Best movies & TV Shows like Ayali

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Ayali Starring Abi Nakshathra, Anumol, Linga, Lovelyn Chandrasekhar, and more. If you liked Ayali then you may also like: Nil Battey Sannata, Nurse on Wheels, The Journey, Khushboo, Dead Poets Society 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.

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Young Tamizhselvi dreams of becoming a doctor. But her village, Veerappannai, has fearsome age-old customs and traditions which inadvertently suppress women of the village. Will she be able to overcome them?

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Nil Battey Sannata

Behind the magnificent Taj Mahal lies a cluster of dingy homes where Chanda (35), a domestic help, lives with her 14-year-old daughter Appu. Chanda aspires and dreams that her daughter will study and embrace a better fate. When Appu tells her she wants to quit school and become a maid like her, Chanda takes a strong decision: she will herself go back to school, and even join the class of her daughter.

Nurse on Wheels

Quietly competent young Joanna moves with her scatterbrain mother to a country village to take up her first job as District Nurse. She soon overcomes the suspicion of her patients used to someone rather older, while becoming romantically involved with a local farmer - at least until he tries to evict a newly-arrived expectant couple who park their caravan on his land.

The Journey

Kiran is mortified by her growing lesbian desire for the effervescent Delilah in an idyllic Indian village where arranged marriage is the only acceptable form of coupling.

Khushboo

Kusum and Brindavan are two small children living in a small village in India. Both love each other, and decide to marry when they grow up. Kusum has his name tattooed on her arm. But fate has other plans - both are separated. Kusum thinks that Brindavan has betrayed her, and she burns her arm to eradicate the tattoo. Years later, Kusum has grown up and is looking after a wealthy woman in her village. The wealthy woman falls sick, and her son brings in a doctor to treat her. Kusum's hopes for meeting her beloved surface, when she finds out that the doctor's (Jeetendra) name is Brindavan

Dead Poets Society

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.

East Is East

In 1971 Salford fish-and-chip shop owner George Khan expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways. But his children, with an English mother and having been born and brought up in Britain, increasingly see themselves as British and start to reject their father's rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.

Fiddler on the Roof

In a small Jewish community in a pre-Revolutionary Russian village, a poor milkman, determined to find good husbands for his five daughters, consults the traditional matchmaker – and also has words with God.

if....

In an English boys' boarding school, social hierarchy reigns supreme and power remains in the hands of distanced and ineffectual teachers and callously vicious prefects in the Upper Sixth. Three Lower Sixth students, Wallace, Johnny and leader Mick Travis decide on a shocking course of action to redress the balance of privilege once and for all.

Eve and the Fire Horse

Eve is a precocious nine year-old girl with a wild imagination growing up in a traditional Chinese immigrant family in Vancouver where Confucian doctrines, superstitious obsessions and divine visions abound. When Buddhism and Catholicism are thrown into the mix, life for Eve and her 11-year-old prim and authoritative sister, Karena, escalates into a fantasia of catastrophe, sainthood and cultural confusion. The journey of a young girl and her sister striving to grow up in world where childhood is lonely and the world is full of wonder.

Home

Carrie is a religious fundamentalist. But her mother decided to come-out-of-the-closet and marry another woman, which they have a daughter together with. Now, she is forced to move into a new house with people she cannot accept. The story takes place over the first two days at the strange house, as Carrie's new parents leave for a business trip and she must now take care of her step sister. As creepy occurrences lead to full blown terror, Carrie must learn to overcome her own fears and believes to save her little sister.

Maya Miriga

In this quiet drama about a large and loving family, what the parents want the most for their children -- a good education -- causes them to endure what they want the least for themselves, an empty house. As this engaging story opens, a retired schoolteacher and his wife are at home with their four grown sons and one daughter. The oldest son is a teacher whose wife is expecting a baby. The youngest son is a student in New Delhi and, defying custom, his young wife opts to go live with her own family while her husband is at school instead of remaining with her in-laws. Will her behavior and that of the younger generation undermine the tradition that holds the society and family together? After the youngest son graduates and gets a job, he and his wife move across the country to New Delhi. As the siblings continue to grow and develop their own lives and families, the mother and father face a gradual and inevitable adjustment to living without them.

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.

Smile

Introduced to a volunteer opportunity with the Doctor's Gift Program, Katie (Mika Boorem) signs up for a trip to China, where she meets Lin (Yi Ding), a girl with whom she shares a birthday. Lin has a facial deformity that discourages her from ever showing her face, but her friendship with Katie helps her start to see life in a new way.

Songcatcher

After being denied a promotion at the university where she teaches, Doctor Lily Penleric, a brilliant musicologist, impulsively visits her sister, who runs a struggling rural school in Appalachia. There she stumbles upon the discovery of her life - a treasure trove of ancient Scots-Irish ballads, songs that have been handed down from generation to generation, preserved intact by the seclusion of the mountains. With the goal of securing her promotion, Lily ventures into the most isolated areas of the mountains to collect the songs and finds herself increasingly enchanted.

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.

