Best movies like Gate of Youth

Originally called White Thunder, American producer Varick Frissell's 1931 film was inspired by his love for the Canadian Arctic Circle. Set in a beautifully black-and-white filmed Newfoundland, it is the story of a rivalry between two seal hunters that plays out on the ice floes during a hunt. Unsatisfied with the first cut, Frissell arranged for the crew to accompany an actual Newfoundland seal hunt on The SS Viking, on which an explosion of dynamite (carried regularly at the time on Arctic ships to combat ice jams) killed many members of the crew, including Frissell. The film was renamed in honor of the dead.

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

A boy and his dog, White Fang, must try to save the noble Haida tribe from evil white men in turn-of-the-century Alaska.

Based on the true story of Homer Hickam, a coal miner's son who was inspired by the first Sputnik launch to take up rocketry against his father's wishes, and eventually became a NASA scientist.

On his death bed the man who raised Joji reveals that he is not his real father and that Joji’s real parents died tragically in a plane crash. Shortly thereafter Joji goes to Japan is search of his sister and his twin brother Toru. Joji’s quickly finds his sister Chihiro who is now blind and lives with their uncle. Joji one evening accidently over hears his uncle who has ties to the criminal underworld discussing his various illegal operations. Joji ‘s eavesdropping is discovered by his uncle who offers him a chance to join the organization. Joji promptly turns his uncle’s offer down which immediately puts his life in danger.

A woman faces harassment and humiliation when she goes to work as a coal miner to support her small son and ailing dad.

In 1969, an administrator runs against the corrupt president of the United Coal Miners Union, and becomes the target of a murder plot.

1935 documentary about the hard working life of Welsh coal miners.

A crew of coal miners becomes trapped 600 feet below ground after a disastrous collapse. As the air grows more toxic and time runs out, they slowly descend into madness and begin to turn on one another. Inspired by true events.

A moving comedy-drama about the love, identity and courage of the LGBTQ community during the first walk towards Gay Pride in 1950s England. Based on the real-life events of Yorkshire coal miners and secret gay lovers, Tommy and Eddy, who spend their annual week holiday at a quirky B & B in Blackpool, along with a few other alternative members of society – the transgender Mr. Elbridge, the ex-show girl Red Ethel and the eccentric owner Gladys and her flirty daughter Maureen.

Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 1876. A secret society of Irish coal miners, bond by a sacred oath, put pressure on the greedy and ruthless company they work for by sabotaging mining facilities in the hope of improving their working conditions and the lives of their families.

Zora Banks is a school teacher and aspiring singer hoping to become a successful star while taking a break from heartache. Franklin Swift is a down-on-his-luck construction worker and not-quite divorced father of two hoping to start his own business. The two meet and fall in love and during the course of the stormy relationship, they both come to some startling conclusions about love and each other.

Wealthy Cynthia is in love with not-so-wealthy Roger, who is married to Marcia. The threesome is terribly modern about the situation, and Marcia will gladly divorce Roger if Cynthia agrees to a financial settlement. But Cynthia's wealth is in jeopardy because her trust fund will expire if she is not married by a certain date. To satisfy that condition, Cynthia arranges to marry Hagon Derk, who is condemned to die for a crime he didn't commit. She pays him so he can provide for his little sister. But at the last minute, Derk is freed when the true criminal is discovered. Expecting to be a rich widow, Cynthia finds herself married to a man she doesn't know and doesn't want to.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA.

A man in his fifties reminisces about his childhood growing up in a Welsh mining village at the turn of the 20th century.

In Coaltown, Pennsylvania, miner Coke Mason hopes to better himself, buy a radio store, and marry Rose Warren. His gambler brother George thinks Coke can be more successful as a boxer, knowing that when he fights he's consumed with a murderous rage that makes him an "iron man." Seeing dollar signs in Rose's eyes, Coke reluctantly agrees, though he's fearful of the "killer instinct" that makes him a knockout success in the ring...and brings him the booing hatred of the fans. Will Coke throw off his personal demon before he kills someone?

A flapper shopgirl woos her rich boss with animal magnetism, otherwise known as "it."

An intense and imaginative artist, revered Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh possesses undeniable talent, but he is plagued by mental problems and frustrations with failure. Supported by his brother, Theo, the tormented Van Gogh eventually leaves Holland for France, where he meets volatile fellow painter Paul Gauguin and struggles to find greater inspiration.

In a town where half the men die down the coalpit, Margaret MacNeil is quite happy being single in her small Cape Breton island town. Until she meets Neil Currie, a charming and sincere bagpipe-playing, Gaelic-speaking dishwasher. But no matter what you do, you can't avoid the spectre of the pit forever.

