Mamma Roma (1962), Fists in the Pocket (1965), Oasis (2002), Mouchette (1967), Salaam Bombay! (1988), Cabaret Balkan (1998), The Ballad of Narayama (1983), Kes (1969) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Harsh Reality movies.
Storyline: A prostitute (Anna Magnani) tries to go straight and help her son (Ettore Garofalo), but the past and corruption catch up with them.
Plot Keywords: social critique, mother-son relationship, moral dilemma, social injustice, struggle for survival, exploration of humanity, harsh reality ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Augusto (Marino Mase) is the oldest son in a dysfunctional Italian family that includes a blind mother (Liliana Gerace), a selfish sister, Giulia (Paola Pitagora), and two epileptic brothers, Alessandro (Lou Castel) and Leone (Pier Luigi Troglio). Augusto is planning to marry Lucia (Jennie MacNeil) despite Giulia's repeated attempts to drive them apart, but cannot do so while taking care of the clan. An angry and unstable Alessandro decides to help Augusto by killing their mother and siblings.
Plot Keywords: psychological drama, family conflict, mental illness, moral dilemma, black comedy, social critique, existentialism ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: After serving time for killing a man in a hit-and-run car accident, Hong Jong-du (Sul Kyung-gu) is released with no money and nowhere to go. His family has abandoned him. While trying to make amends, he meets Han Gong-ju (Moon So-ri), his victim's adult daughter. She is wheelchair-bound due to cerebral palsy and all but abandoned in a cheap apartment by her callous family. Gong-ju's innate tenderness appeals to the uncontrollably impulsive Jong-du, and the pair begin an improbable relationship.
Plot Keywords: romance, drama, korean cinema, social outcasts, disability, forbidden love, human nature ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Young teen Mouchette (Nadine Nortier) faces hardships everywhere in her difficult life. Her father (Paul Hébert) is a cruel drunk who neglects her. Meanwhile, her mother (Marie Cardinal) lies ill, slowly dying. One day, fleeing a rainstorm, Mouchette comes across Arsène (Jean-Claude Guilbert), a poacher with a violent streak. He lets her take shelter in his cabin but then assaults her. Arsène even blackmails Mouchette to involve her in a cover-up for a crime he's committed.
Plot Keywords: french film, drama, black and white, 1960s, social marginalization, poverty, rural life ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Young Krishna's mother abandons him at the Apollo Circus and informs him that he can only return home when he can afford 500 rupees to pay for his brother's bicycle that he destroyed. The circus then leaves Krishna behind and he takes a train to Bombay, where he works delivering tee for Chacha's street bar and being called "Chaipau" by the local street children. He befriends heroin addict and drug dealer Chillum, and young Manju Golub, the daughter of Baba Golub and prostitute Rekha Golub. Krishna dreams of saving 500 rupees to return home, but Bombay street life isn't easy.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Plot Keywords: india, children, street life, social realism, mumbai, independent film, coming of age ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: People, each representing an aspect of the Serbian character, spend a hectic and frightening night in a city.
Plot Keywords: moral decay, multi-narrative, despair, hatred, revenge, social alienation, psychological trauma ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse he or she would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.—Mattias Thuresson
Plot Keywords: drama, period drama, cannes film festival, palme d'or, adaptation, village life, aging ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Bullied at school and ignored and abused at home by his indifferent mother and older brother, Billy Casper (David Bradley), a 15-year-old working-class Yorkshire boy, tames and trains his pet kestrel falcon whom he names Kes. Helped and encouraged by his English teacher Mr. Farthing (Colin Welland) and his fellow students, Billy finally finds a positive purpose to his unhappy existence, until tragedy strikes.
Plot Keywords: social realism, working class, coming of age, british cinema, education system, poverty, family conflict ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: After being enrolled in a new high school, Kwan must confront bullies.
