Best Resilient Movies & TV Shows

Isolated since the time of the dinosaurs, New Zealand’s wildlife has been left to its own devices, with surprising consequences. Its ancient forests are still stalked by predators from the Jurassic era. It’s also one of the most geologically active countries on earth. From Kiwis with their giant eggs, to forest-dwelling penguins and helicopter-riding sheep dogs, meet the astonishing creatures and resilient people who must rise to the challenges of their beautiful, dramatic and demanding home.

Take a trip into the core of the Big Apple to see just how it is being eaten away from the inside out in a witty, two-time Emmy Award-winning documentary from filmmaker Mark Lewis exploring the eternal rivalry between man and rat. From the inner walls of New York's tallest skyscrapers to the sewers and subways far beneath the surface, there is virtually no place in the city that these resilient vermin haven't claimed for themselves.

Daryl washes ashore in France and struggles to piece together how he got there and why. The series tracks his journey across a broken but resilient France as he hopes to find a way back home. As he makes the journey, though, the connections he forms along the way complicate his ultimate plan.

A resilient girl with a tragic past and a heart of gold falls in love with a bad boy race car driver.

Global movie star Chris Hemsworth, despite being in peak superhero-condition, is on a personal mission to learn how to stay young, healthy, strong, and resilient. Undergoing a series of epic trials and extraordinary challenges, he’ll learn firsthand how we can live better for longer by discovering ways to regenerate damage, maximize strength, build resilience, supercharge memory and confront mortality.

A look at Canada's resilient, vibrant northern communities and the determined men and women who help provide their lifeline to the outside world. These groups are linked together by the summer sealift, when ships loaded with critical cargo travel each year to the farthest reaches of the north to deliver food, clothing, supplies and vital pieces of infrastructure.

Viewers go deep into an Alaskan winter to meet six tough and resilient residents as they try to stay one step ahead of storms and man-eating beasts to make it through to spring. The closest neighbor to Sue Aikens is more than 300 miles away. Eric Salitan subsists solely on what he hunts and forages. Chip and Agnes Hailstone catch fish for currency in bartering for supplies, and Andy and Kate Bassich use their pack of sled dogs for transportation.

GAZA brings us into a unique place beyond the reach of television news reports to reveal a world rich with eloquent and resilient characters, offering us a cinematic and enriching portrait of a people attempting to lead meaningful lives against the rubble of perennial conflict. Throughout its entire history the Gaza Strip has been witness to conflict and upheaval. From ancient times this tiny coastal territory, located at a crossroads between continents, has been a pawn whose fate rested in the hands of powerful neighbours.

Based on the book by anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff, this Academy Award-winning short documentary offers a tender portrait of a community of elderly yet resilient Jews living, loving, and at times struggling, in Venice, California. From everyday trials to traditional celebrations, this compassionate portrayal of Eastern European survivors cuts straight to the heart of every viewer and reminds us of the joys and realities of long life.

Colonel Steve Austin, astronaut and test pilot, is badly injured when he crashes while testing an experimental aircraft. A covert government agency (OSI) is willing to pay for special prosthetics to replace the eye, arm and both legs he lost in the crash. Highly advanced technology (bionics) built into them will make him faster, stronger and more resilient than normal. In return they want him to become a covert agent for the OSI. It will cost $6,000,000 to rebuild Steve Austin.

A tribute to the courage and resiliency of Britons during the darkest days of the London Blitz.

An intimate character study of the complex figure Ittetsu Nemoto, an aimless and rebellious former punk rocker-turned-Buddhist priest. He is renowned in Japan for saving the lives of countless suicidal men and women through his wise and compassionate counsel. But Nemoto is now approaching middle-age with a wife and young boy of his own, when he learns his life is at risk from heart disease, compounded by the heavy emotional workload of supporting those who no longer want to live. When saving others takes such a toll, can he find the resiliency to save himself?

A dreamer who aspires to human flight is assigned public service after one of his attempts off a public building. This leads him to meeting a young woman, who is dying of motor neuron disease. The strong-willed woman admits her wish to be de-flowered before her death. The man, struggling to maintain his relationship with his girl friend, declines but offers to help pay for a gigolo to do the deed. The following events play off the inherent comedy and drama of the circumstances.

An intimate family portrait of four hapless but resilient women and the bittersweet lessons they learn in keeping up with the hectic demands of their individual neuroses. Each of the women seeks redemption in her own haphazard way, but whatever salvation they find is illusory and short-lived.

Recently released from prison, French chef Jacques pursues an obsession -- to leave his past behind and work for the great British chef Victor Ellwood. He knows Victor had an affair with his mother and may even be his dad. Working for iron-fisted Victor is back-breaking, but his existence is softened by the presence of a curious girl living in the downstairs flat. As he falls in love with her, he realises she not only has an aversion to restaurants, but food of all kinds. Is her eating disorder a force too resilient for anything, even love to cure?

In 2040, a generation of Torontonians have grown up after the economic collapse of the west. The movie consists of episodes of a documentary series popular in mainland China about the bad jobs some white people have -- the plucky and resilient souls unlucky enough to be born into the slums of North America are both amusing and moving to the Chinese audience. Oscar is a digital janitor, and has to manually cover up logos for copyright reasons in the future's answer to Google StreetView maps. Gary and Karen assemble robot baby dolls for the children of the wealthy in Asia. Anton and Toph are spider silk collectors. Serina is human spam and makes a living by mentioning brands and products in casual conversation.

Captives of the very relationships that define and sustain them, nine women resiliently meet the travails and disappointments of life.

A group of grad students have booked passage on the fishing trawler Harbinger to study the effects of global warming on a pod of Orcas in the Bering Sea. When the ship's crew dredges up a recently thawed piece of old Soviet space wreckage, things get downright deadly. It seems that the Russians experimented with tardigrades, tiny resilient animals able to withstand the extremes of space radiation. The creatures survived, but not without mutation. Now the crew is exposed to aggressively mutating organisms. And after being locked in ice for 3 decades, the creatures aren't about to give up the warmth of human companionship.

The brutes and the belles. The gadflies and the good ol' boys. The taboos and the profound truths. They're all part of a tennessee state of mind -- a realm of places, personalities and ideas. Williams is front and center for this exploration, reading from his works, placing them in the context of his life, and serving as guide in visits to his career-shaping refuge in New Orleans and his later-day writing quarters in Key West. Also, dramatizations by distinguished actors -- including Jessica Tandy, Broadway's original Blanche DuBois, in a recreation of her A Streetcar Named Desire triumph -- give flesh-and-bone immediacy to some of the writer's famed works. In his own words. In his own places. The resilient character and memorable characters of one of our greatest writers reside in Tennessee Williams' South.

Extraordinary individuals share stories from their lives that exemplify the incredible diversity of the human experience as well as the resiliency of the human spirit.

As a mother, Diana's energies were devoted to her boys, the most important part of her life, and she laid the foundations for them to grow into strong, resilient and kind young princes, instilling into them qualities that would help to shape a truly modern monarchy. In her actions, and in her words, Diana changed the workings of the British monarchy forever. Join us as we look back at her lasting legacy and her impact on those she loved the most.

In a powerful exploration of her Greek Canadian heritage, Jaime Leigh Gianopoulos embarks on an introspective journey through the depths of her heart, akin to traversing a black hole, in search of the gifts hidden within her wounds. Guided by the presence of the plantain, a resilient plant often referred to as "white man's footprints" due to its association with European settlers, she unravels the fragmented threads of an ancient myth and pre-Hellenic ceremony. Through this profound exploration, she seeks to rediscover the art of navigating the loss of identity and the cyclical nature of life's transitions.