Best movies like Ciske the Rat

A 19 year old Brooklyn boy who is torn between two worlds when his photography portfolio wins him a partial scholarship to NYU. He must figure out how to balance his Italian neighborhood roots with the expansive, sophisticated world on the other side of the East River. Based on Tim McLoughlin's novel "Heart of the Old Country".

NEDs (Non Educated Delinquents) is the story of a young man’s journey from prize-winning schoolboy to knife-carrying teenager. Struggling against the low expectations of those around him, John McGill changes from victim to avenger, scholar to NED, altar boy to glue sniffer. When he attempts to change back again, his new reality and recent past make conformity near impossible and violent self determination near inevitable.

A searing legal drama that centers on a highly credentialed child psychologist whose life is shattered when he's accused of sexually assaulting a young boy he's been treating.

The rough-hewn boss of a lumber crew courts trouble when he steps in to protect the youngest member of his team from an abusive father.

A destitute 14-year-old struggles to keep his life together despite harsh abuse at his mother's hands, harsher abuse at his father's, and a growing separation from his slightly older brother.

In the late 19th century, a young woman moves to Amsterdam with her family and tries to make a living. Preyed upon by various men, she nonetheless rises in society.

A young, English working-class boy finds a kestrel and decides to train it.

A day in the life of a group of troubled 15-year-olds growing up in west London.

Ali, Kwita, Omar and Boubker are street kids. The daily dose of glue sniffing represents their only escape from reality. Since they left Dib and his gang, they have been living on the portside of Casablanca. They live in constant fear of Dib's revenge. Ali wants to become a sailor - when he was living with his mother, a prostitute, he used to listen to a fairy tale about the sailor who discovered the miracle island with two suns. Instead of finding his island in the dream, Ali and his friends are confronted with Dib's gang. Matters are getting serious.

Martin and Hazel Quarrier are small-town fundamentalist missionaries sent to the jungles of South America to convert the Indians. Their remote mission was previously run by the Catholics, before the natives murdered them all. They are sent by the pompous Leslie Huben, who runs the missionary effort in the area but who seems more concerned about competing with his Catholic 'rivals' than in the Indians themselves. Hazel is terrified of the Indians while Martin is fascinated. Soon American pilot Lewis Moon joins the Indian tribe but is attracted by Leslie's young wife, Andy. Can the interaction of these characters and cultures, and the advancing bulldozers of civilization, avoid disaster?

After reuniting with his mother in Ho Chi Minh City, a family tragedy causes Binh to flee from Viet Nam to America. Landing in New York, Binh begins a road trip to Texas, where his American father is said to live.

After being abducted as children, and suffering years of abuse, a teenage boy and girl find themselves living on the street.

To get to know his girlfriend's son, a man volunteers to pick him up from a prep school....only to learn that her son's not the nicest kid.

Determined to have a normal family life once his mother gets out of prison, a Scottish teenager from a tough background sets out to raise the money for a home.

Marcus is a kid on Manhattan's mean streets. He's turning 15, his father is dead, his mother is in prison for smuggling undocumented aliens. His grandmother is raising him. He has four close buddies who have a basement clubhouse; they shoplift and sell the wares to kids. One is moving toward selling drugs. Marcus wants to take a breather from the city and visit family in New Mexico. He also meets Melena, 14, a sweet kid who dreams of going to Alaska; her father is not just protective but angry and uncommunicative. The gang pressures Marcus to move up to burglary and car theft. He just wants to breathe open air. Can anything go right?

An aimless adolescent joins several itinerant misfits who live on the fringe of society and welcome at-risk youths into their fold.

Manhattan socialite begins to fear for her troubled younger brother when he starts behaving bizarrely and he seems to have been friends with a backstreet murderer.

Elijah has been bounced from group home to group home throughout his turbulent young life. What has sustained him is his art. After a promised scholarship is taken away, Elijah ends up in a fight that result in the death of another boy. Now, sentenced to a minimum of fifteen years, the young man must find a way to keep his soul alive behind bars or turn into a hardened bitter criminal.

Various stories of how crack cocaine has infiltrated the inner-city streets. Based on Buddy Giovinazzo's novel "Life is Hot in Cracktown".

William Franklin is a teacher who was born in Ireland and moved to the United States only to repatriate in 1939 after his leftist political views cause him to lose his job. Franklin becomes the first non-cleric instructor at St. Jude's, a school for wayward boys run by Brother John, who is a firm believer in strong discipline.