The film tells the story of four orphans living in an impoverished mining town. An adaptation of a best-selling book based on the diary of a ten-year-old zainichi (ethnic Korean Japanese) girl, it was one of the first films to deal with the subject of zainichi identity and struggles in Japan.

In a Welsh coal mining valley, a young man with a beautiful singing voice is called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice when a pit disaster threatens.

The Stars Look Down is based on A. J. Cronin's 1935 novel of the same name, about injustices in a mining community in North East England. While the novel follows the development of three young men in the small mining town, the film focuses on just one of them; the smart David Fenwick who gets a scholarship to university, meets a girl who only marries him because her former boyfriend has abandoned her, and eventually returns to the mine town as a teacher and takes part in a futile rescue effort when the mine is flooded, trapping both his father and his younger brother.

Rancher Matt Black is willed half of a Nevada gold mine. Arriving there, he learns that the heir of the other half is a young girl named "Bertie." Realizing that there may be some dirty work and theft going on at the mine, he conceals his identity and gets a job as a miner.

In a small American coal town living in the shadow of a recent mining accident, the disappearance of a teenage boy draws three people together—a surviving miner, the lonely wife of a mine executive, and a local boy—in a web of secrets.

The series swansong, Beat '71, sees Kaji framed and sent to prison by her boyfriend's father and with the help of some hippies she strives to be re-united.

The state police try to break up racketeering in a coal mining town.

Mayo, the Black Angel, is ordered to assassinate a powerful syndicate leader. The hit goes awry, however, as the crime boss' bodyguard steps in the way. It's none other than Yamambe, who once rescued Mayo from a rape and has lived in her heart since then.

If You Were Young: Rage highlights the other side of post-war Japanese prosperity, focusing on the throngs of young people who missed out on the boom. We follow a group of young men that can't seem to get ahead, despite their willingness to try. Then one hits upon a plane - to work together to save for a dump truck and thus become independent contractors and be their own bosses at last. Ultimately life presents obstacles: jail for one, violence at the hands of the police for another and a girlfriend and subsequent children for the third. An early Kinji Fukasaku gem that imports the freewheeling style of the French New Wave and the hip detachment of American noir.

An English girl comes to America to join her American husband in a Pennsylvania coal town in the late 1950's. She faces the ire of her new mother-in-law, a former Hungarian with different ideas about the life and culture that her son should have.

Paul, a young man from London, arrives in the small Nova Scotia town of Milestone, where his long lost father was last seen years earlier. Paul is eager to find out what brought his father to this remote community. He meets Rauchine, a young, beautiful and unaffected girl who lives with her unstable mother and domineering grandmother on a nearby island, who is eking out a harsh and isolated living. Paul finds himself enmeshed in a web of jealousy, bitterness and fear as his attraction to Rauchine begins to grow. After a failed attempt to leave the island with Paul, Rauchine must make a crucial decision and break the cycle of violence and death that has marked her life.

A Kentucky woman whose mine-worker husband is nearly killed in a cave-in, and whose father is slowly dying of black lung disease, joins the picket lines for a long, violent strike.

Two miles into the earth, nine Appalachian miners struggle to survive after a methane explosion leaves them with one hour of oxygen.

Gringo miner Gallager is caught up in the Mexican revolution of 1910-11 when corrupt administrator Ruiz appropriates his mine. Gallager saves the life of guerilla leader Raquel, then finds there's a price on his head; he becomes romantically involved with her in the course of a series of rescues and ambushes, leading up to Orozco's march on Ciudad Juarez.

Josh Holman encounters the ghost of a child mine worker with a special warning on the headlands of his Cornish home town, as an old tin mine is about to be re-opened after the discovery of valuable deposits of ore.

The Brave Don't Cry aspires to the "feel" of a documentary, right down to the deliberate absence of background music. A mine in Scotland falls victim to a cave-in, trapping some one hundred workers. Rescue parties are formed as the tremulous families of the miners wait in agony. As in the actual incident upon which this film is based, the rescue is nip and tuck and times, but eventually successful. The faces of real-life Scottish mining folk are melded with the professional actors in The Brave Don't Cry, adding poignancy to this otherwise cut-and-dried film.

Kei Kikuno attends a vocational school as a student. For her part-time job, she works as a contract killer. She is excellent at her job and never gets scared by anyone. One day, she receives the most challenging request.

