Best movies like Ashes and Embers

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Ashes and Embers Starring John Anderson, Evelyn A. Blackwell, Norman Blalock, Kathy Flewellen, and more. If you liked Ashes and Embers then you may also like: Da 5 Bloods, The U.S. vs. John Lennon, The Visitors, The War at Home, Welcome Home 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.

Ashes and Embers is an original screenplay by Haile Gerima, about a Vietnam veteran, who, several years after the war, is struggling to come to terms with his role in the war, and his role as a Black person in America. He survives by working odd jobs in Washington, D.C. and living with his girlfriend and her son. When criticism of his alienated behavior come from her and a father figure too often, he runs to the streets or to his grandmother's rural house in Virginia. Her criticism and his memories of the past both send him fleeing again to Los Angeles, where he is surrounded by superficial people who have forgotten how to be compassionate human beings. It is here that the advice of his friends and grandmother combine to transform him from an embittered ex-soldier to a strong and confident man.

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Da 5 Bloods

Four African-American Vietnam veterans return to Vietnam. They are in search of the remains of their fallen squad leader and the promise of buried treasure. These heroes battle forces of humanity and nature while confronted by the lasting ravages of the immorality of the Vietnam War.

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.

The Visitors

Bill, Martha and their little child Hal are spending a quiet winter Sunday in their cosy house when they get an unexpected visit from Mike Nickerson and Tony Rodriguez. Mike and Tony are old acquaintances of Bill; a few years back, in Vietnam, they were in the same platoon. They also became opposed parties in a court martial - for a reason that Bill never explained to Martha. What happened in Vietnam, and what is the reason for the presence of Mike and Tony ?

The War at Home

Documentary film about the anti-war movement in the Madison, Wisconsin area during the time of the Vietnam War. It combines archival footage and interviews with participants that explore the events of the period on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus.

Welcome Home

An Air Force officer returns to his father, son and remarried wife in Vermont after 17 years in Vietnam.

0.0 / 10 1981 Drama
suggested by: ElectricElk

The Woman Inside

A Vietnam vet decides to undergo a sex change operation in the 1970's.

One Potato, Two Potato

Study of interracial marriage in the 1960s. A white divorcée falls in love with and marries an African-American man. When her ex-husband sues for custody of her child, arguing that a mixed household is an improper place to raise the girl, the new husband fights for his parental rights in court, fighting against a judge who represents the prejudices of the era.

Rules of Engagement

A Marine Colonel is brought to court-martial after ordering his men to fire on demonstrators surrounding the American embassy in Yemen.

Jacknife

A conflict develops between a troubled Vietnam veteran and the sister he lives with when she becomes involved romantically with the army buddy who reminds him of the tragic battle they both survived.

6.5 / 10 1978 Drama
suggested by: user102rvw5z7h7

Killer of Sheep

An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.

Black Dynamite

This is the story of 1970s African-American action legend Black Dynamite. The Man killed his brother, pumped heroin into local orphanages, and flooded the ghetto with adulterated malt liquor. Black Dynamite was the one hero willing to fight The Man all the way from the blood-soaked city streets to the hallowed halls of the Honky House...

Boyz n the Hood

Boyz n the Hood is the popular and successful film and social criticism from John Singleton about the conditions in South Central Los Angeles where teenagers are involved in gun fights and drug dealing on a daily basis.

The Spook Who Sat by the Door

A black man plays Uncle Tom in order to gain access to CIA training, then uses that knowledge to plot a new American Revolution.

The Domino Principle

Roy Tucker, a Vietnam war veteran with excellent shooting skills, is serving a long prison sentence when a mysterious visitor promises him that he will be released if he agrees to carry out a dangerous assignment.

The Black Six

A black high school student is caught dating a white girl by the girl's brother. He and his biker gang beat the boy to death. The boy's brother, who is a member of a black biker gang, hears about it and comes to town to avenge his brother's death.

The Indian Runner

Two brothers cannot overcome their opposite perceptions of life. One brother sees and feels bad in everyone and everything, subsequently he is violent, antisocial and unable to appreciate or enjoy the good things which his brother desperately tries to point out to him.

Hi, Mom!

