Best movies like Pay Back

Given a second chance after her arrest for prostitution, Mae decides to go straight. Mae is soon befriended by kindly cab driver Jimmy Doyle who gets her work at a diner, where she meets Gert, another former prostitute. Mae and Jimmy fall in love, marry and save to buy a small business. Gert then pleads for money from Mae, which results in her unwitting involvement in a crime. Believing Mae has lied and cheated him, Jimmy threatens to leave her.

Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.

A college freshman is date-raped and tries to press charges.

After destroying his older brother's motorbike in retaliation for his constant bullying, 11-year-old Krishna is sent to a traveling circus to earn money to pay for the bike's repairs, but soon winds up in the streets of Bombay's poorest slums. There, he befriends the drug dealer Chillum and young prostitute Sola Saal, while trying to make enough money at a neighborhood tea stall to repay his debt to his family.

Prince Leo, last in the line of rulers of a long-deposed monarchy on continental Europe and jaded with the frenetic search for kicks with the European jet-set, returns to his father's London town house for rest.

Samad is nobody’s fool. The narcotics officer has seen his share of a drug dealer’s lies and games, and his patience has come to run thin. While searching for the infamous drug baron Nasser Khakzad, he and his colleague Hamid scour the streets of Tehran, turning an overcrowded prison on its head. With his rough and dubious approach, Samad finally manages to find the criminal’s whereabouts – but things do not quite go according to plan...

Longinotto's documentary is about Brenda Myers-Powell, who fights against sexual exploitation and supports prostitutes in Chicago. Brenda knows what she is talking about: her own story, involving teenage prostitution and a life of violence and abuse, is in stark contrast to her dauntless energy and optimism.

The sister of ex-pimp and current Los Angeles Police detective Lyle York was murdered working the streets a few years ago. Since his reform, he has teamed with Officer Russ Garfield to clear the streets of underage girls working in prostitution. Pretty, young runaway Hailey Atkins has been turned out. Down deep she wants to go straight but has had great difficulty escaping her pimp and doesn't even have a place to go. York and Garfield go out on a limb to try and help.

A pool boy and a gardener turn an empty mansion into a home for women who belong to the world's oldest profession.

Various stories of how crack cocaine has infiltrated the inner-city streets. Based on Buddy Giovinazzo's novel "Life is Hot in Cracktown".

A yellow cab is driving through the vibrant and colourful streets of Tehran. Very diverse passengers enter the taxi, each candidly expressing their views while being interviewed by the driver who is no one else but the director Jafar Panahi himself. His camera placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio captures the spirit of Iranian society through this comedic and dramatic drive…

Various women struggle to function in the oppressively sexist society of contemporary Iran.

After four years apart, Ahmad returns to his wife Marie in Paris in order to progress their divorce. During his brief stay, he cannot help noticing the strained relationship between Marie and her daughter Lucie. As he attempts to improve matters between mother and daughter Ahmad unwittingly lifts the lid on a long buried secret...

Mohammad is sent to an apartment situated in uptown Tehran to install their satellite dishes, while having satellite TV is illegal in Iran. He arrives there with a girl named Shirin who seems to be his girlfriend and is in need of some money to repair her father's car with which she has had an accident the day before. Each of the house's residents have their own fish to fry and they also want their satellites installed as soon as possible.

Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.

For Hussein, a pizza delivery driver, the imbalance of the social system is thrown in his face wherever he turns. One day when his friend, Ali, shows him the contents of a lost purse, Hussein discovers a receipt of payment and cannot believe the large sum of money someone spent to purchase an expensive necklace. He knows that his pitiful salary will never be enough to afford such luxury. Hussein receives yet another blow when he and Ali are denied entry to an uptown jewelry store because of their appearance. His job allows him a full view of the contrast between rich and poor. He motorbikes every evening to neighborhoods he will never live in, for a closer look at what goes on behind closed doors. But one night, Hussein tastes the luxurious life, before his deep feelings of humiliation push him over the edge.

This is the story of Tehran from the Qajar time (middle of 19th century) to today. Tehran has become a metropolis from a small village, now a developed city with many social problems.

Parkway is a crossing in Tehran. Part horror, part thriller, the film chronicles the tribulations of a young couple, Raha and Kouhyar.

When a young girl's mother doesn't meet her after school, she tries to navigate the streets of Tehran by herself.

For the young and fearless Setareh, there are no walls or boundaries she cannot overcome. Determined to provide for her family, Setareh takes a job as a bike rider in a theme park, following the tracks of her late father. When she becomes the first female to ride around 'The Wall', a wooden cylinder-shaped structure, the authorities intervene to prevent her from taking her rightful place on the wall of fame. With the successful show on the verge of being cancelled, Setareh struggles for her voice to be heard. An adventurous philosophical debate into gender equality.

Lili is a young medical student who lives a normal life with her mother until one night that being raped changes Lili's life.

A visual social examination in the form of ten conversations between a driving woman and her various pick-ups and hitchhikers.

