Best movies like Aarakshan

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Aarakshan Starring Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Manoj Bajpayee, and more. If you liked Aarakshan then you may also like: Umrao Jaan, Vanaja, Nayak: The Real Hero, A Night of Knowing Nothing, Nightjohn and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

movie

The decision by India's supreme court to establish caste-based reservations for jobs in education causes conflict between a teacher and his mentor.

selected filters: Sort: Default

You may filter the list of movies on this page for a more refined, personalized selection of movies.

Still not sure what to watch click the recommend buttun below to get a movie recommendation selected from all the movies on this list

Know any good movies to watch like Aarakshan 2011. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.
8.2 / 10 2006 Romance Drama
suggested by: coderlife

Umrao Jaan

Bollywood film about the famous courtesan of the title. Aishwarya Rai stars in the lead role. The film is directed by J.P. Dutta and also stars Shabana Azmi, Sunil Shetty, Abhishek Bachchan, Divya Dutta, Himani Shivpuri and Kulbhushan Kharbanda. A remake of the original directed by Muzaffar Ali and released in 1981.

Vanaja

In rural South India, 15 year old Vanaja goes to work for the local Landlady in hopes of learning Kuchipudi Dance. Initial chemistry with the Landlady's son turns ugly, pitching her into a battle of Caste and Animus.

Nayak: The Real Hero

TV reporter Shivajirao gets a chance to be the Chief Minister of Maharashtra for a day, after being challenged by incumbent Chief Minister Balraj Chauhan. After his successful one-day stint, he attempts to get back to his normal life, but it is not as easy as he thought it to be, with the lives of his near and dear ones now in danger on account of his honesty.

A Night of Knowing Nothing

L, a university student in India, writes letters to her estranged lover, while he is away. Through these letters, we get a glimpse into the drastic changes taking place around her. Merging reality with fiction, dreams, memories, fantasies and anxieties, an amorphous narrative unfolds.

Nightjohn

John is a man of many talents, including one forbidden skill: he can read. When he teaches a young slave girl named Sarny to read and write, she learns an unforgettable lesson about the power of words and the true meaning of freedom.

Ocean of Pearls

As a Sikh man with a full beard and turban, AMRIT SINGH is often the target of racial profiling. But when he sees his dreams of becoming Chief of Surgery at a state-of-the-art transplant center dwindle because of his appearance, Amrit goes against a tradition he's maintained his whole life and cuts his hair. Hiding this decision from his girlfriend and family in Toronto is only the start of a series of compromises Amrit finds himself making as he deals with hospital politics and health care injustices. When his compromises result in the death of a patient, Amrit begins to reexamine the value of the religious traditions he'd turned his back on.

On the Basis of Sex

Young lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg teams with her husband Marty to bring a groundbreaking case before the U.S. Court of Appeals and overturn a century of sex discrimination.

A Raisin in the Sun

Dreams can make a life worth living, but they can also be dashed by bad decisions. This is the crossroads whare the Younger family find themselves when their father passes away and leaves them with $10,000 in life insurance money. Should they buy a new home for the family? Perhaps a liquor store? While no choice is easy, life on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s is even harder.

Being Cyrus

The Sethna family resides in the hills of Panchgani. A retired sculptor Dinshaw heads the family of Dinshaw's wife Katy , brother Farokh, sister-in-law Tina and second brother Fardoonjee . When the bizarre Cyrus comes into their lives, it is soon revealed that things aren't quite right with the Sethna family

Black

Black is an adaptation of Helen Keller's autobiography. Black revolves around a blind and deaf girl, and her relationship with her teacher who himself later develops Alzheimer's disease.

Buffalo Dreams

Josh Townsend finds himself living in New Mexico after his father's new job requires the family to move from their home in Utah. While acclimating to his new surroundings, Josh becomes involved with a group of teens attempting to preserve the buffalo and Navajo traditions. Along the way he makes friends and learns important lessons about life in this Disney Channel Original movie.

Catch a Fire

The true story of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, and particularly the life of Patrick Chamusso, a timid foreman at Secunda CTL, the largest synthetic fuel plant in the world. Patrick is wrongly accused, imprisoned and tortured for an attempt to bomb the plant, with the injustice transforming the apolitical worker into a radicalised insurgent, who then carries out his own successful sabotage mission.

Conrack

A young, white school teacher is assigned to Yamacraw Island, an isolated fishing community off the coast of South Carolina, populated mostly by poor black families. He finds that the basically illiterate, neglected children there know so little of the world outside their island.

Machuca

Santiago, capital of Chile during the Marxist government of elected, highly controversial president Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports his leftist views by introducing a program at the prestigious "collegio" (Catholic prep school) St. Patrick to allow free admission of some proletarian kids. One of them is Pedro Machuca, slum-raised son of the cleaning lady in Gonzalo Infante's liberal-bourgeois home. Yet the new classmates become buddies, paradoxically protesting together as Gonzalo gets adopted by Pedro's slum family and gang. But the adults spoil that too, not in the least when general Pinochet's coup ousts Allende, and supporters such as McEnroe.