In a gritty retelling of the Dickens's classic, Twist takes Oliver and the Artful Dodger out of the poorhouse and onto the streets, where junk is the currency and hustling is the game.

Nine-year-old Karo grows up with her parents in an Amsterdam commune in the Seventies. She leads a carefree existence in this utopia-for-adults. Everything is shared in the squat, but not everyone is able to honor these ideals. Karo gets confused because of the internal conflicts that start to divide the group. Karo slowly realizes that nothing can stay the same forever.

Starring Jurgen Prochnow ('The Replacement Killers' 'Air Force One' and Patrick Muldoon 'Stigmata' 'Starship Troopers'), 'Heart of America' is a powerhouse of a contemporary drama and essential viewing for anyone who was captivated by Michael Moore's 'Bowling For Columbine'. It is the last day of high school and the unthinkable is about to happen. Distraught at the constant abuse and bullying they have been subjected to, two students have made a suicide pact. But before they take their own lives, they are determined to cause chaos and murder amongst their fellow students.

Phillip and Dieter nearly suffocate hiding their sexual identity in the face of puritanical small town values. Joined by a mysterious German relative, the three misfits escape to the big city searching for a place to belong.

The true story of boys being sexually abused at their orphanage, run by a religious community in Newfoundland.

A charismatic leader and a high-spirited student group are on holiday in Italy. The surreal adventures of these friends are a free-flowing, four-part "multi-sensual symphony," bereft of traditional story line. One national critic described the boys' anarchic revelry as a "dream-like descent from civilization into the chaos reminiscent of Lord of the Flies."

Shipwrecked on a tropical island, a young boy befriends an abandoned native youth, forcing him to reevaluate societal prejudice about race, religion and nudity.

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.

A 12-year-old boy and his single mother live separate lives. The boy spends his days alone while his mother works and goes out with her friends. The boy’s solitude is both a source of freedom and a cause for grief. His explorations slowly bring to light the dark contrast between the rules of society and the laws of nature. And before long, the delicate balance of his inner world becomes shattered by unforeseen events.

Summer, 1948. 14-year-old Alan has just three wishes: that there will be lasting peace, that England will win the Ashes, and that he will finally kiss classmate Ann. So when he's cast opposite her in a play that requires a kiss and England seem to be doing well in cricket, life couldn't be better.

Ricky is just out of a young offenders institute, heading home to Hackney and determined to go straight. Instead, he heads straight for trouble when he becomes involved in a street confrontation, siding with his best friend Wisdom against a local rude boy. The trouble escalates into a series of tit-for-tat incidents that threaten to spiral out of control. Ricky's 12-year-old brother Curtis, hero-worships Ricky, though he appears smart enough to know he doesn't want to follow his example. Yet, despite the stern warnings from his mother and support from her friends in the community, might Ricky's bad boy allure be too attractive for Curtis to resist?

A teenage girl, Jessica, befriends a teenage boy called Tom, who is bullied by a local gang. She is abused by Jack, who is both her neighbour and school teacher, and Tom is sexually abused by his father. Together they bond in the woods, creating a private reality that no-one else can enter.

Antoine, 13, spends the summer vacation with his parents in a rented cottage on an island in the middle of the Saint-Lawrence River. His neighbour, 17-year-old Anna, is an enigmatic and lively young woman. Antoine begins to experience the first stirrings of love-which soon yield a troubling brew of anxiety, desire and obsession. He eventually comes across a terrible secret that will forever change his life.

Adrift in the lush, nocturnal urban landscape of THE GRAFFITI ARTIST, Nick (Ruben Bansie-Snellman) is a post-modern urban hero asserting his anarchistic agenda on the endless maze of virgin exterior walls that comprise downtown Seattle and Portland. For this iconoclastic young visionary, the vast wall surfaces of deserted alleys and train yards are at once a daunting symbol of capitalist oppression and a texturally rich, seamless tableau ripe for exploitation to amplify his artistic dialectic of anger and rebellion.

Set in a rural Québec village in the dead of winter, Jean-François, a single father, works at a deserted bowling alley at night and in a rundown motel during the day. His daughter, Julyvonne, never leaves their home. Jean-François isolates her in fear that contact with the outside world will scar her the way it has him.