Best movies like Dirt

She lives her life without leaving a mark.

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Dirt Starring Julieta Ortiz, Yvette Mercedes, Gloria Irizarry, Deborah Hedwall, and more. If you liked Dirt then you may also like: The Valley of Decision, The Visitor, Nanny, El Norte, Return to Paradise 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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Dolores is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who works as a housemaid in New York City. Under the constant fear of likely deportation, she wonders whether she should return to her country. Her decision to leave is strengthened when her life is suddenly complicated by a series of unfortunate events.

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The Valley of Decision

Mary Rafferty comes from a poor family of steel mill workers in 19th Century Pittsburgh. Her family objects when she goes to work as a maid for the wealthy Scott family which controls the mill. Mary catches the attention of handsome scion Paul Scott, but their romance is complicated by Paul's engagement to someone else and a bitter strike among the mill workers.

The Visitor

A college professor travels to New York City to attend a conference and finds a young couple living in his apartment.

Nanny

Senegalese immigrant Aisha lands a job as a nanny for a wealthy Manhattan couple. As she prepares for the arrival of the son she left behind in Senegal, a violent presence begins to invade both her dreams and her reality, threatening to destroy the American Dream she is painstakingly piecing together.

El Norte

Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.

Return to Paradise

Lewis, Sheriff and Tony are three friends vacationing in Malaysia. Sheriff and Tony eventually leave to pursue careers in New York, but Lewis stays behind to work with orangutans. Two years later, Sheriff and Tony learn that, because of their past actions, Lewis has been arrested for drug possession. With Lewis facing a death sentence, the friends are left with a difficult decision: return to Malaysia and split Lewis' sentence, or let him die.

Row Your Boat

Jon Bon Jovi plays Jamey Meadows, a man newly released from prison who has found himself homeless on the crazy streets of New York City. Slowly, he must try to build his life up from the gutter. Resisting constant offers from his brother, played by William Forsythe (Dick Tracy, The Rock, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo) to rejoin the insidious world of crime, Meadows takes a menial job as a door to door census worker. Among his many encounters throughout this job, he meets a young Chinese immigrant who is just as unhappy in her life as he is in his. These two slowly hit it off and a relationship gradually begins to develop between them. Can Jamey Meadows learn to live in this new life, or will the temptations of his old ways drag him back to where he started?

Joanna

Joanna Manners is a flapper with a million-dollar figure, million-dollar looks, and a million dollars in cash. She falls in love with John Wilmore, a gut who hasn't got a dime nor a pot to put it in if he had a dime. There are those who object. Especially, the crowd of gold-digging gigolos and hustlers she knows.

Kidnap Capital

Imagine leaving everything you have, everyone you know, everyone you love, behind. Having to cross half a continent on foot, atop freight trains, inside truck trailers. Swimming across wild rivers. Crossing borders illegally. Walking across the Arizona desert. Being shot at, robbed and beaten. Raped. Surviving it all. Crossing into the USA, after life in the poorest parts of Central America. Succeeding. Now. In the “promised” land, you don’t belong, legally; or socially. You don’t understand the language. No one knows you arrived, no one knows you exist. Imagine…. being Nobody. Then imagine a bag being shoved over your head. Getting your clothes stripped from you. Getting tossed in a closed room with a dozen others. A loaded gun is pointed at your head. You are forced to call back home and beg for money, a ransom for your life.

The Beautiful Country

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.

A Better Life

A gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.

Biutiful

This is a story of a man in free fall. On the road to redemption, darkness lights his way. Connected with the afterlife, Uxbal is a tragic hero and father of two who's sensing the danger of death. He struggles with a tainted reality and a fate that works against him in order to forgive, for love, and forever.

Border Incident

The story concerns two agents, one Mexican (PJF) and one American, who are tasked to stop the smuggling of Mexican migrant workers across the border to California. The two agents go undercover, one as a poor migrant.

The City

The stories of four Hispanic immigrants living in New York City.

The Maids

A film version of Genet's play. Two maids, Solange and Claire, hate their employers and, while they are out, take turns at dressing up as Madame and insulting her.

Dirty Pretty Things

An undocumented immigrant finds a human heart in one of the toilets of the west London hotel where he works with other undocumented immigrants.

Frozen River

Ray Eddy, an upstate New York trailer mom, is lured into the world of illegal immigrant smuggling. Broke after her husband takes off with the down payment for their new doublewide, Ray reluctantly teams up with Lila, a smuggler, and the two begin making runs across the frozen St. Lawrence River carrying illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrants in the trunk of Ray's Dodge Spirit.