Plot Keywords: youth, coming of age, bromance, 1970s, korean cinema, nostalgia, rebellion ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: While waiting for her mothers reply to take her to the USA, Lilya idles the time away smoking, drinking and having fun with her, too, outcast friend Volodya. In time, the chance of a new life becomes non-existent; her life is going nowhere. Meeting a young man, she then finds a plane ticket in her hand and a new life in Sweden: a job, an apartment and prospects. All is not what it seems. There shall be work, there shall be housing and there shall be no escape. This is the stark, frank and disturbing vision of the life of a young victim of the underground sex trade and in all its tone of realism of abject poverty, despicable actions and of wanting to show that dreaming of a better life is not a crime but that life can shatter the illusion of a happy ending.
Plot Keywords: drama, crime, swedish film, european film, social realism, dark side of humanity, poverty ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: From July, 1913 to the outbreak of World War I, a series of incidents take place in a German village. A horse trips on a wire and throws the rider; a woman falls to her death through rotted planks; the local baron's son is hung upside down in a mill; parents slap and bully their children; a man is cruel to his long-suffering lover; another sexually abuses his daughter. People disappear. A callow teacher, who courts a nanny in the baron's household, narrates the story and tries to investigate the connections among these accidents and crimes. What is foreshadowed? Are the children holy innocents? God may be in His heaven, but all is not right with the world; the center cannot hold.
Plot Keywords: drama, historical, mystery, psychological, thriller, black and white, german film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Working class and middle-upper class worlds come together in this interesting look at class conflict within the gay world from the German director Reiner Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder plays Fox, he is working class, a former circus performer who wins the lottery of DM 500,000. His life starts to look up and doesn't have to struggle financially. Fox can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. He begins a new relationship with Eugen, creates a business partnership, and his life is looking bright. While he wants to climb up the social ladder, it isn't without turmoil, and being torn between his old working class roots, and the shiny new facade of middle class consciousness.—Nathan Niessen
Plot Keywords: social critique, class conflict, exploitation, love story, tragedy, 1970s cinema, realism ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Antoine Besson, Miriam's divorced husband, is a nice man. In charge of security in a hospital, he is esteemed both by his superiors and his fellow colleagues. Moreover he is a good father who, willing to be closer to his eleven-year-old son Julien, has chosen to be transferred to the town where the boy lives with his mother and his older sister Joséphine, soon to be of age. That is the very reason why Antoine, the caring father, is asking for joint custody of Julien. Well, all that would be fine provided Antoine actually was the man he claims to be. The trouble is that his wife and his two children see him in a very different light. For in the past, Antoine was far from an angel. On the contrary, he had a knack for creating an atmosphere of permanent fear at home, going as far as to occasionally beat his wife under his children's eyes. And he got away with it all the more easily as Miriam, wishing to avoid even more problems, never lodged a complaint against him - a fact that eventually turns against her. Which is why, despite the fact that Julien does not want to see his father any more, the family court judge complies with Antoine's request.—Guy Bellinger
Plot Keywords: legal drama, tension, emotional conflict, domestic violence, psychological pressure, social issues, french film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The first scene, like almost all others, is a fighting scene. A girl, about 18, is sacked from her factory work because her trial period is over. The girl, Rosetta, is quite upset and the cops will have to arrive to get her out. She has her reasons: she lives in a caravan, with her alcoholic mother. She goes looking for work as some go to the war. Treasons, murders are in her mind, if not in her acts.—Gregoire Dubost <Gregoire.dubost@polytechnique.org>
Plot Keywords: drama, realism, social issues, poverty, struggle for survival, unemployment, female protagonist ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In Lille, two penniless young women with few prospects become friends. Isa moves in with Marie, who's flat-sitting for a mother and child in hospital in comas following a car crash. Isa is out-going, unskilled, with hopes of moving south to warmer climes. Marie usually is either angry or detached. Then, while Isa begins to visit the child in whose flat they live, going to hospital to read to her, Marie slowly falls for a rich youth. At first Marie keeps him at bay, then she not only pursues him, she begins to dream he is her life's love. When Isa tries to warn Marie, their friendship flounders. How will Marie handle the inevitable? And once they lose the flat, where will they go?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: french film, drama, social realism, female protagonist, friendship, working class, loneliness ...
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