Best tv shows like Sex Traffic
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Boston based Kernwell Industries is an American defense contractor. One of those contracts is to deploy 3,000 peacekeepers to the International Peacekeeping Coalition's work in the Balkans. Because of the near epidemic problem of sex trafficking of young Balkan women, Kernwell has decided to support the charity, Worldwide Federation Against Forced Migration. Kernwell's head of charities is Madeleine Harlsburg, the wife of the company's CEO, Tom Harlsburg. Although it does not have a pristine reputation as a good social corporate citizen, Kernwell hits a bigger public relations problem when it is learned that one of those 3,000 peacekeepers was caught trying to buy the services of a teen-aged prostitute in Sarajevo. Although not named to the media, that person is Sergeant Callum Tate, who swears he was trying to save that woman. In reality, Tate has evidence of a larger conspiracy of sex trafficking.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK, Canada
Duration: 189 min
Plot tags: bleak, thought provoking, realistic, disturbing, rough, serious, suspenseful
Best tv shows and movies like Sex Traffic (2004):
Similar in 90%
Daughter of the King (2014)
Plot Summary:
DAUGHTER OF THE KING follows Ashley Miller as she rebuilds herself after a drug filled episode trying to live a normal life. An outstanding debt gets her sucked back into the underworld that is ruled by Haydar, a ruthless man that forces her into slavery. She becomes his property. Ashley is forced to prostitute and deal drugs hoping to regain her freedom. The abuse that comes from all sides and in all forms crushes her to the ground making her believe she's worthless. In the darkest moments Nadia, her close friend, descends in her life like an angel bringing her back to the light and setting her free.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 25
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 135 min
Plot tags: christian film
Similar in 78%
Cargo (2011)
Plot Summary:
A young Russian woman, smuggled into America by human traffickers, and a notorious Egyptian transporter hired to drive her from the Mexican border to New York City, form an unlikely bond that transforms them and threatens to derail the traffickers' plans.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 531
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: disturbing, tense, serious, realistic, suspenseful, independent film
Similar in 84%
East End Hustle (1976)
Plot Summary:
Group of prostitutes who rely on each other to revolt against their sinister pimps. Their bid for freedom turns much more dangerous than they ever imagined.
IMDB Rating: 4.6
IMDB Votes: 153
Genere: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: independent film, erotic, rough, sexy, serious, realistic, suspenseful, sexual, cult film
Similar in 78%
Guns (2008)
Plot Summary:
A high profile arms dealer comes under increased police scrutiny when his teenage son is implicated in the murder of a senator's father. British expatriate Paul Duguid (Colm Feore) is an international arms dealer accredited by numerous governments, though he also hawks illegal guns to petty street thugs. Paul has earned the nickname "Mr. Teflon" for his uncanny ability to avoid prosecution, but his non-stick coating begins to flake when his son Bobby (Gregory Smith) wanders into the home of a small-time gun dealer who's currently under surveillance. The father of a prominent U.S. Senator has been murdered, and now Bobby is the primary suspect. When Bobby's girlfriend Frances (Elisha Cuthbert) volunteers to run guns over the border, an already complicated situation soon threatens to turn deadly.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 328
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 240 min
Plot tags: realistic, suspenseful, rough, serious, hood, psychological thriller, psycho film
Similar in 75%
Bad Girls (1999)
Plot Summary:
Bad Girls is a British television drama series that was broadcast on ITV from 1 June 1999 to 20 December 2006 and starred Simone Lahbib, Mandana Jones, Debra Stephenson, Linda Henry, Jack Ellis and many more throughout the eight-year run. The series was broadcast in 17 countries and was produced by Shed Productions, the company which later produced Footballers' Wives and Waterloo Road. It is set in the fictional women's prison of Larkhall, and features a mixture of serious and light storylines focusing on the prisoners and staff of G Wing. From 2010, the UK broadcast rights were bought by CBS Drama, and is repeated regularly – as of September 2012, the channel is re-running the series again in a late-night time slot.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing, queer cinema
Similar in 79%
Oliver Twist (1999)
Plot Summary:
Based on Charles Dickens' novel, this adaptation traces the childhood of an orphan whose mother dies giving birth to him in an English work-house in the 1820s.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 829
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 386 min
Plot tags: costume drama, period piece, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy, period drama
Similar in 76%
Violet Perfume: No One Is Listening (2001)
Plot Summary:
A poignant and moving urban drama, focusing on the growing problem of sexual assault in Mexico City. Director Sistach fictionalizes the true story of a friendship between two adolescent girls which is torn apart when one of them is brutally raped.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico, Netherlands
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, disturbing, rough, bleak, weird
Similar in 81%
The Free Will (2006)
Plot Summary:
After nine years in psychiatric detention Theo, who has brutally assaulted and raped three women, is released. Living in a supervised community, he connects well with his social worker Sascha, finds a job at a print shop and even a girlfriend, Nettie, his principal's brittle and estranged daughter. But even though superficially everything seems to work out Theo's seething rage remains ready to erupt.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 163 min