Lady Sings the Blues

Chronicles the rise and fall of legendary blues singer Billie Holiday. Her late childhood, stint as a prostitute, early tours, marriages and drug addiction are featured.

Raging Grace

An undocumented Filipina immigrant lands a job as a careworker for a seemingly terminal old man, securing a better life for her and her daughter. But a dark discovery threatens to destroy everything she’s strived for and holds dear.

Human Cargo

Bonnie Brewster and "Packy" Campbell, rival reporters on competing newspapers, team up to put an end to a smuggling gang that brings illegal aliens to the United States, and then makes further victims of them by extortion payments. They go to Vancouver, Canada and board a ship carrying aliens. But the gang recognizes them as reporters and gang-henchmen Tony Scula (Ralf Harolde) and Ira Conklin take them off the ship. But Campbell recognizes Scula as the gunman who killed Carmen Zoro.

The Guru

Bored with Bollywood movies but fascinated with their Hollywood counterparts from his youth, Ram dreams to become a singer and actor in America, the country where dreams are made. He is encouraged when his American-based close friend, Vijay Rao, comes for visit, and brags about driving a Mercedes and living in a penthouse.

I Carry You with Me

An epic love story spanning decades is sparked by a chance encounter between two men in provincial Mexico. Based on a true story, ambition and societal pressure propel an aspiring chef to leave his soulmate and make the treacherous journey to New York, where life will never be the same.

In America

A family of Irish immigrants adjusts to life on the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen while also grieving the death of a child.

Take Me Home

In New York City, Thom is broke and jobless, illegally working as a taxi driver. Claire is a successful business-woman, but personally she's in shambles - then comes the phone call that her estranged father is in the hospital. Not knowing what to do, Claire hops in Thom's cab and orders him to just drive and so he does. They find themselves in Pennsylvania and Claire makes the rash decision to drive across the country to California. On the road, there are many detours as the obstacles and secrets force them to learn about themselves and each other.

No matarás

Antonio Guerra is an unemployed Spanish immigrant in the USA. His brother and mother in Spain haven't heard about him for many years or even receive a letter. But one day, his brother receives a letter from him, telling that things are going well. But the reality is other. Antonio is passing a hard time in New Yor City, suffering the Years of Depression as many out of workers. One day, Antonio meets a nice Cuban seller, who invites him to eat at his poor house. The seller advices Antonio to visit a man, who has contacts and could help him to find a job. Nevertheless, Antonio is send with the leader of a group of gangsters, dedicated to the illegal traffic of alcohol. Antonio is offered a work of dealer, but he won't do anything out of the law.

The Maid's Room

Drina, a young immigrant working as a live-in maid for a wealthy Long Island family, finds herself entangled in the family's web of dark secrets once she begins to suspect her employer's son has committed a terrible crime.

In the Heights

The story of Usnavi, a bodega owner who has mixed feelings about closing his store and retiring to the Dominican Republic or staying in Washington Heights.

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors

When autistic teen Ricky is scolded for skipping class, he escapes into the subway for a days-long odyssey among the subway’s disparate denizens. Meanwhile, his mother wages an escalating search effort above ground. Based on a true story and set in Far Rockaway, Queens, in the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy, these parallel stories of mother and son take the viewer on a touching journey of community and connection in and below New York City.

Borderline

Centres on two brothers, Stelios and Yannis. The impulsive Stelios skips their small town, deserts from the army, and is thought dead, until Yannis, now a city cop, recognizes his name on the papers of an illegal immigrant seaman. He begins a search for his lost brother, a search that takes him across many borders: between past and present, between Greece and its neighbouring countries, between one identity and another.

Yellow Rose

Rose, a 17-year-old Filipino-American teenager from Texas, dreams of becoming a country music icon. She has to fend for herself when her mother is arrested by ICE, and must choose between following her dreams without her mother or leaving her passions behind.

Dolores

Dolores Huerta bucks 1950s gender conventions by starting the country's first farm worker's union with fellow organizer Cesar Chavez. What starts out as a struggle for racial and labor justice, soon becomes a fight for gender equality within the same union she is eventually forced to leave. As she wrestles with raising 11 children, three marriages, and is nearly beaten to death by a San Francisco tactical police squad, Dolores emerges with a vision that connects her new found feminism with racial and class justice.

Lily in Winter

Lily Covington, a Manhattan housekeeper, embarks on a trip to the rural Alabama town of her youth. To Lily's surprise, her employer's nine-year-old son Michael stows away for the ride. Together, Lily and Michael realize just how alike and how different their worlds really are. Michael explores a way of life he never knew existed, while Lily discovers some tender truths about the family she left behind.

