Best movies like Strip Down, Rise Up

Paid 50 dollars for their time, 101 male prostitutes -- spanning all ages, ethnicities, and personal backgrounds -- are questioned by the filmmakers about their lives.

Amaryllis Campos is a young, classically trained Puerto Rican ballerina, who dreams of leaving her impoverished home in Puerto Rico to pursue fame and fortune as a dancer. Amaryllis heads for New York City, where she is forced to work in a seedy strip club to make ends meet. Setting audiences afire with her erotic moves, Amaryllis quickly becomes the strip club's hottest attraction, but must finally decide between true love and realizing her dream of becoming a star.

In a staid English seaside town after the Second World War, young Lynda grows up with her widowed father and younger sister. Rebellious Lynda has been swearing constantly from an early age. At sixteen, she becomes more exhibitionist and seeks out sexual encounters challenging the prevailing lower-middle class attitudes to sex. She eventually becomes pregnant by an acquaintance of her father.

High school student Wendy has an odd relationship with her five friends: They're openly sexual with each other, swapping partners every week. But this is all thrown into turmoil when she meets Sean, a new student in school who has a crush on her. Wendy wants to be with Sean, but doesn't want to disappoint her friends, whom she has known since grade school. When she does decide to leave them, her best friend, Billie, threatens revenge.

A young woman who has just become engaged has her life completely shattered when she is raped while on her way home from work.

Raising Bertie is a longitudinal documentary feature following three young African American boys over the course of six years as they grow into adulthood in Bertie County, a rural African American-led community in Eastern North Carolina. Through the intimate portrayal of these boys, this powerful vérité film offers a rare in-depth look at the issues facing America's rural youth and the complex relationships between generational poverty, educational equity, and race. The evocative result is an experience that encourages us to recognize the value and complexity in lives all too often ignored.

Robert Altman's life and career contained multitudes. This father of American independent cinema left an indelible mark, not merely on the evolution of his art form, but also on the western zeitgeist. With its use of rare interviews, representative film clips, archival images, and musings from his family and most recognizable collaborators, Altman is a dynamic and heartfelt mediation on an artist whose expression, passion and appetite knew few bounds.

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

Freshman high-school student Melinda has refused to speak ever since she called the cops on a popular summer party. With her old friends snubbing her for being a rat, and her parents too busy to notice her troubles, she folds into herself, trying to hide her secret: that star senior Andy raped her at the party. But Melinda does manage to find solace in her art class headed by Mr. Freeman.

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.

Happy is a 2011 feature documentary film directed, written, and co-produced by Roko Belic. It explores human happiness through interviews with people from all walks of life in 14 different countries, weaving in the newest findings of positive psychology. Director Roko Belic was originally inspired to create the film after producer/director Tom Shadyac (Liar, Liar, Patch Adams, Bruce Almighty) showed him an article in the New York Times entitled "A New Measure of Well Being From a Happy Little Kingdom". The article ranks the United States as the 23rd happiest country in the world. Shadyac then suggested that Belic make a documentary about happiness. Belic spent several years interviewing over 20 people, ranging from leading happiness researchers to a rickshaw driver in Kolkatta, a family living in a "co-housing community" in Denmark, a woman who was run over by a truck, a Cajun fisherman, and more.

17-year-old Jem Starling struggles with her place within her Christian fundamentalist community. But everything changes when her magnetic youth pastor Owen returns to their church.

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

Two teenage girls with parallel lives but coming from different socio-economic backgrounds meet one summer to discover friendship and a sexual awakening.

An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.

A woman trying to recover from a sexual attack is locked in a posh apartment with a corpse of the very man she's been dreaming would murder her. She tries to hang on to reality when objects around her seem to come to life.

Gloria Allred overcame trauma and personal setbacks to become one of the nation’s most famous women’s rights attorneys. Now the feminist firebrand takes on two of the biggest adversaries of her career, Bill Cosby and Donald Trump, as sexual violence allegations grip the nation and keep her in the spotlight.

A socially inept man's amateur porn film wins him a contract with a small-time pornography distribution company, where he faces a series of moral crises and is forced to face his own porn addiction.

In February 2022, The Boy Scouts Of America reached a $2.7 billion agreement over sex abuse claims, the largest such settlement in history. Leave No Trace explores how this all-American institution went so horrifyingly wrong.

