Best movies like Vera Drake

Similar in 82%

Wanda (1970)

Plot Summary:

Wanda, after a string of abusive relationships, abandons her family and seeks solace in the company of a petty criminal (Michael Higgins).

Similar in 80%

Call Jane (2022)

Plot Summary:

A married woman with an unwanted pregnancy lives in a time in America where she can't get a legal abortion and works with a group of suburban women to find help.

Similar in 76%

Ladybird Ladybird (1994)

Plot Summary:

Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by social services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her history still haunts her.

Similar in 83%

If These Walls Could Talk (1996)

Plot Summary:

If These Walls Could Talk follows the plights of three different women and their experiences with abortion. Each of the three stories takes place in the same house in three different years: 1952, 1974, and 1996.

Similar in 86%

Frozen River (2008)

Plot Summary:

Ray Eddy, an upstate New York trailer mom, is lured into the world of illegal immigrant smuggling. Broke after her husband takes off with the down payment for their new doublewide, Ray reluctantly teams up with Lila, a smuggler, and the two begin making runs across the frozen St. Lawrence River carrying illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrants in the trunk of Ray's Dodge Spirit.

Similar in 83%

After the Wedding (2006)

Plot Summary:

A manager of an orphanage in India is sent to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he discovers a life-altering family secret.

Similar in 76%

In the Bedroom (2001)

Plot Summary:

Summertime on the coast of Maine, "In the Bedroom" centers on the inner dynamics of a family in transition. Matt Fowler is a doctor practicing in his native Maine and is married to New York born Ruth Fowler, a music teacher. He is involved in a love affair with a local single mother. As the beauty of Maine's brief and fleeting summer comes to an end, these characters find themselves in the midst of unimaginable tragedy.

Similar in 90%

Young Adam (2003)

Plot Summary:

A young drifter working on a river barge disrupts his employers' lives while hiding the fact that he knows more about a dead woman found in the river than he admits.

Similar in 87%

All or Nothing (2002)

Plot Summary:

Penny's love for her partner, taxi-driver Phil, has run dry. He is a gentle, philosophical guy, and she works on the checkout at a supermarket.

Similar in 76%

Joe the King (1999)

Plot Summary:

A destitute 14 year old struggles to keep his life together despite harsh abuse at his mother's hands, harsher abuse at his father's, and a growing separation from his slightly older brother. Petty thefts for food grow into more major takes until he steals a cash box from the diner where he works. Although Joe uses the money to pay off some of his father's debts and to replace his mother's records that his father smashed in a fit of temper, Joe gets no thanks.

Similar in 87%

Money (1983)

Plot Summary:

A forged 500-franc note is cynically passed from person to person and shop to shop, until it falls into the hands of a genuine innocent who doesn't see it for what it is - which will have devastating consequences on his life, causing him to turn to crime and murder.

Similar in 79%

Polisse (2011)

Plot Summary:

The daily grind for the cops of the Police Department's Juvenile Protection Unit - taking in child molesters, busting underage pickpockets, interrogating abusive parents, confronting the excesses of teen sexuality, enjoying solidarity with colleagues and laughing uncontrollably at the most unthinkable moments. Knowing the worst exists and living with it. How do these cops balance their private lives and the reality they confront every working day? Fred, the group's hypersensitive wild card, is going to have a hard time facing the scrutiny of Melissa, a photographer on a Ministry of the Interior assignment to document the unit.

Similar in 79%

Sweet Sixteen (2002)

Plot Summary:

Determined to have a normal family life once his mother gets out of prison, a Scottish teenager from a tough background sets out to raise the money for a home.

Similar in 85%

Maria Full of Grace (2004)

Plot Summary:

A pregnant Colombian teenager becomes a drug mule to make some desperately needed money for her family.

Similar in 77%

Leviathan (2014)

Plot Summary:

In a Russian coastal town, Kolya is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits a lawyer friend to help, but the man's arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.

Similar in 82%

Lilya 4-Ever (2002)

Plot Summary:

Lilya lives in poverty and dreams of a better life. Her mother moves to the United States and abandons her to her aunt, who neglects her. Lilya hangs out with her friends, Natasha and Volodya, who is suicidal. Desperate for money, she starts working as a prostitute, and later meets Andrei. He offers her a good job in Sweden, but when Lilya arrives her life quickly enters a downward spiral.

Similar in 87%

Let Him Have It (1991)

Plot Summary:

In 1950s England, slow-witted Derek Bentley falls in with a group of petty criminals led by Chris Craig, a teenager with a fondness for American gangster films. Chris and Derek's friendship leads to their involvement in the true case which would forever shake England's belief in capital punishment.

Similar in 85%

The Accused (1988)

Plot Summary:

After a young woman suffers a brutal rape in a bar one night, a prosecutor assists in bringing the perpetrators to justice, including the ones who encouraged and cheered on the attack.

