Best movies & TV Shows like Germinal

Single mother Nadia is surviving on welfare while transport strikes are paralyzing France in December 1995. While watching the news, she recognizes the father of her child among the strikers and decides to go and search for him. But she has nowhere to go. The film, shot almost entirely at night, carries documentary qualities, part of which is due to the appearances of actual railroad workers in several group scenes.

Documentary about the pornography industry and the apparent violent anti-woman slant much of it takes.

Suzanne Simonin describes her life of suffering in letters. As a young woman she is sent to a convent against her will. Since her parents cannot afford the dowry required for a marriage befitting her rank they decide she must instead become a nun. Although a kind and understanding Mother Superior helps her to learn the convent’s daily routine, Suzanne’s desire for freedom remains unabated. When the Mother Superior dies, Suzanne finds herself faced with reprisals, humiliation and harassment at the hands of the new Abbess and the other Sisters. For many years, Suzanne is subjected to bigotry and religious fanaticism. (Berlinale.de)

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

When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go on strike and fight for a wage they believe is fair. But as the work stoppage drags on and the strikers face losing everything, friends become enemies, families are divided and the very future of this typical mid American town is threatened.

In a remote Amazon jungle village, a group of angry diamond prospectors revolt when the local government undertakes a violent crackdown.

In 1977 France, tightfisted factory owner Robert Pujol is so shocked when his workers strike for higher wages that he suffers a heart attack. His acquiescent wife, Suzanne, whose father had founded the factory, takes over management duties during Robert's convalescence.

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.

It's mid 19th century, north of France. The story of a coal miner's town. They are exploited by the mine's owner. One day the decide to go on strike, and then the authorities repress them.

An adaptation of Émile Zola’s 1877 masterpiece L’assommoir, the film is an uncompromising depiction of a lowly laundress’s struggles to deal with an alcoholic husband while running her own business.

At New Mexico's Empire Zinc mine, Mexican-American workers protest the unsafe work conditions and unequal wages compared to their Anglo counterparts. Ramon Quintero helps organize the strike, but he is shown to be a hypocrite by treating his pregnant wife, Esperanza, with a similar unfairness. When an injunction stops the men from protesting, however, the gender roles are reversed, and women find themselves on the picket lines while the men stay at home.

It’s 2017 in Bisbee, Arizona, an old copper-mining town just miles from the Mexican border. The town’s close-knit community prepares to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bisbee’s darkest hour: the infamous Bisbee Deportation of 1917, during which 1,200 striking miners were violently taken from their homes, banished to the middle of the desert, and left to die. Townspeople confront this violent, misunderstood past by staging dramatic recreations of the escalating strike. These dramatized scenes are based on subjective versions of the story and “directed,” in a sense, by residents with conflicting views of the event. Deeply personal segments torn from family history build toward a massive restaging of the deportation itself on the exact day of its 100th anniversary.

Biopic of the famous French writer Emile Zola and his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair.

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.

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

Claire is a midwife and has devoted her life to others. At a moment when she is preoccupied by the imminent closure of the maternity clinic where she works, her life is further turned upside down when Béatrice, her father's former mistress, turns up on the scene. Béatrice is a capricious and selfish woman, Claire's exact opposite.

A startling expose of rape crimes on US campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families. The film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue—despite incredible push back, harassment and traumatic aftermath—both their education and justice.

Documentary look at the 1996-97 effort of the dancers and support staff at a San Francisco peep show, The Lusty Lady, to unionize. Angered by arbitrary and race-based wage policies, customers' surreptitious video cameras, and no paid sick days or holidays, the dancers get help from the Service Employees International local and enter protracted bargaining with the union-busting law firm that management hires. We see the women work, sort out their demands, and go through the difficulties of bargaining. The narrator is Julia Query, a dancer and stand-up comedian who is reluctant to tell her mother, a physician who works with prostitutes, that she strips.

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.

Anthony Halliday, a brilliant young surgeon, is forced to resign as chief of staff at a New York hospital when he is compelled to delay an appendectomy on the daughter of John Mitchell, a wealthy supporter of the hospital, because of an emergency operation he has to perform. The appendectomy is successful, but later complications cause the girl's death. Carol Andrews, his fiancée, regards him as a failure and leaves him. Halliday, suffering from amnesia brought on by the shocks, drifts to Scranton, Pa., where he gets work in the steel mill. He only remembers who he is when he finds himself bandaging some injured workers. The mill doctor, Miller, asks him to become his assistant. Halliday remains at the mill under the name of John Davis. Because of many accidents at the mill, the smelter boss, Joe Kosovic is demoted. He becomes friendly with Halliday and invites him home for dinner, where he becomes attracted to Gerta, Joe school-teacher daughter.

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.

Fay Wray plays Jean Hastings, the wealthy and spoiled scion of a factory-owning family led by her irrepressible grandmother. Sparks fly when Jean meets Jim Devlin, the labor leader who’s spearheading a tense worker’s strike against the factory. After circumstances force Jean and Jim to spend a night together in his cabin, she begins questioning her family’s ruthless tactics. This hard-to-see Columbia film by British director Roy William Neill not only features Wray as a brunette but also includes an explosive depiction of labor strife. (Block Cinema)

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.

Gilbert and Simone live a restless retreat in a village in the South of France. The departure of Étienne, her neighbor and lover, the lack of money, but especially the constant bitterness of her husband, push Simone to flee the home. Gilbert then realizes that he is ready to do anything to find his wife, his love.

Étienne is barely twenty when he falls in love with Valérie. They are hardly any more when their daughter Rosa is born. And then, one day, Valérie leaves and never returns. He chooses not to make a drama of it and builds a happy life for him and his child. Sixteen years later, when Rosa is about to lead her own life, Étienne recognizes his wife in a television report. The past brutally resurfaces, and father and daughter are propelled into one last chaotic family journey.

Since 2014, France's restaurative justice programmes have offered a safe space for supervised dialogue between offenders and victims. Grégoire, Nawelle, and Sabine, victims of heists and violent robberies, agree to join one of these discussion groups alongside offenders Nassim, Issa, and Thomas, all convicted of violent robberies. Meanwhile Chloé, a victim of childhood sexual abuse, prepares for dialogue with her own agressor after learning he has moved back into town.

Koroviev, a police officer who teaches poetry in a brigade of police poets, is in search of a precious Bible annotated by Pierre Maheu, the captain of the St. Elias, a legendary ship. His quest leads him to befriend a young thief who introduces him to a mysterious woman named Coriandre.

Detective John Davis becomes enraged with the failing justice system. Davis reaches his breaking point, resigns from the police department, and decides to take justice into his own hands. Detective Michelle Reyes, from the D.A.'s office, begins investigating the sudden disappearance of suspected criminals. Reyes now must track down this former cop and put an end to his reign of Violent Justice.

A group of family and friends travels to a secluded island for a destination wedding. They've come to laugh... to love... and, though they don't know it... to die. As the wedding festivities begin, friendships are tested and secrets exposed as a murderer claims victims, one by one, transforming the wedding week of fun and celebration into a terrifying struggle for survival.

Crown prosecutors live in a world where the stakes are naturally high. It is a world where home robberies, sexual abuse and murder exist. It's a dangerous world that presents enormous challenges, both brutal and complex. But far from making a damning report, this is the truth of the courageous men and women who have the resources to cope.

Forty years after, through the eyes of those directly involved, this powerful series explores the bitterly divisive strike that wounded the soul of the nation

Stories of real people who face the surreal horror of losing loved ones to vicious crimes. With every tick of the clock, detectives work to seek justice for the families, all while never forgetting the victims whose own dreams were so callously interrupted.