If you ever find yourself traveling down Interstate 49 through Missouri, try not to blink—you may miss Rich Hill, population 1,396. Rich Hill is easy to overlook, but its inhabitants are as woven into the fabric of America as those living in any small town in the country. This movie intimately chronicles the turbulent lives of three boys living in said Midwestern town and the fragile family bonds that sustain them.

A significant number of American children and teenagers - from all social backgrounds - suffer from mental disorders, schizophrenia, autism and emotional problems, leading them to isolation from society while treating their issues in mental health facilities. But there's no end in sight for those young individuals when they face obstacles and mistreatment in inadequate places under the supervision of careless and inexperienced professionals. The documentary follows some of those public mental institutions and another private center dealing with troubled kids and reveals what's wrong with their procedures, and the irreparable harm they cause in those patients.

Julie is a new mom and children's book author, who escapes into the bright Crayola-colored world of her creation in order to leave behind the darkness caused by her post-partum depression.

Filmmaker Amy Berg sheds light on the sexual, financial and spiritual abuses heaped upon members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by their former leader, Warren Jeffs.

Inspired by the transformation of the sex-trafficking survivors whose lives she follows, the filmmaker finds the courage to break the silence about sexual abuse in her own life.

The story of a lifelong swimmer-turned-artist, exploring the issues of sexuality, grief, and addiction.

A chain reaction of confrontations and romantic encounters occurs when college friends reunite for one's wedding.

A bold, feminist film about how the vagina has shaped our view of the world and the shame around female sexuality. Women from 19 to 77 years old talk about puberty, menstruation, birth, motherhood, infertility, menopause, pleasure, sex, pain, trauma, gender, sexuality, cancer, rape and FGM.

To mark the ten year anniversary of her death, Amy Winehouse's closest family and friends reveal the truth about the music icon and the impact that her loss has had on them. With access to never-before-seen family archives and rare musical performances, this highly personal and powerful account of the life and death of one of Britain’s best-loved musicians offers a new interpretation of her life, her loves and her legacy.

The publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses in 1988 sparked a culture war in Britain between the Muslim community, who considered the book blasphemous and called for the book to be banned, and those defending it as an expression of freedom of speech. Protests, began in England and soon spread to the rest of the Islamic world, culminating in February 1989 with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa - a death sentence on the writer. Now, 30 years on, Mobeen Azhar embarks on a journey to examine the lasting effect the book has had on the Muslim community, and continue to have an impact today. Mobeen hears from a range of people affected by the so called 'Rushdie Affair' - from the men who took an early stand against the book; to a writer who wrestled with the book's publication, complex questions of free speech, and her own religious beliefs; and a former member of the National Front who claims that the furor over the book became a recruiting tool for them.

Interviews with victims of sexual abuse, including some offences committed by the disk jockey and TV host Sir Jimmy Savile, talk about their long struggle to be heard and believed.

Undercover in Tibet reveals the regime of terror which dominates daily life and makes freedom of expression an impossibility. Tash meets victims of arbitrary arrests, detention, torture and ‘disappearances’ and uncovers evidence of enforced sterilizations on ethnic Tibetan women. He sees for himself the impact of the enormous military and police presence in the region, the hunger and hardship being endured by many Tibetans and hears warnings of the uprising taking place across the provinces now.

A documentary about the making of director Martin Scorsese's 1993 film adaptation of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence. It features a conversation between Scorsese and the star of the film, Daniel Day Lewis, as well as rare behind-the-scenes footage.

West Texas, in the 1960's. A tale of two 12-year-olds who embark on an adventure to find new parents in order to escape their unhappy and emotionally unsatisfying family life.

A photojournalist turns her lens on the decades of sexual abuse her family and community experienced at the hands of her grandfather in this unflinching portrait of intergenerational trauma, family secrets, and redemption.

In the heartwarming short documentary, “Makayla’s Voice: A Letter to the World”, we are introduced to a remarkable young girl whose spirit and determination defy all expectations. Makayla, a black teenage girl, has spent her life grappling with a rare form of autism that rendered her essentially nonverbal. However, her parents, filled with unwavering belief in their daughter's potential, embarked on a transformative journey to discover the true depth of Makayla's inner world.