheric, serious, captivating, realistic
Similar in 90%
Tula: The Revolt (2013)
Plot Summary:
'Tula, The Revolt' is an international English spoken feature length movie about the leader of the big slave uprising on the island of Curacao, a Dutch colony in 1795.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 422
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Netherlands Antilles, Netherlands
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sentimental, serious, captivating, realistic
Similar in 89%
Snow Pirates (2015)
Plot Summary:
In the shadow of the military coup in 1980, these children aged 12-13, playing their childish games soon arrive at an understanding of life's responsibilities and are hastily introduced into the world of the grownups.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 334
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Turkey
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: sentimental, serious, realistic, captivating, bleak
Similar in 82%
Black Venus (2010)
Plot Summary:
The story of Saartjes Baartman, a Black domestic who, in 1808, left Southern Africa, then ruled by Dutch settlers, for Europe, following her boss Hendrick Caesar , hoping to find fame and fortune there. Once in London her master turned manager does nothing but exhibit her as a freak in a phony and humiliating carnival show. After a series of troubles caused by their act, Caesar, Saartje and their new friend, bear-tamer Réaux, head for Paris where once again, and against her will, she has to mimic savagery and expose her body, first in carnivals, then in the aristocratic salons of Paris, later on among the libertines and finally in brothels where she ends up being a prostitute. In the meantime, French anatomists will have taken an interest in her unusual anatomy (enormous buttocks and labia) only to declare her the missing link from ape to man. In 1815, aged only 27, she dies alone, of a combination of pneumonia and venereal disease.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 162 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, thought provoking, realistic, erotic, existential horror, gloomy, iconic, tragic
Similar in 76%
The Birth of a Nation (2016)
Plot Summary:
Nat Turner, a former slave in America, leads a liberation movement in 1831 to free African-Americans in Virgina that results in a violent retaliation from whites.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 22000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: factual, brutal, emotional, stylized, intense, controversial, exciting, powerful, gothic, serious
Similar in 88%
Mandingo (1975)
Plot Summary:
A slave owner in the 1840s trains one of his slaves to be a bare-knuckle fighter.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: realistic, sexy, serious, suspense, suspenseful, controversial, grindhouse, sexual, southern gothic, biting
Similar in 80%
Pompeii: The Last Day (2003)
Plot Summary:
In 79 AD, one of the infamous natural disasters in human history occurred when Mount Vesuvius erupted. With speculative dramatizations of various inhabitants' final hours along with detailed documentation of the known facts concerning the eruption, the horrific day is vividly brought to life.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: UK, USA, Germany, France
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, psychotronic, semi documentary, period drama, disaster movie
Similar in 82%
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974)
Plot Summary:
In February, 1962, as the civil rights movement reaches Bayonne, Louisiana, a New York journalist arrives to interview Jane Pittman, who has just turned 110. She tells him her story dating back to her earliest memories before slavery ended. In between the chapters of her life, the present-day struggles of Blacks in Bayonne, urged on by Jimmy, are dramatized.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: political, epic, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, touching, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic
Similar in 77%
The Long Walk Home (1990)
Plot Summary:
Two women, black and white, in 1955 Montgomery Alabama, must decide what they are going to do in response to the famous bus boycott lead by Martin Luther King.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: inspirational, independent film, touching, realistic, political, gothic, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, serious
Similar in 75%
Boycott (2001)
Plot Summary:
This made-for-TV movie dramatizes the historic boycott of public buses in the 1950s, led by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, realistic, political, talky
Similar in 81%
Shake Hands with the Devil (2007)
Plot Summary:
Canadian Lt. General Romeo Dallaire was the military commander of the UN mission in Rwanda and this movie is personal and, all too true, story of his time there during the genocide of 1994. It is not quite as moving as the earlier Hotel Rwanda and is less geared to drama and emotional manipulation, but it is still grim and upsetting.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Canada
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: disturbing, serious, rough, bleak, realistic, sad, sincere, political
Similar in 86%
Sometimes in April (2005)
Plot Summary:
Debra Winger, Oris Erhuero and Idris Elba star in this drama framed by the Rwandan genocide.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: France, Rwanda, USA
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, serious, realistic, sad, disturbing, inspirational, political, informative, bilingual
Similar in 75%
Rosewood (1997)
Plot Summary:
Spurred by a white woman's lie, vigilantes destroy a black Florida town and slay inhabitants in 1923.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Action, Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: disturbing, depressing, political, social, cult classic, tense, rough, thought provoking, touching, serious
Similar in 86%
Cry Freedom (1987)
Plot Summary:
A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: UK, Zimbabwe, USA
Duration: 157 min
Plot tags: inspirational, political, cult classic, political thriller, edutainment, tense, thought provoking, bleak, serious, captivating
Similar in 86%
Amistad (1997)
Plot Summary:
In 1839, the slave ship Amistad set sail from Cuba to America. During the long trip, Cinque leads the slaves in an unprecedented uprising. They are then held prisoner in Connecticut, and their release becomes the subject of heated debate. Freed slave Theodore Joadson wants Cinque and the others exonerated and recruits property lawyer Roger Baldwin to help his case. Eventually, John Quincy Adams also becomes an ally.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 82000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 155 min
Plot tags: touching, emotional, period piece, epic, dramatic, compassionate, factual, uplifting, serious, captivating
Similar in 85%
Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
Plot Summary:
Ghosts of Mississippi is a drama covering the final trial of the assassin, Bryon De La Beckwith, of the 60s civil rights leader Medgar Evers. It begins with the murder and the events surrounding the two initial trials which both ended in a hung jury. The movie then covers District Attorney, Bobby DeLaughters transformation and alliance with Myrlie Evers, wife of Medgar Evers, of the, as he becomes more involved with bringing Beckwith to trial for the third time 30 years later. Some of the characters are played by the actual participants in this story.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 12000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: inspirational, talky, factual, intense, compassionate, sincere, thought provoking, serious, political, political thriller
Similar in 88%
12 Years a Slave (2013)
Plot Summary:
In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty as well as unexpected kindnesses Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist will forever alter his life.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 731000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA, UK
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: motivational, heartbreaking, disturbing, harsh, bleak, atmospheric, emotional, factual, brutal, rough