Best movies like Germinal

The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.

The tragic story of Vincent van Gogh broadened by focusing as well on his brother Theodore, who helped support Vincent. Based on the letters written between the two.

A fictionalized account of the first major successful sexual harassment case in the United States -- Jenson vs. Eveleth Mines, where a woman who endured a range of abuse while working as a miner filed and won the landmark 1984 lawsuit.

Set during the Alaskan gold rush of the late 1800s. In his efforts to gain control of a small mining town, Sean McLennon is buying up every claim that becomes available, usually after the deaths of the previous owners at the hands of McLennon's 'assistants'. One of the miners targeted by McLennon, a half-Indian hunter named Hudson Saanteek, manages to escape his hired thugs and comes back into town looking to re-establish his claim and get revenge. McLennon and his men have the advantage of numbers and weapons, but Saanteek has his survival skills and knowledge of the Alaskan wilderness.

The story of exploited textile factory workers in Turin, Italy at the turn of the century and their beginnings of their fight for better working conditions. Professor Sinigaglia (Marcello Mastroianni) is sent by (presumably) the Socialists to help them organize their strike and give form to their struggle

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

In Victorian England, wealthy patriarch Sir Harald Alabaster invites an impoverished biologist, William Adamson, into his home. There, William tries to continue his work, but is distracted by Alabaster's seductive daughter, Eugenia. William and Eugenia begin a torrid romance, but as the couple become closer, the young scientist begins to realize that dark, disturbing things are happening behind the closed doors of the Alabaster manor.

Under the sun, the heavenly beauty of grasslands will soon be covered by the raging dust of mines. Facing the ashes and noises caused by heavy mining , the herdsmen have no choice but to leave as the meadow areas dwindle. In the moonlight, iron mines are brightly lit throughout the night. Workers who operate the drilling machines must stay awake. The fight is tortuous, against the machine and against themselves. Meanwhile, coal miners are busy filling trucks with coals. Wearing a coal-dust mask, they become ghostlike creatures. An endless line of trucks will transport all the coals and iron ores to the iron works. There traps another crowd of souls, being baked in hell. In the hospital, time hangs heavy on miners' hands. After decades of breathing coal dust, death is just around the corner. They are living the reality of purgatory, but there will be no paradise.

Maya is a quick-witted young woman who comes over the Mexican border without papers and makes her way to the LA home of her older sister Rosa. Rosa gets Maya a job as a janitor: a non-union janitorial service has the contract, the foul-mouthed supervisor can fire workers on a whim, and the service-workers' union has assigned organizer Sam Shapiro to bring its "justice for janitors" campaign to the building. Sam finds Maya a willing listener, she's also attracted to him. Rosa resists, she has an ailing husband to consider. The workers try for public support; management intimidates workers to divide and conquer. Rosa and Maya as well as workers and management may be set to collide.

In a small and conservative Scottish village, a woman's paralytic husband convinces her to have extramarital intercourse so she can tell him about it and give him a reason for living.

Mickael's family is struggling (they don't have enough money to pay for hot water) however his life is full with Judo and his girlfriend Venessa. Then Mickael makes a decision to open up his relationship to include Clement his rich-kid Judo partner, starting a chain of events.

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

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.

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan's vested interests so that justice and workers' rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.

Set in Limoges, the movie tells the story of "good son" Franck (Jalil Lespert), who returns to his hometown to do a trainee managerial internship in the Human Resources department of the factory where his anxious, taciturn father has worked for 23 years.

A look at 18th-century France, when the authorities depravity contributed to social oppression, and the uprisings flared up one after another.

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.

Bored with the limited and tedious nature of provincial life in 19th-century France, the fierce and sensual Emma Bovary finds herself in calamitous debt and pursues scandalous sexual liaisons with absolute abandon. However, when her volatile lifestyle catches up to her, the lives of everyone around her are endangered.

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.

An eccentric family is re-united during the 1968 general strike in France, after the death of the grandmother.

Boston, 1920. Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are charged and unfairly tried for murder on the basis of their anarchic political convictions.

During the 1970s a student named Gilles gets entangled in contemporary political turmoils although he would rather just be a creative artist. While torn between his solidarity to his friends and his personal ambitions he falls in love with Christine.

The adventures and deceptions of a photographer who travels through small villages of 1950s Sicily pretending to work for the big film studios in Rome.

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.

A 9-year-old girl weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris.

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

Married couple, Ethan and Zeena, are in need an extra hand around the house due to Zeena's debilitated body and constant illness. The young woman who joins them is a beautiful, spirited person. She and Ethan fall in love much to the dismay of Zeena.

26 year-old Karl Marx embarks with his wife, Jenny, on the road to exile. In 1844 in Paris, he meets Friedrich Engels, an industrialist’s son, who has been investigating the sordid birth of the British working class. Engels, the dandy, provides the last piece of the puzzle to the young Karl Marx’s new vision of the world. Together, between censorship and the police’s repression, riots and political upheavals, they will lead the labor movement during its development into a modern era.

"A", a member of a student protest organization, becomes disenchanted by his group's inability to effect real change. Emboldened to pursue more radical methods by the older, experienced leftist organizer Despard, "A" unwittingly becomes party to a labor strike that turns violent. Ultimately held responsible by the authorities for the fracas, "A" allies himself with terrorist Leonard, who intends to avenge those jailed in the protest.

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.

„Un peuple et son roi" crosses the destinies of the men and women of the population, and those of historical figures. Their meeting place is the newly founded National Assembly. At the heart of the story lie the fate of the king and the birth of the French Republic.

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.

In the early 1900s, the legendary Joe Hill emigrates with his brother to the United States. But after a short time, he loses touch with his brother. Joe gets a few jobs but is struck by all the injustice and tragedy going on. He becomes active in the forbidden union IWW, a union for workers without trades. It is forbidden to demonstrate and to speak in public but Joe gets around that by singing his manifests with the Salvation Army. He manages to get more and more people to go on strike with him but he also makes powerful enemies doing that. Finally he gets connected with a murder and during the trial he fires his lawyer and takes upon himself to become his own defender.

It all began when camcorders replaced cameras. Making TV programs then became within everyone's reach. Jean-Lou, Yasmina, Victor, Clara, Adonis, and the others didn't only want to create their own television channel, they above all wanted to make a revolution. Thus Télé Gaucho was born, as anarchic and provocative as the main channels were conformist and reactionary. Five years of mayhem, brutal pirate TV demonstrations, drunken parties, and thwarted love.. And that was my idyllic interlude.