Plot tags: bleak, psychological, sincere, rough, serious, realistic, depressing, disturbing, controversial, contemplative
Similar in 81%
Lilet Never Happened (2012)
Plot Summary:
Lilet Never Happened is the rollercoaster story of how a young girl, struggling to survive in the streets of Manila, spirals down into child prostitution. She is a fighter. She is a dreamer. She is a rebel and she thinks she can handle the world with her wits. But she has to face up to reality when she runs out of innocent dreams.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 281
Genere: Drama
Country: Netherlands, UK, Philippines
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic, disturbing, bleak, emotional
Similar in 87%
King of Thieves (2003)
Plot Summary:
Two amateur circus kids from a poor Ukrainian village, ten-year-old Barbu and his older sister Mimma, are sold to a circus artist called Caruso who promises them a career in the West.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 416
Genere: Drama
Country: Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Germany, France
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: disturbing, emotional, serious, realistic, bleak
Similar in 90%
Stolen (2011)
Plot Summary:
A fast-paced thriller about a vital and terrifying subject - the trafficking of children - with the heart-stopping vibrancy, compassion and energy that only the fate of children inspires. This is a story that touches all our lives. And it's happening now.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 329
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, captivating, thought provoking, realistic, bleak, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 81%
The Jammed (2007)
Plot Summary:
A young Australian woman reluctantly agrees to help a Chinese mother search for her missing daughter and becomes involved in human trafficking and the sex slave trade.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 863
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: Australia
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: serious, tense, psychological, captivating, rough, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 90%
Human Trafficking (2005)
Plot Summary:
When a sixteen-year-old girl from the Ukraine, a single mother from Russia, an orphaned seventeen-year-old girl from Romania, and a twelve-year-old American tourist become the victims of international sex slave traffickers, a specialized team of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) struggles to expose the worldwide network that has enslaved them.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Canada
Duration: 176 min
Plot tags: suspenseful, serious, rough, realistic, sincere, educational, disturbing, tense, bleak, captivating
Similar in 78%
Red Light (2020)
Plot Summary:
Three women become entangled in the world of human trafficking and prostitution when Esther's husband suddenly disappears. From completely different worlds, the lives of these women become intertwined. They discover that they need each other to escape from the difficult situations they find themselves in.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Netherlands, Belgium
Duration: 50 min
Plot tags: psychological, thought provoking, captivating, suspense, disturbing
Similar in 89%
Purge (2012)
Plot Summary:
Allide experienced The Great Terror under Stalin’s regime, and decades after her hometown people were deported to Siberia, she lives alone in an isolated house. One night, she finds a young woman in her yard – Zara has just escaped from the claws of the Russian mafia that held her as a sex slave. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in unearthing each other’s motives and gradually, and their stories merge into one, revealing the tragedy of a family during the cruelest years in Estonian history.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Finland, Estonia
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, tense, rough, captivating, disturbing, suspense, bleak, serious, stylized
Similar in 88%
Russian Dolls: Sex Trade (2005)
Plot Summary:
Young women from Lithuania and Russia are taken to Belgium by a gang involved in the sex trade to work as sex slaves.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Belgium
Duration: 50 min
Plot tags: touching, suspense, tense, suspenseful, disturbing, sensual, erotic
Similar in 86%
Blind Mountain (2007)
Plot Summary:
Blind Mountain follows a young woman, Bai Xuemei, in the early 1990s who recently graduated from college and attempts to find work to help pay for her brother's education. In the process, she is drugged, kidnapped and sold as a bride to a villager in the Qinling Mountains of China's Shaanxi province. Trapped in the fiercely traditional town, the young woman finds that her avenues of escape are all blocked. As she searches for allies, including a young boy, a school teacher and a mailman, she suffers from being raped by her "husband" and continued beatings at the hands of the villagers, her husband, and her husbands' parents.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: China
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: disturbing, thought provoking, serious, touching, controversial, bleak, realistic, sexual, surprise ending, sexy
Similar in 90%
I Know My First Name Is Steven (1989)
Plot Summary:
7-year old Steven Stayner is kidnapped a few days before Christmas by Kenneth Parnell. Under the belief that Parnell has been given legal custody of him, and that his family has moved away, he stays with Parnell for seven years, enduring repetitive sexual abuse the entire time. Finally, at fourteen, he returns home to his family.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 180 min
Plot tags: disturbing, psychological, suspenseful, emotional, thought provoking, sad, tense, bleak, serious, realistic
