Best movies like Paradise is Burning

A teenager journeys through a series of foster homes after her mother goes to prison for committing a crime of passion.

Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink in 'the Bathtub', a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe—for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack—temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.

An aspiring dancer and her two wicked sisters resent their mother's love for a foster daughter.

Pregnant sixteen year old Jacey's well-meaning mother forces her to keep the birth a secret and decides to raise the baby as her own.

A naive California teen plans to remain above the fray at his Nebraskan family reunion, but a strange encounter places him at the center of a long-buried family secret.

A group of single moms are brought together in the aftermath of an incident at their children's school.

A pregnant single mother, with two children in foster care, embraces her Bay Area community as she fights to reclaim her family.

The summer of '58, the year Sweden almost won the world championship in soccer over Brazil, Yngve Johansson accepts two children to live with him during the summer, as told through the eyes of a young boy. His name is Mårten, and the other child's name is Annika. She is a rough girl, with many problems. The three of them do not get along, and Yngve is a true dictator to the children's eyes. However, when the children discover that their new guardian has a crush on their teacher (Cecilia Nilsson), they do what they can to bring the two together. Soon enough, the three will discover that they have a lot more in common than they previously imagined, and together they can make their lives worth living again. This is a sweet story about life in Sweden in the mid 1900's. It is about family, love, hate, innocent friendship that we all can relate to, and much, much more...

The year is 1984. It's summer, and the rebellious 12-year-old girl Kid wants to stay in Gothenburg, but her mother has other plans. Kid discovers that summer vacation in Finland isn't as bad as first feared. In a few hot weeks she discovers her dawning sexuality, and experience her first crush.

Agnese and Stefano are profoundly different. She is only seventeen, lives with her mother – a harsh and devoted woman – is a regular church-goer and is about to take a vow of chastity to last until marriage. He is twenty-five, has a violent temper and a difficult past behind. He works as a warden in a car park that borders a Roma camp. Their unexpected meeting engenders a true sentiment, made of little stolen moments and mutual help.

The twin sisters Helena and Irene are born in Helsinki during World War II. A few months later their mother, Sirkka, leaves the girls in the care of their grandmother, an old communist, and runs away with a German soldier. Their life under the protection of their grandmother and the teachings of communism ends first with the death of Stalin, then with that of their grandmother. The girls are eight years old when they are put in an orphanage. Their mother shows up at the orphanage in the company of Ramon, a Spanish trapeze artist. They are on a talent search for a German circus. Ramon trains the reluctant Irene during circus tours in Central Europe. She becomes the trapeze star of the circus. The hard work soon exhausts Irene and she falls from height, as if on purpose. Helena has secretly learned the art of fire-eating. Now she is burdened with both her mother and her sister. The violent life, however, separates the three from each other. In the present-day Helsinki the middle-aged...

A mysterious — and suspicious — run of ill fortune plagues a teenage girl and her mother and sister on their hillside farm in this folk story set in the dark hills of Wales during the industrial revolution.

1943: Nine-year-old Eero whose father is killed during the war is brought to Sweden to foster parents to his protection like thousands of other Finnish children. Eero feels lost, particularly as his foster mother Signe behaves very unfriendly. She was expecting a little girl and still mourns for her daughter who drowned in the sea.

Mississippi in the early '60s is the setting for this story of a 12-year-old African-American girl who, along with her white friends, tries to ease increasing racial tensions.

Josefin is a six year old girl who lives isolated in the countryside, where her father is a priest. She has no friends until she meets Hugo. He is a carefree boy who'd rather walk in the forest than go to school. Together with the gardener, they make up fun things to do.

Wisecracking, gum-chewing 12-year-old Gilly is well known in the foster system. Totally unmanageable, she has stayed with more families than she can remember and has outwitted them all. After all, how can she settle down when her real mother, the beautiful and glamourous Courtney, might be out there waiting for her? When Gilly is sent to live with the Trotters, the weirdest family yet, she isn’t planning to stick around. But cheerful, affectionate Maime Trotter isn’t giving up on Gilly just yet...

Living alone since her beloved mum died, 12-year-old Georgie fills the flat they shared with her own special magic. But when her absent father Jason turns up out of the blue, she’s forced to confront reality.

Struggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and Terry becomes a smart yet quiet teenager, but the secret that has defined their lives threatens to destroy the home they have so improbably built.

Rebellious, quick-witted Erica Vandross is a 17-year-old firecracker living with her single mom, Laurie, and her mom's new boyfriend, Bob, in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. When Bob's mentally unbalanced son, Luke, arrives from rehab to live with the family, Erica finds her domestic and personal life overwhelmed. With Luke and her sidekicks Kala and Claudine in tow, Erica acts out by exposing a high school teacher's dark secret.

