Best movies like Heat Wave
The Watts uprising of '65 turned the police into killers... a community into ashes... and a young black journalist into a hero.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Heat Wave Starring Cicely Tyson, Blair Underwood, Sally Kirkland, James Earl Jones, and more. If you liked Heat Wave then you may also like: White Man's Burden, Never Die Alone, Carbon Copy, Conrack, The Intruder 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.
A rookie black journalist investigates the tensions of the Watts section of Los Angeles in the bloody summer of 1965.
Heat Wave
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Carbon Copy
A middle-aged married wealthy white corporate executive is surprised to discover that he has a working-class black teen-age son who wants to be adopted into the almost-exclusively-white upper-middle-class community of San Marino, California.
The Intruder
A man in a gleaming white suit comes to a small Southern town on the eve of integration. He calls himself a social reformer. But what he does is stir up trouble--trouble he soon finds he can't control.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
A black man plays Uncle Tom in order to gain access to CIA training, then uses that knowledge to plot a new American Revolution.
Ghosts of Mississippi
A Mississippi district attorney and the widow of Medgar Evers struggle to bring a white supremacist to justice for the 1963 murder of the civil rights leader.
The Lost Man
A gang of black militants plots to rob a factory to finance their "revolutionary struggle."
Hope & Redemption: The Lena Baker Story
Based on true events, The Lena Baker Story recounts one African-American womans struggle to rise above the challenges of her life, to face the choices she makes, and to ultimately triumph over her...Lena Baker was the first and only woman to be sentenced to death by the electric chair in the state of Georgia and was executed in 1945. She was pardoned posthumously in 2005.
Sucker Free City
The film follows three young men as they are drawn into lives of crime. Nick (Crowley) uses his entry-level corporate job to commit credit card fraud and deals drugs on the side. K-Luv (Mackie) is a member of the "V-Dubs", an African-American street gang. Lincoln (Leung) is a rising figure in the Chinese mafia. Gentrification forces Nick's family to move out of their home in the Mission District into Hunter's Point where they are harassed by the V-Dubs. K-Luv's side business of selling bootleg compact discs leads him to enlist Nick's help to bootleg CDs and to negotiate a truce with Lincoln. Lincoln conducts an affair with his boss' daughter Angela (Carpio), a Stanford student engaged to a medical student classmate.
The Rosa Parks Story
A seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
Freedom Song
Freedom Song (2000) is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan. In the midst of the Freedom Summer, a group of high school students in the small town are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community. The young activists meet resistance not only from white southerners, but from their parents, who have experienced firsthand the violence that can result from speaking out.[1] As high school students band together with the support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they make strides in registering African-American voters and gaining awareness for their cause.
A Lesson Before Dying
In the 1940s South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing a a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince school teacher go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity.
Selma, Lord, Selma
In 1965 Alabama, an 11 year old girl is touched by a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and becomes a devout follower. But her resolution is tested when she joins others in the famed march from Selma to Montgomery.
Ruby Bridges
When six-year-old Ruby Bridges is chosen to be the first African-American to integrate her local elementary school, she is subjected to the true ugliness of racism for the first time.
Race to Freedom: The Underground Railroad
A number of slaves risk their lives to escape their masters with their only help coming from the famous secret slave escape network.
The Vernon Johns Story
In 1948, Johns served as the outspoken spiritual leader of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Incensed at the racial injustice that pervaded the South, he was determined to fight for equality for all African Americans.
Crisis at Central High
The historic federal-state controversy over the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, as seen through the eyes of Elizabeth Huckaby, one of the teachers and girls' vice principal.
Cornbread, Earl and Me
The unintentional shooting by police of a star basketball player has profound personal, political and community repercussions in this acclaimed adaptation of the novel Hog Butcher by Ronald Fair. This was one of the more thoughtful urban dramas produced at the height of the "blaxploitation" craze. Also released under the title Hit the Open Man, it features the screen debut of Laurence Fishburne, who was barely a teenager at the time.
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
In February, 1962, as the civil rights movement reaches Bayonne, Louisiana, a New York journalist arrives to interview Jane Pittman, who has just turned 110. She tells him her story dating back to her earliest memories before slavery ended. In between the chapters of her life, the present-day struggles of Blacks in Bayonne, urged on by Jimmy, are dramatized.
Imperial Dreams
A 21-year-old reformed gangster's devotion to his family and his future is put to the test when he is released from prison and returns to his old stomping grounds in Watts, Los Angeles.
Miss Evers' Boys
The true story of the US Government's 1932 Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments, in which a group of black test subjects were allowed to die, despite a cure having been developed.
The River Niger
An intimate look at life in the ghetto: Johnny Williams is a house painter who moonlights as a poet, struggling to financially and emotionally support his cancer-ridden wife Mattie. But times are tough and the poverty-troubled streets are even tougher, and it takes every ounce of Johnny's love and courage for the couple to make it through their strife, finding redemption in the River Niger.
10,000 Black Men Named George
In the 1920s, the rights of American workers to join a labor union was still considered an open question, and African-Americans were routinely denied their civil and economic rights. 10,000 Black Men Named George, the title, refers to the fact Pullman porters were often called "George" by white passengers, which was considered a racial slur.
Drop Squad
Controversial film about an underground organization that kidnaps and 'deprograms' African Americans who sell out or deny their cultural heritage. Spike Lee is the Executive Producer.
Halls of Anger
An all-black inner city school has to become an integrated school. Few dozen white kids are transfered there, but the black students are aggressively opposed to this. The school then approaches a tough black teacher for help.
I Am Not Your Negro
Working from the text of James Baldwin’s unfinished final novel, director Raoul Peck creates a meditation on what it means to be Black in the United States.
Death of a Prophet
After breaking ties with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became a man marked for death...and it was just a matter of time before his enemies closed in. Despite death threats and intimidation, Malcolm marched on - continuing to spread the word of equality and brotherhood right up until the moment of his brutal and untimely assassination. Highlighted by newsreel footage and interviews, this is the story of the last twenty-four hours of Malcolm X. Featuring the music of jazz percussionist Max Roach.
Burn Motherfucker, Burn!
An in-depth and provocative look at the 1992 Los Angeles riots exploring the roots of civil unrest in California and the relationship between African Americans and LAPD.
A rookie black journalist investigates the tensions of the Watts section of Los Angeles in the bloody summer of 1965.
Heat Wave
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Heat Wave Starring Cicely Tyson, Blair Underwood, Sally Kirkland, James Earl Jones, and more. If you liked Heat Wave then you may also like: White Man's Burden, Never Die Alone, Carbon Copy, Conrack, The Intruder 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.
White Man's Burden
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.