Best movies like Old Man River

Winner of Cinequest and Vermont Film Festivals and the American Cinema Editors Eddy Award for Best Edited Documentary.

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Old Man River Starring Jerry Fujikawa, Cynthia Gates Fujikawa, and more. If you liked Old Man River then you may also like: Unfinished Business, The Unknown, The Unwritten Code, The Vicious Years, The Wash 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.

Documentary film version of the stage show in which actress Cynthia Gates Fujikawa explores the story of her father, actor Jerry Fujikawa, who had a long career in films and television, most often as a stereotyped Asian. The daughter, in the course of searching out her late father's history, discovers many things that she had not known, among them that her father had spent time in Manzanar, the internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, that he had had a family prior to hers, and that somewhere out there was a sister she had never known existed.

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Unfinished Business

1985 documentary film about Min Yasui, an attorney from Oregon, Gordon Hirabayashi, a Quaker college student in Washington, and Fred Korematsu, a San Francisco welder and how their lives were affected by Japanese American internment during World War II.

The Unknown

"The Unknown" was the final entry in Columbia’s I Love A Mystery series. A woman hires two detectives to keep her alive long enough to claim her inheritance.

The Unwritten Code

The Unwritten Code is an offbeat, better-than-average Columbia wartime "B" picture. Though Ann Savage and Tom Neal are top-billed, the central character is supporting-actor Roland Varno. He plays a Nazi spy who sneaks into the U.S., hoping to release hundreds of German prisoners. He fails, but not until plenty of bullets have been spent. The most interesting aspect of The Unwritten Code is the casting of Savage and Neal as the "good" characters: in 1945, these two cult favorites would play the decidedly unsavory protagonists of the film noir classic Detour.

The Vicious Years

Mario, an Italian war orphan, sees Luca Rossi commit a murder. Eager for a home and family life, Mario promises not to tell the police if Luca takes him into his household and family. Luca fears and hates Mario, but his father, mother and sister all come to love him.

The Wash

Mako is a neglectful husband. Not the most loving man. His wife gradually encounters a widower who is a kind, gentle figure. She eventually makes the transition to leave her husband and go to this fellow.

Wedding in White

A young girl's brother comes home from the army, and brings an army buddy with him. The three of them go out that night to celebrate, and after much drinking has been done, the brother's friend rapes the sister. After the two men have gone back, the girl finds that she's pregnant--and discovers that her parents don't blame the soldier, but blame her.

Week-End Pass

A run-away socialite "Babs" Bradley (Martha O'Driscoll), using an alias, wants to join the WACs, finds romance with a shipyard worker, Johnny Adams (Noah Beery Jr.), while dodging sheriffs, policemen and others who are searching for her.

The Wizard of Loneliness

After his mother dies and father goes to fight in World War II, a young boy moves in with his aunt and uncle who live in the countryside. Lonely and unhappy, he starts believing he has super powers. Then a "dead" man shows up.

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl

This documentary recounts the life and work of one of most famous, and yet reviled, German film directors in history, Leni Riefenstahl. The film recounts the rise of her career from a dancer, to a movie actor to the most important film director in Nazi Germany who directed such famous propaganda films as Triumph of the Will and Olympiad. The film also explores her later activities after Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945 and her disgrace for being so associated with it which includes her amazingly active life over the age of 90.

Never Too Late

A 60-year-old lumber supply businessman is dismayed to learn his 50-year-old wife is pregnant. A film adaptation of the hit Broadway comedy, with Paul Ford repeating his stage role as the flabbergasted papa-to-be.

Night Will Fall

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

Overlord

During World War II, a young man is called up and, with an increasing sense of foreboding, undertakes his army training ready for D-day, June 6th, 1944.

Raw Nerve

A race car driver has visions of the victims of a serial killer before their demise and tries to get a skeptic police detective and an ambitious reporter to help him find the killer.

Jungle Siren

A woman - raised in the jungle - tries to help an American stop a native uprising spurned on by Nazis.

American Pastime

American Pastime tells a poignant story set against the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. Rounded up and uprooted from their everyday lives, they remained loyal to the United States and ironically turned to that most American of sports - baseball - as a way to deal with their plight.