Do Dooni Chaar

A middle-class father in India struggles through a series of unexpected events for upholding respect and smiles.

6.4 / 10 2005 Drama
suggested by: user7648aw9ning

The F Word

A frustrated radio DJ takes to the streets of Manhattan during the Republican National Convention after the FCC has slapped his station with $1 million in indecency fines, and popular radio personality Joe Pace (Josh Hamilton) isn't going down without a fight. As the streets fill with restless republicans, angry protestors, and other colorful characters, Joe arms himself with a wireless microphone and a portable transmitter in order to get the opinions of the average person on the street.

Gandhi, My Father

With Gandhi My Father, producer Anil Kapoor and director Feroz Abbas Khan have shed light onto Gandhi the person, rather than Gandhi the icon. Using Gandhi’s political career as a canvas, the film paints a picture of his intricate, complex, and strained relationship with his son Harilal Gandhi.

Stand and Deliver

Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students.

There Goes My Baby

It's the summer of 1965, and the members of the graduating class of upscale Westwood High are eager to reinvent themselves. Valedictorian Mary Beth wants to attend a liberal university. Surfer bum Stick plans to enlist to fight in Vietnam. Calvin lives in the poor Watts section of Los Angeles, which is slowly erupting in violence. As the summer nights grow long, they'll all be forced to make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives.

Madame Sousatzka

In London, eccentric piano instructor Madame Sousatzka takes on a new prize protégé, Manek, a teenage Bengali immigrant who displays incredible talent. Manek forms a close bond with his teacher, but soon discovers that she expects her pupils to become disciplined in all areas of life, and not just behind the piano

The Year That Trembled

The Year That Trembled is a coming-of-age story set in 1970 in the shadow of Kent State that focuses on a group of young people facing the Vietnam Draft Lottery.

6.9 / 10 1999 Action Crime
suggested by: serenity

Shool

Police Inspector Samar Pratap Singh is transferred to Motihari, in the Indian state of Bihar, along with his wife, Manjari and a daughter. He is honest and diligent and these attributes sets him up against his superior - the District Superintendent of Police, as well as his subordinates and fellow officers.

In Custody

Ismail Merchant's feature directorial debut addresses a subject close to his heart: the expressive Urdu language of Northern India, in danger of extinction as political trends and modernization obscure its contributions to Indian culture. Merchant 's treatment is wry and good humored , as his characters - an aging Urdu poet (Shashi Kapoor) and a worshipful young college lecturer - clash despite their shared passion for the beauty of words.

6.8 / 10 2002 Drama
suggested by: moviejunkie

Mr. and Mrs. Iyer

A bus is setting out to Calcutta from a village in West Bengal. Meenakshi Iyer, who is from a strict orthodox Hindu background, is leaving to Chennai for her husband, with her young child, after the vacation with her parents. By chance, she gets a co-passenger who is also to Chennai, Rajah, a photographer, introduced by one of the friends of her father. During the journey they build a good relationship. But a Hindu-Muslim communal riot sets out in the meantime, in some areas they had to travel. Then she comes to face the fact that Rajah is not a Hindu but a Muslim whose real name is Jehangir. Even though she curses herself at that time while some Hindu fanatics evade their bus she saves him introducing as Mr. Iyer. But they have to reach their destination while the other passengers know Rajah as no one else but Mr. Iyer.

Selma

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Akeelah and the Bee

Akeelah is a precocious 11-year-old girl from south Los Angeles with a gift for words. Despite her mother's objections, Akeelah enters various spelling contests, for which she is tutored by the forthright Dr. Larabee, her principal Mr. Welch, and the proud residents of her neighborhood. Akeelah's aptitude earns her an opportunity to compete for a spot in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The Rosa Parks Story

A seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.

5.8 / 10 2000 Drama TV Movie
suggested by: user681i0irp5cb

Freedom Song

Freedom Song (2000) is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan. In the midst of the Freedom Summer, a group of high school students in the small town are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community. The young activists meet resistance not only from white southerners, but from their parents, who have experienced firsthand the violence that can result from speaking out.[1] As high school students band together with the support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they make strides in registering African-American voters and gaining awareness for their cause.

Ruby Bridges

When six-year-old Ruby Bridges is chosen to be the first African-American to integrate her local elementary school, she is subjected to the true ugliness of racism for the first time.

Talk to Me

The story of Washington D.C. radio personality Ralph "Petey" Greene, an ex-con who became a popular talk show host and community activist in the 1960s.

Skin

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.

Swades

A successful Indian scientist returns home to his village to take his nanny back to America with him, and in the process rediscovers his roots.

Lower Learning

Barry Goldwater Elementary is on the brink of collapse: the lowest test scores in the state, teachers who are either drunk or having sex on school grounds, and a principal who extorts money from parents. It's up to Tom, the down-on-his-luck vice-principal, to rally the lazy teachers, expose the principal's corruption, and turn the school around before an end of the day board decision.