Following a stint in reform school, Ryu (Shinsuke Shimada) returns to his home, the Minami area of Osaka, accompanied by his new friend Ko (Takeshi Masu). He's greeted by his friends, Chabo (Ryusuke Matsumoto) and Ken (Bang-ho Cho). They seek to forge their own path through a multitude of rival gangs in Kita and Minami, including the Hokushin Alliance, backed by the yakuza, the Hope Association, and various other minor factions, including Zainichi Korean groups. What follows is a wild, fast-paced story of violence, revenge, betrayal, and discrimination, that never loses its sense of humor.

When a cave in threatens the lives of four miners, including a father and son, it becomes a fight for survival. The superintendent (Mimi Rogers) struggles against the ticking clock to save her crew and family from impending doom.

Coal miner Isamu Oba is forced to quit his village and leave his mother and siblings behind. Mining buddy Ichiro accompanies him to Tokyo, and the pair enjoy several "fish-out-of-water" sequences before finding employment at a boxing gym with trainer Sawada and his spunky sister Tomoko. The boys also find part time night jobs as roving minstrels in the club district courtesy of benevolent gang boss Asakawa. Of course, they run afoul of boss Karasawa's cruel gang. Karasawa also has it in for Asakawa, and this indirectly throws a spanner into the works as far as Isamu's burgeoning success as a kickboxer. When Asakawa 's HQ is burned to the ground by Karasawa's men, Asakawa tries to kill Karasawa - which, of course, leads to his own gruesome death. Isamu goes on the rampage with his sword, wiping out Karasawa and men.

The local yakuza gangs dominating the port of Yokohama do not take well the invasion of their territory by a daring biker gang, led by a girl in black leather outfit and cowboy hat - reminiscent of the earlier war victors. Old and new grudges lead the two girl gangs to clash in several fights. However, when one of the leaders dies, the girls end up by uniting against the male gangsters that had been using them as puppets - and it all ends in a great finale mixed battle by the seashore.

Hidejuro is sent to prison after killing the boss of a rival family. After being released, he discovers that his family has scattered and he is taken in by a company of quarry workers, whose boss has a strict code of non-violence. When the rival family tries to take over the company and kills their boss, Hidejuro must choose between his promise of non-violence and his yakuza code of revenge...

Jim Cole, heir to a mining operation, takes over the mine, which is suffering from unexplained low production, and is facing a strike by the miners. Jim will soon loose the mine if production doesn't increase and the sabotage continues. Mary Norsen, office-secretary, accidentally learns of a plot by Fred Johnson to wreck the mine and force Cole to sell his coal-mine. She and her brother, Joe, join Cole in his fight to stop Johnson.

The early years of the Showa period were turbulent times for Japan. The country suffered financial crisis and famine, women worked under intolerable employment conditions, and political corruption was a major issue. Out of fear that the great nation would soon fall, a group of young patriotic men gathered to lay out plans to assassinate the crooked politicians. One of these young terrorists was Shinsuke Kusaka. He receives orders to kill the Prime Minister.

An impertinent son of a wealthy New Yorker, Roger Carr takes the blame for the murder of Norman Evans, whom Roger believes his sister Ethel shot when Evans assaulted her.

A very beautiful Japanese woman is in love with Persian carpets. She is being chased by lecherous Saburi Shin and a handsome young photographer. Lecherous Saburi Shin knows what she wants, and is able to produce it for her.

A simple Pennsylvania coal miner is drawn into the violent conflict between union workers and management.

Katsuragi, an elite office worker who fell from a perfect life, drunkenly attempted to jump and commit suicide. Suddenly, he was helped by a mysterious man, Yoda, but that was the beginning of a horrible life of confinement training...

Glace Bay, Nova Scotia Canada, 1901. Willie MacLean is a 10-year-old boy with a love for horses and liking to school to cape the difficult times his family has. Willie's stern, but benevolent father is a coal miner in a local mine along with his older brother John. But when Willie's father is injured and John is killed in an accident at the mine, Willie is forced to step into his brother's shoes to support his older sister Nelle, and two younger sisters until their father recovers. Willie soon finds work at the mine lonely (aka: the pit) and unfriendly in which he forms a bond with a pit pony horse in order to make it though each day.

Based on the true story of coal miners who became trapped underground in a cave-in on Christmas Eve, 1951.

In a small town in Appalachia, Autumn's young husband is killed in a suspicious mine explosion. She vows vengeance on mine owner Douglas Osborne and dedicates her life to destroying him, even at the cost of her own happiness. When her attempts at financial ruin fail, she manipulates Osborne into marriage by claiming she is carrying his child. After Osborne dies from cyanide poisoning, Autumn is arrested for his murder, but she professes her innocence.