Matt Ballot has returned home after 12 years of hard-drinking in all 48 states. His wife has managed to raise their 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son nicely without his help. Matt is considered a disgrace to the town he came from and now he finds himself trying to win the love of his children, his wife, and the respect of the townspeople. Set in Arkansas in the 1920s.

in the summer of 1966, in Beloeil, Québec, where a young girl named Élise is enjoying summer vacation. Summer 1966. It's time to enjoy the summer holiday, total freedom. Suddenly her mother leaves her family to pursue her journalism career in London. Her urge to leave is triggered when she coincidentally listens in on a conversation between her husband and his male lover. Her brother Coco seeks solace in the garage, building a super racing car. Her youngest brother Benoît throws himself into his own inner world. The father seems absolutely knocked out by the situation. Élise decides to take control of her family, in an eloquent attempt to save them. With the assistance of flourishing nature around her, she stands on the threshold of an incomparable summer.

Fourteen-year old Juliette lives in the country with her father and her older brother. When Juliette was younger, her mother left the family to pursue her career in New York; from that moment, Juliette started to gain weight. Today, she’s not obese, but she’s clearly the heaviest girl at her high school. But that doesn’t stop her from being vivacious, funny and unrepentantly rebellious. Juliette has big dreams: she wants to throw the best parties, move to New York to live with her mother, and date the most gorgeous guy in her school, an older boy who is about to graduate. In short, she wants everything she can’t have—which sometimes makes her forget to appreciate those who really love her. We follow this brazen and endearing girl during her hectic last few weeks before summer vacation, and watch as she does some growing up—but not too much.

Forever Yours is a film about children who have been taken into custody. Through the children, their biological parents and foster parents, the film depicts love in everyday life. The film explores the invisible bond between a child and a biological parent. Even when a child is taken into custody, the yearning for closeness to the biological parents and need for their approval never seems to disappear. This longing is a form of loneliness that the foster parents struggle to overcome. The film describes the entire foster care process: a child being brought into a shelter home, a teenager’s everyday life in a foster family, and siblings preparing to return to their biological mother, after five years in a foster family.

Loner Diane Ford is a truck driver with an 11-year-old son, Peter, whom she never sees, and that's fine with her. But, when Peter's father, Len, falls ill, he asks Diane to take care of their son for a while. Eventually, Diane reluctantly agrees, but she quickly realizes that caring for a child interferes with her independent lifestyle - and Peter isn't all that thrilled with the arrangement, either.

Autumn 1978 in suburban Sweden. Everything seems to be fine with the middle class Bendrick family with their two teenage children and a younger son, until the mother starts seeing her first love again after 20 years. Just like their badly built house, the family façade starts slowly crumbling into pieces. The daughter, 15, finds her first love, and the boys too are puzzled by their own questions around adolescence and sexuality. The father tries to keep up a happy face, while the youngest son is the first and the most sensitive to realize how the family is heading towards a disaster.

In an apartment a single and psychotic mother locks in herself and her daughter. Here, the demons are in control. Ti can hear her mother talking to the demons, and she sees her changing and confined face. But the demons that the mother speaks with Ti can neither hear nor see. Outwards, Ti is forced to keep a straight face to protect her mother, while she herself is going under.

Two neighboring families in Florida, one black and one white, struggle with the problems of race, poverty, prejudice, and absent fathers, as their children become friends over the course of one summer and fall.

An adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play about a restless young warehouse worker and would-be poet, Tom Wingfield, his fragile, reclusive sister, Laura, and his colorful but overbearing mother, Amanda, all living together in a shabby apartment in St. Louis during the Depression and struggling to dilute the grim realities of daily living by way of memories, fantasies, and grandiose dreams about the future.

15-year-old Rocks fears that she and her little brother Emmanuel will be taken into care and forced apart if anyone finds out that their mother has left them. Against all odds, and with the help of her loyal friends, she evades the authorities and navigates the most defining days of her young life.

A coming of age story told through the eyes of a young girl whose family spirals out of control after they decide to live off the grid.

For Billie and Nico, life with their father is a roller-coaster ride of playfulness and unease. When he is in the grip of alcohol, tears flow and their apparently idyllic family life collapses. Their mostly absent and irresponsible mother is not much help either. But their friendship with Malik, a boy of Billie’s age, frees them from their shackles. Together they embark on a journey full of intense moments of freedom. The colourful, emotional world of the three young people is depicted in kaleidoscopic black and white imagery, which opens space for their own notions of childhood. Alexandre Rockwell's tale portrays a profound sense of solidarity and deep love: for cinema and Billie Holiday, and also for risk and adventure.

Sussie is 15, raised with her alcoholic mother and an absent father. She has lived in several foster homes. Now she gets one last chance with a new family, the Lindgren's who live in a large house by the sea.

While out and about tending to his herd, young shepherd Larus meets a mysterious little girl named Tinke. Quickly realizing that the girl is alone, Larus brings Tinke some food and slowly builds a friendship with her. Tinke, whose parents died within the past year, has managed to survive by her own devices in the wild and has hence become quite feral. Larus convinces Tinke to come to his home so that his parents can take care of her

A vivacious, carefree young girl is disgusted by the thought of growing old. In her despondency she adopts the motto "Who cares?" and does her best to live up to it, even after she marries the handsome and dashing Martin Grey.

Elvira goes to summer camp and is scared to death of not making any friends. Mysterious things also start to happen, things that can't be explained… unless you believe in ghosts.