Similar in 79%
Trade (2007)
Plot Summary:
A Texas cop (Kevin Kline), whose own daughter might have been forced into sexual slavery, joins forces with a Mexican youth (Cesar Ramos) to find the boy's sister, who was abducted and forced into prostitution. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian woman who was promised a better life in America also becomes a victim.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Germany, USA, Mexico
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: rough, suspenseful, disturbing, tense, detective, sexy, depressing, dark, multicultural, emotional
Similar in 88%
Eden (2012)
Plot Summary:
The true story of Chong Kim who, as a young teen, was abducted into the sex trade, and the complicated moral choices she had to make in order to survive as her situation grew more desperate.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: psychological, realistic, serious, suspenseful, bleak, sexy, disturbing, crime drama, captivating, independent film
Similar in 84%
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.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 49000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Sweden, Denmark
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: bleak, depressing, sad, harsh, brutal, serious, sincere, dramatic, disturbing, touching
Similar in 85%
Human Cargo (2004)
Plot Summary:
Human Cargo is a 2004 Canadian television miniseries. The series won seven Gemini Awards and two Directors Guild of Canada Awards. It premiered on CBC Television on January 4, 2004 and starred Kate Nelligan, Cara Pifko, and Nicholas Campbell. The series was written by Linda Svendsen and Brian McKeown.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 116
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration:
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing, epic, bleak
Similar in 88%
Five Daughters (2010)
Plot Summary:
Factually-based drama telling the stories of five young women who were tragically murdered in Ipswich in 2006.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 593
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, suspenseful, bleak, captivating, realistic
Similar in 87%
In Face of the Crime (2010)
Plot Summary:
Im Angesicht des Verbrechens is a German television series about the Russian mafia in Berlin. It received high critical acclaim, but the viewer figures were disappointing. It was broadcast by ARTE and Das Erste.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Germany, Austria
Duration: 479 min
Plot tags: realistic, disturbing, serious, captivating, detective, suspenseful, interesting
Similar in 75%
The Chief (2011)
Plot Summary:
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IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 46
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Russia
Duration:
Plot tags: exciting, realistic, disturbing, suspenseful, captivating, tense, suspense, rough, serious, psychological
Similar in 80%
Traffik (1989)
Plot Summary:
Traffik is a 1989 British television serial about the illegal drugs trade. Its three stories are interwoven, with arcs told from the perspectives of Afghan and Pakistani growers and manufacturers, German dealers, and British users. It was nominated for six BAFTA Awards, winning three. It also won an International Emmy Award for best drama. The 2000 crime drama film Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh, was based on this television serial. In turn, the 2004 American television miniseries Traffic was based on both versions.
IMDB Rating: 8.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 315 min
Plot tags: serious, tense, thought provoking, disturbing, rough, bleak, political, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 78%
Sexy Beast (2000)
Plot Summary:
The idyllic life of retired safecracker Gal is put at risk when a psychotic gangster from his past arrives at his villa in southern Spain, intent on bringing him out of retirement for one last job.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 65000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: UK, USA, Spain
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: dark comedy, neo noir, psychological, talky, atmospheric, black comedy, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 80%
Three Girls (2017)
Plot Summary:
The story of three of the children who were victims in the 2012 grooming and sex trafficking case in Rochdale, for which nine men were convicted and sentenced. The drama explores how these girls were groomed, how they were ignored by the authorities directly responsible for protecting them, and how they eventually made themselves heard.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Biography, Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 180 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, suspense, tense, disturbing, detective
Similar in 90%
The Whistleblower (2010)
Plot Summary:
Based on the experiences of Nebraska cop Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) who discovers a deadly sex trafficking ring while serving as a U.N. peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia. Risking her own life to save the lives of others, she uncovers an international conspiracy that is determined to stop her, no matter the cost.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 35000
Genere: Biography, Crime, Drama
Country: Canada, Germany
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: rough, political, educational, heartbreaking, factual, intellectual, suspenseful, suspense, thought provoking, sincere
Similar in 90%
Peaky Blinders (2013)
Plot Summary:
A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England and centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby, who means to move up in the world.
IMDB Rating: 8.8
IMDB Votes: 621000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 2109 min
Plot tags: serious, atmospheric, tense, stylized, captivating, clever, suspenseful, rough, historical drama, realistic