Best movies like The Selfish Giant
Last updated March 2024
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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
Best tv shows and movies like The Selfish Giant (2013):
Similar in 81%
Stella Does Tricks (1996)
Plot Summary:
A young Glaswegian prostitute in London tries to start a new life.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 664
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: erotic, depressing, tense, bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing, non-linear, gloomy
Similar in 84%
Neds (2010)
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
Similar in 77%
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 87%
The Mustang (2019)
Plot Summary:
While participating in a rehabilitation program training wild mustangs, a convict at first struggles to connect with the horses and his fellow inmates, but he learns to confront his violent past as he soothes an especially feisty horse.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: realistic, exciting, social, heartbreaking, sentimental, sad
Similar in 82%
Nothing in Return (2015)
Plot Summary:
One summer, Dario flees the hellish environment of his home. Luismi, unconditional friend, a poor devil with pretensions of winning, and Antonia, an old woman who collects abandoned his motorcar furniture, become his new family. Three generations living together in a city too big to be alone.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, serious, captivating, psychological, tense, social, queer cinema
Similar in 88%
Junkhearts (2011)
Plot Summary:
Frank is an ex-soldier, haunted by a violent past. He lives alone, drowning his nightmares with alcohol. Christine - smart and successful... on the surface, tackles life as a single working mother by immersing herself in drugs, parties and sex. Lynette, a young rough sleeper watches Christine stumble out of a club whilst she sits in the cold waiting for loose change to fall on her lap; her luck seems to change when she meets Frank who despite his misgivings, offers her a place to stay.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 787
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, atmospheric, captivating, rough, serious, gloomy
Similar in 88%
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 87%
Small Faces (1995)
Plot Summary:
Three teenage brothers, gang-member Bobby, troubled mama's boy Alan and self-assured prankster Lex, reside in a downtrodden section of Glasgow, Scotland, circa 1968. But while Bobby and Alan are beginning to experience the power of raging hormones, the story focuses on Lex, who begins a downward spiral after he accidentally shoots the leader of Bobby's gang. Lex's cockiness and immaturity unfortunately prevent him from understanding the effect his subsequent crimes will have on both himself, and on those around him.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: bleak, realistic, independent film, tense, rough, serious, road movie, thought provoking, clever, brutal
Similar in 83%
Hi, Tereska (2001)
Plot Summary:
Teenager Tereska comes from poor family and has to face difficult world and mean people around her.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: disturbing, touching, serious, realistic, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 89%
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 90%
The Visitor (2008)
Plot Summary:
A young boy lives with his mother on a farm surrounded by deep forest in the remote wilds of the Finnish countryside. From time to time, the boy visits his father - a man of great violence - in prison. Locked in the stable is an unruly horse, the boy´s only other companion. Their simple life is disrupted when a stranger appears, with a note from the father and a bullet in his side. Reluctantly, mother and son offer the stranger refuge.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 618
Genere: Drama
Country: Finland, Estonia, Germany, UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, suspense, tense, realistic, gloomy, ambiguous ending, independent film, silent, student film
Similar in 76%
Mother, I Love You (2013)
Plot Summary:
Raimonds, a 12 year old boy, falls into a world of petty crime while trying to stay out of trouble with his mother.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 896
Genere: Drama
Country: Latvia
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, captivating, entertaining
Similar in 85%
My Brother Tom (2001)
Plot Summary:
A teenage girl, Jessica, befriends a teenage boy called Tom, who is bullied by a local gang. She is abused by Jack, who is both her neighbour and school teacher, and Tom is sexually abused by his father. Together they bond in the woods, creating a private reality that no-one else can enter.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 983
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, rough, emotional, captivating, disturbing, tense, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 75%
Neighborhood (1998)
Plot Summary:
A coming-of-age story in the vein of CITY OF GOD and KIDS - available for the first time in the U.S.!.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain, France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: social, hispanic, serious, realistic
Similar in 89%
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 79%
The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete (2013)
Plot Summary:
Coming of age story about two inner city youths, who are left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, hood, clever, sad, therapeutic
Similar in 76%
Darker Than Midnight (2014)
Plot Summary:
Davide is different from the other teenagers. Something makes him look like a girl. Davide is fourteen when he runs away from home. His intuition leads him to choose Villa Bellini, a park in Catania, as a refuge. The park is a world in itself, a world of the marginalized, to which the rest of the city turns a blind eye. But one day the past catches up and Davide has to face the most difficult choice, this time alone.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 355