Talk of Angels

This is the story of a young Irish woman who comes to Spain to escape from the pressures she feels about her impending marriage to a political activist in Ireland. But in Spain in the 1930's, taking a job of governess in a wealthy family, she finds the same kinds of political unrest. In fact, it isn't long before she finds herself attracted to a married man who is similarly involved in the struggle against fascism and Franco. This awakens her to her nature that brings her to such men and resolves for her what she must do about the life she left in Ireland

The Adversary

Siddhartho Chowdhury, a brilliant medical student, is forced to leave his studies after his father's sudden demise. He is forced to navigate the high unemployment rate and the communist socio-political climate of 1960s Calcutta in search of a job.

The Explosive Generation

Peter Gifford is a likable, dedicated schoolteacher that teaches a senior life skills class. When student Janet Sommers brings up the topic of sex and dating, he asks students to write questions on the topic, and will cover them in the next class. The parents get wind of what Gifford is about to do, notify the principal, and he warns Peter not to read the questions in class. Gifford decides to go against this and is suspended. The whole student body protests, and the administration gets worried on what to do.

Suffragette

Based on true events about the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement, women who were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an increasingly brutal State.

Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight

Muhammad Ali’s historic Supreme Court battle from behind closed doors. When Ali was drafted into the Vietnam War at the height of his boxing career, his claim to conscientious objector status led to a controversial legal battle that rattled the U.S. judicial system right up to the highest court in the land.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

In the later years of the nineteenth century Latin master Mr. Chipping is the mainstay of Brookfields boys boarding school, a good teacher and a kindly person but he is considered to be married to the job so that it is a surprise when, on a walking holiday, he meets and marries the vivacious Kathie,who becomes his helpmate at the school but sadly pre-deceases him. Just before World War One insensitive new headmaster Ralston tries to edge Chipping out but the boys rally and Sir John Rivers, an old pupil of Chipping's and now head of the board of governors, invites him to stay and,when the war breaks out and Ralston joins up, Chipping becomes the new head.

6.3 / 10 2006 Drama TV Movie
suggested by: user6890m45k5kg

Walkout

Walkout is the true story of a young Mexican American high school teacher, Sal Castro. He mentors a group of students in East Los Angeles, when the students decide to stage a peaceful walkout to protest the injustices of the public school system. Set against the background of the civil rights movement of 1968, it is a story of courage and the fight for justice and empowerment.

Getting Straight

Graduate student Harry Bailey was once one of the most visible undergraduate activists on campus, but now that he's back studying for his master's, he's trying to fly right. Trouble is, the campus is exploding with various student movements, and Harry's girlfriend, Jan, is caught up in most of them. As Harry gets closer to finishing his degree, he finds his iconoclastic attitude increasingly aligned with the students rather than the faculty.

The Legend of Bhagat Singh

Born in British India, Bhagat Singh witnesses numerous atrocities during his childhood and grows up to become one of the most fearless freedom fighters in the country.

Eklavya: The Royal Guard

As the kingdom of Devigarh comes apart at the seams, an aging bodyguard attempts to protect the Royal Family, as well as keep its darkest secrets from ever coming to light.

Chillar Party

A gang of innocent but feisty kids who lead carefree lives in Chandan Nagar colony, take on the big bad world of politics when one of their friend's life is endangered.

Umrika

When a young village boy discovers that his brother, long believed to be in America, has actually gone missing, he begins to invent letters on his behalf to save their mother from heartbreak, all the while searching for him.

Bringing Down a Dictator

A student group called Otpor! ("Resistance!" in Serbian) forms part of the nonviolent opposition movement that toppled the regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

Boycott

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.

8.0 / 10 2006 Drama
suggested by: user84a1wj3w6l

Mentor

A thought-provoking drama about the power that a famous university professor holds over his students and assistants.

Profoundly Normal

Donna Lee Shelby, a mentally challenged girl who lives in Forest Haven, an institution for the developmentally disabled, meets Ricardo Thornton, a fellow resident. When Forest Haven is closed by a court order, Donna and Ricardo venture into the real world on their own.

An Affirmative Act

"An Affirmative Act" is pro-gay marriage film, starring Charles Durning, Eric Etebari, Costas Mandylor, Rachael Robbins, and Blanche Baker, about a lesbian couple where one pretends to be a man in order for the two to get married and equal benefits. A slice of life of a young, professional married couple with their darling baby turns a sharp, dark corner when the pair are arrested and charged with several counts of fraud. The reason: Terry and Samantha Succi aren't the man and woman that they purported to be... Terry and Samantha married under false pretenses, ignoring state law that discriminates against homosexual partners and prohibits them from receiving the same rights and benefits as their straight counterparts.

More related lists

Sort results by:

X close
Default
Clear filters
...