Babs

This is the story of Dame Barbara Windsor, the Cockney kid with a dazzling smile and talent to match. Preparing to perform in the theatre one cold evening in 1993, the cheeky, chirpy blonde Babs recounts the people and events that have shaped her life and career over fifty years from 1943 to 1993. She contemplates her lonely childhood and WWII evacuation, her decision to go from Barbara Ann Deeks to Barbara Windsor - inspired by the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, her complicated relationship with her father, her doomed marriage to Ronnie Knight, capturing the attention of Joan Littlewood and becoming the blonde bombshell in the Carry On films. Babs, ever the consummate professional, never lets her fans down whatever her personal anguish and steps on the stage to rapturous applause.

Bad Day at Black Rock

One-armed war veteran John J. Macreedy steps off a train at the sleepy little town of Black Rock. Once there, he begins to unravel a web of lies, secrecy, and murder.

The Diary of Anne Frank

The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

The Zone of Interest

The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.

To Hell and Back

The true WWII story of Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in U.S. history. Based on the autobiography of Audie Murphy who stars as himself in the film.

Go for Broke!

A tribute to the U.S. 442nd Regimental Combat Team, formed in 1943 by Presidential permission with Japanese-American volunteers. We follow the training of a platoon under the rueful command of Lt. Mike Grayson who shares common prejudices of the time. The 442nd serve in Italy, then France, distinguishing themselves in skirmishes and battles; gradually and naturally, Grayson's prejudices evaporate with dawning realization that his men are better soldiers than he is.

The Dresser

One fateful night in a small English regional theatre during World War II a troupe of touring actors stage a production of Shakespeares King Lear. Bombs are falling, sirens are wailing, the curtain is up in an hour but the actor/manager Sir who is playing Lear is nowhere to be seen. His dresser Norman must scramble to keep the production alive but will Sir turn up in time and if he does will he be able to perform that night? The Dresser is a wickedly funny and deeply moving story of friendship and loyalty as Sir reflects on his lifelong accomplishments and seeks to reconcile his turbulent friendships with those in his employ before the final curtain.

Where the Red Fern Grows

Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for two years to achieve his dream of buying two red-bone coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in life as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with his dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann.

Hi, Neighbor

A financially strapped college is transformed into a summer holiday resort with the help of music and radio stars.

The Homecoming

In a dreary North London flat, the site of perpetual psychological warfare, a philosophy professor visits his family after a nine-year absence and introduces the four men - father, uncle and two brothers - to his wife.

Monsoon

A young woman named Julia brings her fiance and his mother to a village in India to meet her father and brother. Hospitality proves in short supply and things take a turn for the worse when Julia's seductive younger sister arrives.

Putty Hill

Friends and family of Cory, a young man who has died of an overdose, gather at a Baltimore-area karaoke bar for his wake and compare stories about him. Gradually, as it becomes clear that there are many holes in their recollections about Cory, they fill in the blanks by talking about things that reveal aspects of their own lives. Among those mourning him and searching for meaning are his cousin Jenny, his sister Zoe and his brother James.

To Be Takei

Over seven decades, actor and activist George Takei journeyed from a World War II internment camp to the helm of the Starship Enterprise, and then to the daily news feeds of five million Facebook fans. Join George and his husband, Brad, on a wacky and profound trek for life, liberty, and love.

Topaz

This documentary was secretly and 'illegally' shot inside the prison camps, established during World War II by American authorities to detain US citizens of Japanese descent who were considered a potential threat to national security.

Triumph of the Spirit

The true story of a former Greek Olympic boxer taken prisoner during World War II and sent to Auschwitz. There he was permitted to survive so long as he fought for the amusement of his captors. His father and brother were also held as insurance that he would continue to fight.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.

Come See the Paradise

Come See The Paradise is a deeply touching love story set against the backdrop of a dramatic and controversial period in American history, It follows the romance and eventual marriage of Jack McGurn (Dennis Quad), a hot blooded Irish American, and a beautiful Japanese American Lily Dawanura (Tamlyn Tomita), at the outset of World War II. The clash of cultures, at once painful for the two lovers, becomes insurmountable after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Lily and the Kawamuras are relocated To a bleak, outdoor internment camp in California, Jack is drafted into the Army, powerless to help the woman he loves abandoning all hope of ever winning her family's approval.

Three Came Home

Borneo, 1941, during World War II. When the Japanese occupy the island, American writer Agnes Newton Keith is separated from her husband and imprisoned with her son in a prison camp run by the enigmatic Colonel Suga.