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, realistic, queer cinema
Similar in 84%
Pelle the Conqueror (1987)
Plot Summary:
The end of the 19th century. A boat filled with Swedish emigrants comes to the Danish island of Bornholm. Among them are Lasse and his son Pelle who move to Denmark to find work. They find employment at a large farm, but are treated as the lowest form of life. Pelle starts to speak Danish but is still harassed as a foreigner. But none of them wants to give up their dream of finding a better life than the life they left in Sweden.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 12000
Genere: Drama
Country: Denmark, Sweden
Duration: 157 min
Plot tags: emotional, atmospheric, meditative, disturbing, compassionate, touching, serious, stylized, depressing, sad
Similar in 86%
Cider with Rosie (2015)
Plot Summary:
A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story set in the Cotswolds during and immediately after the First World War.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 825
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, captivating, psychological, sentimental, touching, semi autobiographical
Similar in 90%
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 85%
Abandoned (2001)
Plot Summary:
Áron is a happy child in his family. But at some point things take a different turn, and his mother starts to lose her health rapidly. As this happens, the man in charge decides what's best for Áron without consulting the young boy's opinion, and the boy finds himself thrown out of his warm home into an orphanage in the woods. He's utterly displeased by what's happening, without knowing he has yet to face much worse. After a hard time getting over the harrassment of his classmates and being accepted as one of them, another obstacle on the way to his peace of mind faces him: His obnoxious teachers. He has no intention of being bad, but it's beyond his ability to blend into the revolting place he's in. The nasty treatment of the teaching crew gets the better of him, and he's not all that calm and passive anymore. But that leads into unpleasant events which Áron himself wouldn't want.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 610
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sincere, uplifting, touching, serious, art house, bleak, emotional, realistic
Similar in 90%
The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie (2003)
Plot Summary:
A troubled teen is given the chance to redeem his criminal debt to society.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 594
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, UK, USA
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: touching, sentimental, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 77%
The Kid with a Bike (2011)
Plot Summary:
Abandoned by his father, a young boy is left in the hands of an unqualified childcare provider.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 28000
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium, France, Italy
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: sincere, realistic, meditative, atmospheric, emotional, surreal, disturbing, compassionate, touching, psychological
Similar in 80%
Nobody Knows (2004)
Plot Summary:
In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 30000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 141 min
Plot tags: depressing, touching, serious, atmospheric, bleak, gloomy, heartbreaking, contemplative, melancholic, meditative
Similar in 90%
Bullet Boy (2004)
Plot Summary:
Ricky is just out of a young offenders institute, heading home to Hackney and determined to go straight. Instead, he heads straight for trouble when he becomes involved in a street confrontation, siding with his best friend Wisdom against a local rude boy. The trouble escalates into a series of tit-for-tat incidents that threaten to spiral out of control. Ricky's 12-year-old brother Curtis, hero-worships Ricky, though he appears smart enough to know he doesn't want to follow his example. Yet, despite the stern warnings from his mother and support from her friends in the community, might Ricky's bad boy allure be too attractive for Curtis to resist?.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: psychological, rough, serious, realistic, hood, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 90%
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 84%
Tom Brown's Schooldays (2005)
Plot Summary:
The determined new headmaster of an English prep school attempts to reform the frequently unruly students, who are tormented by a ruthless bully.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, serious, exciting, tense, suspenseful, crying, period drama
Similar in 84%
Fish Tank (2009)
Plot Summary:
Everything changes for 15 year old Mia when her mum brings home a new boyfriend.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 65000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Netherlands
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: bleak, emotional, gloomy, sincere, disturbing, sexy, realistic, teen, serious, depressing
Similar in 84%
Kes (1969)
Plot Summary:
A young, English working-class boy spends his free time caring for and training his pet falcon.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 22000
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: UK
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: independent film, bleak, depressing, realistic, emotional, social, sad, serious, heartbreaking, bad ending
Similar in 81%
Thirteen (2003)
Plot Summary:
Tracy is a normal 13-year-old trying to make it in school. After befriending the most popular girl at school, Evie, Tracy's world is turned upside down when Evie introduces her to a world of sex, drugs and cash. But it isn't long before Tracy's new world and attitude finally takes a toll on her, her family, and old friends.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 96000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: teen, sincere, realistic, tense, disturbing, emotional, intense, serious, depressing, bleak