Similar in 88%

Dogville (2003)

Plot Summary:

A barren soundstage is stylishly utilized to create a minimalist small-town setting in which a mysterious woman named Grace hides from the criminals who pursue her. The town is two-faced and offers to harbor Grace as long as she can make it worth their effort, so Grace works hard under the employ of various townspeople to win their favor. Tensions flare, however, and Grace's status as a helpless outsider provokes vicious contempt and abuse from the citizens of Dogville.

Similar in 79%

Liam (2000)

Plot Summary:

A morality tale of xenophobia, religious prejudice, mob violence, poverty, and their effect on two children in Liverpool during the Depression. When a shipyard closes, Liam and Teresa's dad loses his job. Liam, who's about 8, making his first Holy Communion, gets a regular dose of fire and brimstone at church. Teresa, about 13, has a job as a maid to the Jewish family that owns the closed shipyard. The lady of that house is having an affair, and Teresa becomes an accomplice. Liam stutters terribly, especially when troubled. Dad comes under the sway of the Fascists, who blame cheap Irish labor and Jewish owners. A Molotov cocktail brings things to a head.

Similar in 75%

Nine Lives (2005)

Plot Summary:

Captives of the very relationships that define and sustain them, nine women resiliently meet the travails and disappointments of life.

Similar in 78%

High Hopes (1988)

Plot Summary:

Slice-of-life look at a sweet working-class couple in London, Shirley and Cyril, his mother, who's aging quickly and becoming forgetful, mum's ghastly upper-middle-class neighbors, and Cyril's pretentious sister and philandering husband. Shirley wants a baby, but Cyril, who reads Marx and wants the world to be perfect, is reluctant. Cyril's mum locks herself out and must ask her snooty neighbors for help. Then Cyril's sister Valerie stages a surprise party for mum's 70th birthday, a disaster from start to finish. Shirley holds things together, and she and Cyril may put aside her Dutch cap after all.

Similar in 82%

Secrets & Lies (1996)

Plot Summary:

A middle-aged London factory worker is shocked when the mixed-race daughter she gave up at birth decides to track her down. At first she denies she is her mother. All family members become emotional, as everyone's secrets are exposed.

Similar in 89%

Life Is Sweet (1990)

Plot Summary:

Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend's new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon. Natalie, with short neat hair and a snappy, droll manner, is a plumber; she has a holiday planned in America, but little else. Last is Nicola, odd man out: a snarl, big glasses, cigarette, mussed hair, jittery fingers, bulimic, jobless, and unhappy. How they interact and play out family conflict and love is the film's subject.

Similar in 86%

Conviction (2010)

Plot Summary:

When Betty Anne Waters' older brother Kenny is arrested for murder and sentenced to life in 1983, Betty Anne, a Massachusetts wife and mother of two, dedicates her life to overturning the murder conviction. Convinced that her brother is innocent, Betty Anne puts herself through high school, college and, finally, law school in an 18 year quest to free Kenny. With the help of best friend Abra Rice, Betty Anne pores through suspicious evidence mounted by small town cop Nancy Taylor, meticulously retracing the steps that led to Kenny's arrest. Belief in her brother - and her quest for the truth - pushes Betty Anne and her team to uncover the facts and utilize DNA evidence with the hope of exonerating Kenny.

Similar in 79%

Revolutionary Road (2008)

Plot Summary:

A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children. Based on a novel by Richard Yates.

Similar in 83%

Dirty Pretty Things (2002)

Plot Summary:

An urban hotel in London is a gathering and flash point for legal and illegal immigrants attempting to cobble together their lives in a new country. The immigrants include Senay, a Turkish woman, and a Nigerian doctor named Okwe who is working as a night porter at the hotel. The pair discover the hotel is a front for all sorts of clandestine activities. Their only wish is to avoid possible deportation. Okwe becomes more entangled in the goings on when he is called to fix a toilet in one of the rooms. He discovers the plumbing has been clogged by a human heart.

Similar in 80%

21 Grams (2003)

Plot Summary:

This is the story of three gentle persons: Paul Rivers an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré, Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife, happily married and mother of two little girls, and Jack Jordan, an ex-convict who has found in his Christian faith the strength to raise a family. They will be brought together by a terrible accident that will change their lives. By the final frame, none of them will be the same as they will learn harsh truths about love, faith, courage, desire and guilt, and how chance can change our worlds irretrievably, forever.

Similar in 80%

Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Plot Summary:

Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, escaping life's troubles - even if just for a moment - by dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.

Similar in 84%

Dead Man Walking (1995)

Plot Summary:

A justice drama based on a true story about a man on death row who in his last days forms a strong relationship with a nun who teaches him forgiveness and gives him spirituality as she accompanies him to his execution.