Vietnam vet Jon Rubin returns to New York and rents a rundown flat in Greenwich Village. It is in this flat that he begins to film, 'Peeping Tom' style, the people in the apartment across the street. His obsession with making films leads him to fall in with a radical 'Black Power' group, which in turn leads him to carry out a bizarre act of urban terrorism.

Land of Plenty

After living abroad, Lana returns to the United States, and finds that her uncle is a reclusive vagabond with psychic wounds from the Vietnam War.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Jimmie Fails dreams of reclaiming the Victorian home his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco. Joined on his quest by his best friend Mont, Jimmie searches for belonging in a rapidly changing city that seems to have left them behind.

To Sleep with Anger

An enigmatic drifter from the South comes to visit an old acquaintance who now lives in South-Central LA.

6.6 / 10 2014 Drama
suggested by: user760yk4097ul

Imperial Dreams

A 21-year-old reformed gangster's devotion to his family and his future is put to the test when he is released from prison and returns to his old stomping grounds in Watts, Los Angeles.

Sankofa

On a photo shoot in Ghana, an American model slips back in time, becomes enslaved on a plantation and bears witness to the agony of her ancestral past.

Hangfire

When a large group of escaped convicts take Ike Slayton, a Vietnam veteran's wife hostage, Slayton enlists the help of his old army friend in a furious search to find her, while a hard-nosed National Guardsman leads a platoon of solders determined to kill or capture all the convicts, even if it means killing all the hostages in the crossfire.

Archibald the Rainbow Painter

Vietnam veteran Archibald Wright is a house painter hired to work on a Beverly Hills mansion where he becomes involved in the life of the resident family. The owner Elaine left her husband J.P. while he was serving in Vietnam, causing him to become an alcoholic hobo living in downtown Los Angeles. Archibald tries to help their daughter Tory to continue her relationship with her father, even though Elaine is strongly against it.

5.1 / 10 2020 Drama
suggested by: user356nvd7lifc

Residue

A young filmmaker returns home after many years away, to write a script about his childhood, only to find his neighborhood unrecognizable and his childhood friends scattered to the wind.

2.9 / 10 1994 Drama Comedy
suggested by: user467mlgf4irh

Drop Squad

Controversial film about an underground organization that kidnaps and 'deprograms' African Americans who sell out or deny their cultural heritage. Spike Lee is the Executive Producer.

Trained To Kill

From the fields of Cambodia to the mean streets of L.A., there's no escaping death and it's blinding revenge.

6.1 / 10 1966 Drama
suggested by: user307fi1ayung

The Black Klansman

After his daughter is killed by the KKK, a black man seeks revenge by passing as white and becoming a Klansman.

6.2 / 10 1986 Drama
suggested by: user308hvvsr7sp

Resting Place

A television movie set in Rockville, Georgia, in 1972. Major Kendall Laird, a Survival Assistance Officer, arrives in this sleepy little town with the body of Lieutenant Dwyte Johnson, a Vietnam war hero. It's Laird's job to help Johnson's parents bury their son. But since the dead hero was black, his parents are turned away by the white racists who maintain the town's "all-white" cemetery.

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.

Gordon's War

A black soldier comes home to Harlem after a tour in Vietnam and discovers that his wife had become a heroin addict and died of an overdose. Infuriated, he gathers three of his ex-GI buddies and they lay out plans to fight the drug dealers.

7.0 / 10 1986 TV Movie Drama
suggested by: NighttimeNarwhal

Unnatural Causes

Frank Coleman is a Vietnam veteran dying from cancer brought on by exposure to the defoliant chemical Agent Orange which he turns to Maude DeVictor, a Veterans Administration benefits counselor who teams up with Coleman to fight a lopsided batted against the bureaucratic system for its cover up of the possible dangers of Agent Orange.

6.5 / 10 1973 Drama
suggested by: user928rzdcna6l

The Bad Bunch

A white ex-GI goes to a black ghetto to deliver a letter from his buddy, a black soldier who died in Vietnam. When he arrives there he encounters hostility and trouble from all sides.

Runaway

After witnessing the accidental death of a friend who was attempting to rescue him from bullies, an African-American boy blames himself and, stricken with guilt, hides out among underground street people in New York.

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