Best movies like Cyclo
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Cyclo Starring Le Van Loc, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Nhu Quynh, Hoàng Phúc, and more. If you liked Cyclo then you may also like: Noi the Albino, Once a Thief, Keane, Killer of Sheep, As Tears Go By 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.
Follows a young cyclo (bicycle cab) driver on his poverty-driven descent into criminality in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. The boy's struggles to scratch out a living for his two sisters and grandfather in the mean streets of the city lead to petty crime on behalf of a mysterious Madame from whom he rents his cyclo.
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Once a Thief
Three orphans grow up to become art thieves under the tutelage of a crime boss. Romance complicates matters when the trio are double-crossed.
Killer of Sheep
An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.
As Tears Go By
Mid-level gangster Wah falls in love with his beautiful cousin, but must also continue to protect his volatile partner-in-crime and friend, Fly.
Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.
Calendar Girl
Three young men go on an end of the summer trip to Hollywood, California. Their quest: to fulfill the fantasy of meeting Marilyn Monroe.
Taxi Driver
A mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feed his urge for violent action.
Turtles Can Fly
Turtles can fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iran border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.
The Scent of Green Papaya
In 1951, a young Vietnamese girl arrives at a Saigon household as their new servant.
Hurricane Streets
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?
Lamb
Michael Lamb is a Father questioning his calling, in a Reform School in Ireland. When young epileptic runaway Eoin is sent to the school, the two recognise kindred spirits and escape to London together. With the police on their tail and the money running out however, Lamb is forced to make some terrible decisions.
Piñero
"Piñero" tells the story of the explosive life of a Latino icon, the gay poet-playwright-actor Miguel Piñero, whose urban poetry is recognized as a pre-cursor to rap and hip-hop. After doing time in hard-core Sing-Sing for petty thefts and drug dealing, Piñero's prison experiences developed into the 1974 Tony-nominated play Short Eyes. The resulting notoriety and fame was too much for the Latino bad-boy genius who retreated to the darker corners of New York City.
Tsotsi
The South African multi-award winning film about a young South African boy from the ghetto named Tsotsi, meaning Gangster. Tsotsi, who left home as a child to get away from helpless parents, finds a baby in the back seat of a car that he has just stolen. He decides that it his responsibility to take care of the baby and in the process learns that maybe the gangster life isn’t the best way.
Three Seasons
The residents of Ho Chi Minh City face modernization amid widespread poverty. A retired American Marine arrives on a search for his daughter, whom he abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War. Elsewhere, a cyclo driver falls for a troubled prostitute and schemes to raise money so he can spend time with her. Additionally, a young women begins harvesting lotuses for a writer suffering from leprosy, and a child trinket seller loses his traveling case.
Memoirs of a Survivor
Based on the acclaimed novel by Doris Lessing, this dystopian science fiction tale concerns a woman struggling to make her way in a post-apocalyptic society. D (Julie Christie) is living in a city that's at the point of collapse following a catastrophic nuclear war; lawlessness and violence rule the day, and gangs of brutal youth roam the streets. With the help of her teenage companion Emily (Leonie Mellinger), D tries to make her way, and in order to cope, she often escapes into a fantasy world in which she lives in genteel Victorian surroundings in the 19th century.
Looking for Cheyenne
Cheyenne, a journalist, decides to leave Paris after being laid off and to settle down in the middle of nowhere, far from the society she hates. The trouble is that she leaves Sonia, her true love, behind. The latter, a teacher who loves her job, refuses to give up everything - including her comfort - to follow her. Sonia makes all the efforts in the world to forget Cheyenne, whether in the arms of Pierre, a charming anarchist, or in those of Béatrice, a gay woman who soon proves perverse and dangerous, only to realize that her heart belongs to Cheyenne and nobody else.
Circle of Deceit
Georg Laschen leaves his family in West Germany to go work as a war correspondent in Beirut during the fights between Christians and Palestinians.
Sorry, Haters
Against the anxieties and fears of post-9/11 America, an Arab cab driver picks up a troubled professional woman with unexpected results.
Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
Sammy and Rosie are an unconventional middle-class London married couple. They live in the midst of inner-city chaos, surround themselves with intellectual street people, and sleep with everybody - except each other! Things become interesting when Sammy's father, Rafi, who is a former Indian government minister, comes to London for a visit. Sammy, Rosie, and Rafi try to find meaning through their lives and loves.
Chop Shop
Alejandro, a tough and ambitious Latino street orphan on the verge of adolescence, lives and works in an auto-body repair shop in a sprawling junkyard on the outskirts of Queens, New York. In this chaotic world of adults, young Alejandro struggles to make a better life for himself and his 16-year-old sister, Isamar.
We, the Children of the 20th Century
It focuses on how youngsters in capitalist Russia turn to crime. Either they thrive at their game or they get locked up. In any case they're trapped. The portrayed kids are old men, acting wise and tough while in fact they're victims.
Little Brothers
Talia runs away from home taking her beloved dog with her. When her dog is stolen Talia enlists the help of a gang of boys to help her find her pet.
Pigalle
It's a grim world of prostitution, drug dens, transvestites, junkies and murderers. The seediest side of urban life is examined in this tragedy. The film follows the complex, interwoven lives of four characters as they live their harsh and gritty nocturnal lives on the city streets. The main characters are Fifi a pickpocket who is simultaneously involved with Divine, a transvestite hooker and Vera a peep show dancer who refuses to be a hooker. Vera lives with her would-be pimp Jesus le Gitan, a small-scale drug dealer. When the area riff-raff become embroiled in hostilities, two of main characters are slowly killed in horrible ways. Fifi is then left to avenge their deaths.
Lost in Paradise
Khoi, a naive twenty-year-old, travels to Ho Chi Minh City from the countryside to begin a new life. It's his first time in the big city and he's looking for a place to live. He befriends Dong, a handsome extrovert who offers to share his apartment. When Khoi goes to check the place out, he meets Lam, who also appears to be living there. Khoi decides to stay, but while he showers, Dong and Lam - who turn out to be boyfriends - run off with all his cash and belongings.
The Graffiti Artist
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.
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun
In Dakar, selling newspapers on the street is an occupation always occupied by boys; one morning, Sili, a young beggar, challenges that exclusive rule.
Desert Son
After being abandoned in the desert by his abusive stepfather, Phillip finds himself cruelly cast into a game of life or death until a beautiful orphan named Lucy and her boyfriend Jack come to his rescue. The three runaways patrol the desert and live as petty thieves, but they soon find that the fight for survival against nature may become a fight for survival against each other.
Noi the Albino
17 year old Nói drifts through life on a remote fjord in Iceland. In winter, the fjord is cut off from the outside world, surrounded by ominous mountains and buried under a shroud of snow. Nói dreams of escaping from this white-walled prison with Íris, a city girl who works in a local gas station. But his clumsy attempts at escape spiral out of control.