Under the Same Moon

Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.

Snakehead

Sister Tse is brought to New York by a Snakehead, a human smuggler. Although she is indebted to the crime family responsible for her transport, her survival instincts help her gain favor with the matriarch, and she rises quickly in the ranks. Soon Tse must reconcile her success with her real reason for coming to America—to find the child that was taken from her. In the end, Sister Tse must draw on the strength she found in transforming her victimhood into power.

Jackals

Cops in a small town near the Mexican border find themselves caught up in a scheme that smuggles illegal aliens into the country.

Holiday Switch

A week before Christmas, Paula finds herself struggling with bills and life with her blue-collar husband Gary and her two daughters. When Nick, her high school boyfriend returns to town, a wealthy art gallery owner, Paula wonders if she made the wrong decision when she took the wrong date to the prom. What would her life have been like if she stayed with Nick?

Everything is Wonderful

Set in New York, the film tells the story of the friendship between two European immigrants; Maria and Lena during one intense week, as they struggle to find happiness and test the limits of their freedom.

Santitos

After St. Jude appears in Esperanza's oven, she sets out to find her daughter, who died under mysterious circumstances. The journey forces Esperanza to challenge her own beliefs and face her fears in order to be reunited with her beloved daughter.

It's Not You, It's Me

Serial commitment-phobe, Dave, is reeling from his decision to break up with his near perfect, now ex-girlfriend. As he tries to forget her, his battling inner voices come to life and cloud his mind with conflicting desires. Meanwhile, Carrie's own disjointed inner voices push her to move on with someone less complicated. Sensing time is short, Dave embarks on a sincere and sometimes fumbled personal journey to conquer his fear of commitment.

Brothers in Trouble

Amir is an illegal Pakistani immigrant smuggled into England in the 1960's to work, to send money to his family and perhaps even bring them over with him. A skilled laborer, he is forced to do unskilled work like shoveling sheep dung and processing wool. He lives in a boarding house with nearly a dozen other men, under the supervision of Hussein Shah. He befriends a young student, Sakib, who dreams of being a writer. Their existence is punctuated by secret movies, a visiting prostitute, fear of detection and deportation, and the gangster-like smuggler who comes by for his take every week. The household is shaken up by the arrival of a white girl, Shah's girlfriend, and the sense of femininity and family she brings.

According to Her

Love, motherhood and a musical career strike dissonant chords in this dark tale of a young Russian woman who tries to keep her balance among wealthy French expats in New York.

Little Paradise

A former war vet, a misanthrope, and an illegal immigrant seek salvation in a pair of inexperienced drug dealers staked out at a run-down desert motel.

Seven Lucky Gods

An illegal immigrant from Albania infiltrates the lives of a group of Londoners with devastating consequences.

Icebox

Forced to flee his home in Honduras, Óscar seeks asylum in the United States, only to find himself trapped in the immigration system.

True North

The crew of a bankrupt Scottish trawler turn to smuggling illegal immigrants over the stormy waters of the North Sea.

Between Us

Abruptly abandoned by her husband in a country completely foreign to her, Colombian native Mariana (Paola Mendoza) struggles to take care of herself and her two young children on the unforgiving streets of New York City. Sebastian Villada, Laura Montana and Anthony Chisholm also star in this gritty independent drama jointly written and directed by Mendoza and her collaborator Gloria La Morte.

The Citizen

Yearning to leave behind his life of misfortune in the Middle East, Ibrahim Jarrah wins the U.S. Green Card Lottery for a chance to become an American citizen. Ibrahim lands in New York City the day before 9/11…and the events of the September terrorist attacks forever shape the struggles he faces on his journey to capture the American dream.

Gold In The Streets

An Irish illegal immigrant (Karl Geary) works for a bartender (James Belushi) while struggling to survive and adapt to life in the Bronx.

An American Romance

A European immigrant becomes a master of industry but almost loses his family.

Run for Your Life: The Fred Lebow Story

Without one eccentric first-generation Jewish immigrant from Transylvania, the New York City Marathon simply wouldn't exist. Ehrlich's fun, loving, and inspirational tribute to the late Fred Lebow shows how one man's imagination, determination, and love for running created one of the world's most popular sporting events.

El Salvador: Another Vietnam

This political documentary illustrates the turbulent history of El Salvador from the 1920s-1970s, and the role of the U.S. government in that history. The most comprehensive film introduction to that country, examines the civil war there in light of the Reagan administration's decision to "draw the line" against "communist interference" in Central America. Archival material offers an overview of U.S. military and economic policy in Central America since 1948, while footage drawn from sources in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe provides extensive background to the current political and military situation.

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