Since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, capital punishment is carried out according to Islamic law, which gives the family of the victim ownership of the offender's life. Day Break - based on a compilation of true stories and shot inside Tehran's century-old prison - revolves around the imminent execution of Mansour, a man found guilty of murder. When the family of the victim repeatedly fails to show up on the appointed day, Mansour's execution is postponed again and again. Stuck inside the purgatory of his own mind, he waits as time passes on without him, caught between life and death, retribution and forgiveness.

The story of a simple fellow from a small town who travels to Tehran to find a suitable girl for marriage.

Lantouri is the name of a gang that mugs people in broad daylight on the streets of Tehran and breaks into homes in the city’s rich northern district. The gang also kidnaps children from families who have become wealthy through corruption and embezzlement of state funds. The film begins with the confessions of individual gang members. Sociologists, human rights activists and political hardliners also have their say. Gang member Pasha runs amok because Maryam, a socially committed, self-confident journalist, does not reciprocate his feelings. The badly injured young woman demands lex talionis – the law, applicable in Iran, of ‘an eye for an eye’.

Lynn Schaffer is willfully irresponsible once too often, gets fired and refuses a plea-bargain with her employer. She's now convicted and because of this uncooperative attitude gets the maximum sentence, 10 years in a women's jail wing. Model husband Larry, who wasn't informed of her dumb schemes is left running her appeal, the household and spoiled daughter who now feels abandoned. Since most inmates are junkies or prostitutes, sergeant Ed Crang and fellow corrupt jailers can run a 'favors in kind exchange'. For rebels, it gets worse. Larry however has his own radio show, so it all hangs on gathering proof.

America Undercover goes to the Madison Hotel in the skid-row section of downtown Los Angeles and talks to some of the desperate people living there. It talks to a prostitute and heroin addict named Becky, a drug dealer and traveler names John, and an heavy drinking alcoholic named Jack Woodrow Wilson.

Two Iranian teenagers in love want to get married, travel to the US to get a green card and live there, but their parents object. With not enough money saved, they pin their hopes on winning the state lottery to fund their trip, but tragedy derails their plans.

Jason, an American lawyer, poses as a john to build a legal case against a pimp trafficking girls to Bangkok. Can he win the trust of a young prostitute known only as Number 18 and convince her to risk her life to testify against her pimp?

A prostitute is thrown out of her house by her alcoholic father, and her scheming brother-in-law tries to devise a plan to marry her off and make some money in the process.

A woman searches for her husband on the streets of Tehran.

Director Bahman Farmanara's second film following a 20-year exile from his native Iran depicts the spiritual crisis of a middle-aged man. In the film's dreamlike opening scene, Dr. Reza Sepidbakht (Reza Kianian), a well-off Tehran gynecologist, thinks he runs over an angel while driving home at night with a call girl. The next morning at the hospital where he works, he is shown a comatose boy who is famous for having memorized the entire Koran. These two events cause him to rethink his cynical outlook on life and his relationships with his elderly father, wayward son, and the women he has mistreated since becoming estranged from his wife. When the boy awakens from his coma, Dr. Sepidbakht begins to look to him for answers.

Banafsheh, a young prostitute who has fled with a man to the seaside in hope of starting a new life has to return to her profession as she learns about the betrayal of her lover. Penniless and emotionally broken, she also has to bear with the taunts of the other girls and the threats of the roughneck patron of the house, Mammad who unfailingly refer to his dagger to consolidate his supremacy. In fact it was Mammad who ordered the man to rob Banafsheh of her money and abandon her. Banafsheh apparently has not learnt her lesson, as she trusts her next customer and falls in love with him. Her new lover , Abbas, is a truck driver who received his nickname for his habit of constantly lying, but it seems that he gives it a break when promises Banafsheh to get a house of their own...

The film is about the life story of Fatma, a poor girl who lost her family in an accident, when she comes to Istanbul. Fatma comes to Istanbul from Tehran after the death of her family. His goal is to find his uncle here and inherit his father's inheritance from him. Although Fatma finds her uncle, she cannot inherit her father and is forced to work as a maid in this house. His uncle's son Ali and Fatma fall in love with each other and decide to get married. Ali's family sends him to their factory in Iran to prevent this marriage. He also kicks Fatma out of the house.

The film is based in Tehran, Iran. The lead character, Aarun falls in love with a beautiful dancer Shirin. Due to her dubious profession, Aarun and his brother Naseer decide to lie about her origins to their mother. Unfortunately, she finds out the truth and forbids Shirin from marrying her son. Aarun, believing Shirin has changed her mind and refused to marry him, is angered and marries another woman, Nazneen. Only Naseer knows the truth of why Shirin refused to marry Aarun. Years later, Aarun and Nazneen's son, Romil, becomes best friends with a fatherless boy, Razzaq, who invites Aarun to his home. When Aarun goes to his house, he finds out that Razzaq is his and Shirin's own son. Following the death of Nazneen, Aarun finally manages to convince his mother to accept Razzaq as her grandson, and Shirin as his wife.