Best movies like Debris of Desire

A petty crook moves to an Ohio town and courts a factory owner's disabled daughter.

After a string of abusive relationships, Wanda abandons her family and seeks solace in the company of a petty criminal.

Bilal is 17 years old, a Kurdish boy from Iraq. He sets off on an adventure-filled journey across Europe. He wants to get to England to see his love who lives there. Bilal finally reaches Calais, but how do you cover 32 kilometers of the English Channel when you can't swim? The boy soon discovers that his trip won't be as easy as he imagined... The community of struggling illegal aliens in Calais

The story takes place in alternative America where the blacks are members of social elite, and whites are inhabitants of inner city ghettos. Louis Pinnock is a white worker in a chocolate factory, loving husband and father of two children. While delivering a package for black CEO Thaddeus Thomas, he is mistaken for a voyeur and, as a result, loses his job, gets beaten by black cops and his family gets evicted from their home. Desperate Pinnock takes a gun and kidnaps Thomas, demanding justice.

Mabel Longhetti, desperate and lonely, is married to a Los Angeles municipal construction worker, Nick. Increasingly unstable, especially in the company of others, she craves happiness, but her extremely volatile behavior convinces Nick that she poses a danger to their family and decides to commit her to an institution for six months. Alone with a trio of kids to raise on his own, he awaits her return, which holds more than a few surprises.

When the last factory in a small Rust Belt town closes its doors, an unlikely hero emerges in dutiful, quiet Allery Parkes. A career employee of the factory, the aging Allery can't reconcile how to live a life simply sitting at home doing nothing. Against the advice and pleas of his loving wife Iola, he forms an unlikely friendship with his charismatic neighbor Walter Brewer in order to revive the defunct factory.

Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.

A retired entertainer makes his living as a street musician on the streets of London. Two young children befriend the old musician, brightening his otherwise colorless life

Farming family battles severe storms, a bank threatening to reposses their farm, and other hard times in a battle to save and hold on to their farm.

Bickford Waner, an apparently naive young man from Fort Worth, arrives in the tiny Texas town of Dime Box and takes on a variety of menial jobs. He's befriended by Reese Ford and his wife Molly, but before long Molly has seduced Bickford. Only with the arrival of Bickford's former girlfriend Janet Conforto is it revealed that Bickford is actually the notorious train robber Kid Blue. Humiliated by a scandal arising from his affair with his friend's wife, Bickford gives up on going straight and plots a crime.

The absorbingly cinematic Ascension explores the pursuit of the “Chinese Dream.” Driven by mesmerizing—and sometimes humorous—imagery, this observational documentary presents a contemporary vision of China that prioritizes productivity and innovation above all.

Fed up with mistreatment at the hands of both management and union brass, and coupled with financial hardships on each man's end, three auto assembly line workers hatch a plan to rob a safe at union headquarters.

In a forgotten pocket of Southern Ohio where American manufacturing and opportunity are drying up, a determined young woman finds a ticket out when she is accepted to college. Alongside her older brother, Ruth Avery joins a dangerous scrap metal crew in order to pay her way. Together, they spend one brutal winter working the scrap yards during the day and stealing valuable metal from the once thriving factories by night. With her goal in sight, Ruth finds that the ultimate cost of an education for a girl like her may be more than she bargained for, and she soon finds herself torn between a promising future and the family she would leave behind.

Detroit’s story has encapsulated the iconic narrative of America over the last century – the Great Migration of African Americans escaping Jim Crow; the rise of manufacturing and the middle class; the love affair with automobiles; the flowering of the American dream; and now… the collapse of the economy and the fading American mythos.

Marion is a factory worker who hopes to trade the assembly line, for a beautiful penthouse apartment. Mark Whitney, a wealthy and influential lawyer can make her dreams come true, but there is only one problem, he will give her everything but a marriage proposal. Will this affair ever lead to marriage?

A 22-year-old factory worker lets loose on the weekends: drinking, brawling, and dating two women, one of whom is older and married.