The Remake

Sheridan O'Connor and Riccardo Rossi were destined to meet on the set of their first big movie together when barely out of their teens. What they didn't know was that their on-screen chemistry would translate into a hot and heavy off-screen romance destined only for disaster. Now, living continents apart and a lifetime later, expecting their paths never to cross again, they are thrown back together to star in an updated version of their original film. The studio has high hopes that they will be able to attract the same audience who loved them the first time around. But working together again could demand greater acting skills than either ever imagined: long hours filming awkward romantic scenes, reliving the past and coming face to face with what fate has in store for them. Only slightly shaken and gently stirred by family and friends, Sheridan and Riccardo must find a way to make the perfect martini out of life so as not to waste a single drop of happiness.

Ice Blue

16-year old Arielle's world is rattled when her mother mysteriously returns, driving a wedge into the seemingly perfect relationship she has with her father while unraveling family secrets hidden long ago on their isolated foothills farm.

Sarge Goes to College

A Marine Sergeant, wounded in overseas service, requires an operation, and the Navy psychiatrist recommends to the Captain and Colonel that "Sarge" be given a few weeks rest before hospitalization. Through the Dean of San Juan Junior College, Sarge enters the school on a temporary basis.

Forced March

Ben Kline is an American television star and a bankable name, who is cast to portray the Hungarian writer Miklos Radnoti, whose journal of poems was found with his body, buried in one of Hungary’s mass graves. Kline is also the son of a Holocaust survivor and has long resented his father’s refusal to speak about the War. Now given the opportunity to play the role of a hero, but faced with the reality of a victim, the boundaries between truth and illusion begin to blur.

The Magic of Ordinary Days

Pregnant out of wedlock, an educated young woman is pressured by her father into an arranged marriage with a lonely farmer in this drama set during WWII.

Hell to Eternity

Based on the story about Guy Gabaldon, a Los Angeles Hispanic boy raised in the 1930s by a Japanese-American foster family. After Pearl Harbor, his foster family is interned at the Manzanar camp for Japanese Americans, while he enlists in the Marines, where his ability to speak Japanese becomes a vital asset. During the Battle of Saipan, he convinces 800 Japanese to surrender after their general commits suicide.

I'll Remember April

Four young boys find a shipwrecked Japanese sailor during World War II and struggle with the decision to save him.

The Long Way Home

The story of the post World War II Jewish refugee situation from liberation to the establishment of the modern state of Israel.

Till Death Us Do Part

The film version of 'Till Death Do Us Part' tells the story of Alf Garnett, his wife Else, and their newborn daughter Rita, living through the London Blitz and beyond.

Carol for Another Christmas

Daniel Grudge, a wealthy industrialist and fierce isolationist long embittered by the loss of his son in World War II, is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve who lead him to reconsider his attitude toward his fellow man.

Death Camp Treblinka: Survivor Stories

The only two survivors of the Treblinka concentration camp recount the horrors they experienced and tell how their lives were after escaping during a revolt in 1943.

Japan's War In Colour

Using never-before-seen footage, Japan's War In Colour tells a previously untold story. It recounts the history of the Second World War from a Japanese perspective, combining original colour film with letters and diaries written by Japanese people. It tells the story of a nation at war from the diverse perspectives of those who lived through it: the leaders and the ordinary people, the oppressors and the victims, the guilty and the innocent. Until recently, it was believed that no colour film of Japan existed prior to 1945. But specialist research has now unearthed a remarkable colour record from as early as the 1930s. For eight years the Japanese fought what they believed was a Holy War that became a fight to the death. Japan's War In Colour shows how militarism took hold of the Japanese people; describes why Japan felt compelled to attack the West; explains what drove the Japanese to resist the Allies for so long; and, finally, reveals how they dealt with the shame of defeat.

Stealing the Superfortress

How the Soviet Union was able to copy the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, and the influence of the resulting Tupolev TU-4 on the Cold War.

Sophie and the Rising Sun

In a small Southern town in the autumn of 1941, Sophie’s lonely life is transformed when an Asian man arrives under mysterious circumstances. Their love affair becomes the lightning rod for long-buried conflicts that erupt in bigotry and violence with the outbreak of World War ll.

The War Between Us

The Story of a Japanese-Canadian woman who finds friendship after her family is interned to a small town during World War II.

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