Twilight Time

After spending 20 years in America, aging widower Marko Sekulovic (Karl Malden) returns to his Yugoslavian homeland to take care of his two young grandchildren. But Marko's quiet life is in for a shake up when he meets the pretty new village schoolteacher, Lana (Jodi Thelen). Malden pays tribute to his Yugoslav heritage in this affecting 1982 drama.

Beginner's Guide to Sex

Plucky and innocent Laci Cox is hired to teach a rowdy and experienced group of hormonal high schoolers about sex. The only problems is... she's a virgin! Laci must lose her virginity before she loses her job.

Lesson Plan

"Lesson Plan" is a documentary film about The Third Wave (aka The Wave & Die Welle) classroom experiment, as told by the original students and teacher Ron Jones.

Welcome To Unity

In a sleepy mountain town nestled in rural America, seven foreign exchange students set out to tackle the 'American Dream'.

Anpadh

A wealthy, pampered and illiterate woman faces many challenges after her marriage.

Prophet's Prey

Filmmaker Amy Berg sheds light on the sexual, financial and spiritual abuses heaped upon members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by their former leader, Warren Jeffs.

A Suitable Girl

A Suitable Girl follows three young women in India struggling to maintain their identities and follow their dreams amid intense pressure to get married. The film examines the women's complex relationship with marriage, family, and society.

Left Thumb Signature

In a village called Savargaon in Maharashtra, six male and female teachers are told to conduct the adult literacy program. This requires extra working hours but they run the program with no result.

Child Bride

Jennie is a twelve-year-old girl living with her parents in extremely rural mountain country. Her schoolteacher, Miss Carol, though a mountain girl herself, has gone off to be educated and returned in hopes of stopping the tradition of child marriage which permeates the culture. Jennie's father Ira is a good man who tries to protect Miss Carol from the men who threaten her if she doesn't call off her crusade. One of these men, Jake Bolby, has his eye on little Jennie and plots to make her his bride. NOTE: the actress playing Jennie was 14 years old when she made this film, and appears topless in a couple of shots.

The Black Velvet Gown

In the 1830's in northern England, Riah Millican, a widow with three children, takes a job as housekeeper to a reclusive former teacher, Percival Miller. Miller makes Riah the gift of a black velvet gown, and even educates her children. But when Riah discovers the reason behind Miller's gifts, she vows to leave his house, but Miller has a hold on her, even after his death, when he leaves his house to her on the condition that she never marry. Riah's daughter, Biddy, grows up and becomes a laundress in a large house where her education keeps her from fitting in and makes her a target. But it also catches the eye of a son of the house, and with Miller's legacies, Biddy may yet find her way to happiness.

Jogwa - The Awakening

Jogwa actually means alms given to a person, usually known as a jogta or a jogtini. They are forced by the society to give up everything and serve God. A jogta has to give up the fact of being a man and suppress all his desires. This tradition was followed in the rural areas in the ancient times and like any tradition was flexible enough for those in power to misuse it. It is known to be still followed in some villages in Karnataka.Jogwa is a love story between jogta played by Uupendra Limaye and jogtini played by Mukta Barve.

Palunku

Monichan shifts to the city from his village to provide better education to his children. But will things go as planned?

Ikwe

A young Ojibwa girl from 1770 marries a Scottish fur trader and leaves home for the shores of Georgian Bay. Although the union is beneficial for her tribe, it results in hardship and isolation for Ikwe. Values and customs clash until, finally, the events of a dream Ikwe once had unfold with tragic clarity.

Yefon

An illiterate village girl defies the customs of her tribe, discriminatory to women, only to become the spark of a Literary Revolution.

Begin Japanology

BEGIN Japanology invites you into the world of Japanese culture, both traditional and modern, explaining how traditions evolved and the part they still play today in people's everyday lives.

The Western Tradition

Covering the ancient world through the age of technology, this illustrated lecture by Eugen Weber presents a tapestry of political and social events woven with many strands — religion, industry, agriculture, demography, government, economics, and art. A visual feast of over 2,700 images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art portrays key events that shaped the development of Western thought, culture, and tradition. This series is also valuable for teachers seeking to review the subject matter.

Mother Goose Club

Sing and dance along to your favorite nursery rhymes with your friends from Mother Goose Club, where fun and learning always go hand in hand!

The Write Offs

Sandi Toksvig hosts this look at Britain's low adult literacy rates, as a group of adults overcome the one thing that's always held them back and lift the stigma around illiteracy

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey

In interviews and rare home video footage, ex-FLDS members share the truth about their isolated community — and the events that pushed them to leave.

I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School

An unflinching verité portrait of the children of Stanton Elementary School in North Philadelphia, an inner-city neighborhood where 90% of the students live below the poverty line. Seen through the viewpoint of devoted principal Deanna Burney, the film shows Stanton as grossly underfunded, understaffed, and filled with children struggling to overcome their difficulties. But for these at-risk kids, however, the hope for their future survives only in the success of their education. A captivating series of vignettes concerning children growing up outside the American dream, echoing current “hot-button” issues in our country’s ongoing political discussion.

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