In this wartime musical, a feisty singer working in a London dive swears that she will become a star. She gets a job in an airplane plant when she learns that her fiance, a producer, and his partner are looking for new talent at the war factories. While working there, the woman meets a handsome RAF officer and falls in love. This causes some trouble.

Proud, though poor, Bob wants his little girl to have a beautiful (and costly) brand-new dress for her First Communion. His stubbornness and determination get him into trouble as he turns to more and more questionable measures, in his desperation to raise the needed money. This tragic flaw leads him to risk all that he loves and values, his beloved family, indeed even his immortal soul and salvation, in blind pursuit of that goal.

An underworld drama set in the early 1980s, about a lonely factory worker whose life is transformed when he becomes a nightclub doorman.

Jo Jones, a young defense plant worker whose husband is in the military during World War II, shares a house with three other women in the same situation.

In a distant nation, even foreign to those within, an oppressed factory worker embarks on a perilous odyssey to find his polka idol and prove himself to his long-lost love.

Twenty-six year old Scott is living on the streets and trying to find his way back into society while on probation for petty crimes. He attempts to navigate his relationship with his two bit criminal of a boss and an enigmatic detective, while at the same time winning back the heart of his ex-girlfriend, a working single mom. Never having a mother or father himself, Scott discovers the true meaning of fatherhood.

Master burglar Max Hopper is released early after three years and soon gets an exceptional job: stealing an advanced computer-chip from the IQ Industries headquarters. His first attempt fails; when he enters in cop uniform during an emergency board meeting, a fire quickly spreads- he considers it a godsend opportunity and stays, but soon has his hands too full saving other lives and just surviving to concentrate on the chip; only the owner, his wife who just filed for divorce and a few employees remain, but it soon turns out one of them stole company secrets but the arsonist and/or another chip-thieves are among them.

Feeling unneeded, a disillusioned Santa Claus (Charles Durning) quits Christmas. Through the selflessness of a little girl looking to reunite her parents for Christmas (and the help of his bumbling chief elf, Philpot (Bruce Vilanch), Santa and the child travel across America and Santa discovers that people really do need him and care about other people.

Lily Whitmore is the heir to a crumbling factory that she's determined to restore to its former glory. Unfortunately, Lily must instead turn her attention to the conniving Lionel Filmore who's determined to marry into the family no matter what.

A look at the lives of migratory farm workers, focusing on one family.

A drifter comes to the town of Deepwater and is seduced into a twisted game of deceit and murder.

Gorgeous looking Anju Khanna lives in a palatial home with her dad, and mom. Her dad, R.K.Khanna has been having labor problems at his workplace, due to a headstrong union leader named Shanker, who wants better housing and benefits for all workers, and failing which, he has declared an indefinite strike. Her dad would like her to marry Laxmikant alias Lucky Gupta, but Anju does not like him. She has met and has fallen in love with a dashing young man named Raja Singh Rathod. Although Khanna is upset with her for falling in love, he would like to meet him, to which Anju agrees to and brings Raja along to introduce him to her dad. It is then that Khanna finds out that Raja is a poor motor mechanic, and is the brother of union leader, Shanker. He asks Raja to leave, and warns Anju that if she ever sees him again, he will arrange to have Raja killed. Anju must now decide to carry on with her love-life, or obey her father and save her lover's life.

A pioneering ceramic artist Clarice Cliff roares to prominence in the 1920s while working in Britain’s Stoke-on-Trent pottery industry.

Construction worker, Chuck Hassan, has a heart attack and is no longer able to work and support his family. After losing their home and savings, his wife, Concetta, looks for work and decides to join the Army, to take advantage of the security and benefits. She advances quickly and eventually becomes a helicopter pilot.

In 1910, women working in the silk industry in Bursa, protest against the working conditions. They go on strike.

A successful businesswoman falls in love with one of her (much younger) factory workers. She doesn't know that he is in love with her younger sister.

Film from Andrew Morgan. The True Cost is a documentary film exploring the impact of fashion on people and the planet.

In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.

Produced by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the film used actors to recreate the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and compare working conditions of the early 20th century to that of the 1950s.