Best movies like The Arsonist

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Arsonist Starring Khalid Salleh, Bell Ngasri, Kuswadinata, Anuar Idris, and more. If you liked The Arsonist then you may also like: The Namesake, Ocean of Pearls, Backdraft, A Better Life, Too Young to Be a Dad 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.

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The Arsonist involves the struggles of an undocumented immigrant family and a boy's coming-of-age. The son Kesuma must forge his own identity against the intimidating presence of his father Kakang, a man proud of his Javanese heritage and well aware of the social inequalities that allow his exploitation. Kakang counteracts by torching the property of those who slight him, leaving Kesuma simultaneously proud, fearful and ashamed. A clash of wills is all but inevitable. The film climaxes in a poignant conflagration, literal and metaphorical.

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The Namesake

After moving from Calcutta to New York, members of the Ganguli family maintain a delicate balancing act between honoring the traditions of their native India and blending into American culture. Although parents Ashoke and Ashima are proud of the sacrifices they make to give their children opportunities, their son Gogol strives to forge his own identity without forgetting his heritage.

Ocean of Pearls

As a Sikh man with a full beard and turban, AMRIT SINGH is often the target of racial profiling. But when he sees his dreams of becoming Chief of Surgery at a state-of-the-art transplant center dwindle because of his appearance, Amrit goes against a tradition he's maintained his whole life and cuts his hair. Hiding this decision from his girlfriend and family in Toronto is only the start of a series of compromises Amrit finds himself making as he deals with hospital politics and health care injustices. When his compromises result in the death of a patient, Amrit begins to reexamine the value of the religious traditions he'd turned his back on.

Backdraft

Firemen brothers Brian and Stephen McCaffrey battle each other over past slights while trying to stop an arsonist with a diabolical agenda from torching Chicago.

A Better Life

A gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.

Too Young to Be a Dad

When 15-year-old Matt Freeman gets his girlfriend, Francesca, pregnant, her family decides to put the unborn baby up for adoption. Matt agrees to the decision, but begins to rethink it. This movie is taken from the father's point of view.

The Long, Hot Summer

Accused barn burner and conman Ben Quick arrives in a small Mississippi town and quickly ingratiates himself with its richest family, the Varners.

You've Been Trumped

In this David and Goliath story for the 21st century, a group of proud Scottish homeowners take on celebrity tycoon Donald Trump as he buys up one of Scotland's last wilderness areas to build a golf resort.

Fighting Mad

An evil corporation tries to pressure a bunch of Arkansas farmers and ranchers to sell their land so they can strip-mine it for coal. The fiercely proud and stubborn Hunter family refuse to give in. This leads to a bitter conflict that results in several casualties. Eventually the take-charge no-nonsense Tom Hunter exacts a harsh revenge on the villains with the help of his bow and arrow.

Raging Grace

An undocumented Filipina immigrant lands a job as a careworker for a seemingly terminal old man, securing a better life for her and her daughter. But a dark discovery threatens to destroy everything she’s strived for and holds dear.

The Debut

Filipino-American high school student Ben (Dante Basco) works in a comic book shop to earn money to pay his way into Cal Arts. His father, a postman, is determined that his son--who has won a pre-med scholarship to UCLA--will become a doctor. The eighteenth birthday party of Ben's sister, Rose, sets off a comedic and touching series of events and family struggles that will in turn determine young Ben's future. This fresh independent production from Gene Cajayon presents a lighthearted and warm coming-of-age tale filtered through the eyes of an American subculture rarely seen on film.

I Carry You with Me

An epic love story spanning decades is sparked by a chance encounter between two men in provincial Mexico. Based on a true story, ambition and societal pressure propel an aspiring chef to leave his soulmate and make the treacherous journey to New York, where life will never be the same.

Italianamerican

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese interviews his mother and father about their life in New York and family history back in Sicily.

Meantime

A working-class family in London's East End is struggling to stay afloat during the recession under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Only the mother Mavis is working; father Frank and the couple's two sons Colin, a timid, chronically shy individual and Mark, an outspoken, headstrong young man, are on the dole. This situation is contrasted by the presence of Mavis's sister Barbara, and her husband John, whose financial and social loftiness appears to be a comfortable facade over the unspoken soreness of a lackluster marriage.

Pushing Hands

Mr. Chu is an elderly widower who teaches tai chi chuan in Beijing. He moves to America to live with his son's family, but finds the cultural adjustment difficult. Since his daughter-in-law is a white woman who does not speak Chinese, Mr. Chu's son, Alex, must mediate.

Freedom Song

Freedom Song (2000) is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan. In the midst of the Freedom Summer, a group of high school students in the small town are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community. The young activists meet resistance not only from white southerners, but from their parents, who have experienced firsthand the violence that can result from speaking out.[1] As high school students band together with the support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they make strides in registering African-American voters and gaining awareness for their cause.

Twilight Time

After spending 20 years in America, aging widower Marko Sekulovic (Karl Malden) returns to his Yugoslavian homeland to take care of his two young grandchildren. But Marko's quiet life is in for a shake up when he meets the pretty new village schoolteacher, Lana (Jodi Thelen). Malden pays tribute to his Yugoslav heritage in this affecting 1982 drama.

The Younger Generation

Soap-opera about a social-climbing Jewish man and his old-world parents who are heartbroken by his rejection of them. Young Morris Goldfish follows his immigrant father into business. His ruthless business practices cause him to become a big success, and he moves the family to Park Avenue. They go, but were happier back on the East Side. Morris is ashamed of this parents and his humble origins, but learns in the end that there is more to life than money.

Being Blacker

After a ten year absence, acclaimed filmmaker Molly Dineen is back with a new feature documentary: Being Blacker; an intimate portrait of Jamaican-born reggae producer, businessman, father, son and prominent community figure, Blacker Dread. 40 years after featuring in Dineen’s first film, Blacker and his family, friends and community in South London face the combined challenges of rapid social change, gentrification, inequality, poverty, crime and racism as they seek to secure their futures. Made with intimacy and warmth, the film takes us deep into Blacker’s world as he buries his mother, closes his business and faces prison for the first time. Being Blacker offers a rarely-heard perspective on life in Britain today.

Windows on the World

After watching the news on 9/11 with his family, Fernando travels from Mexico to New York City to find his father, an undocumented worker at the World Trade Center's famous Windows on the World restaurant.

A Long Way Off

Jacob is tired of living on the family farm, submitting to the rules of his father. One day he demands an early inheritance from his father, who shocks his young son by agreeing to give it to him. So, he heads to the big city doing things his way without restraint, and for a while he does well-surprisingly well. He takes huge business risks and converts his small fortune into a big fortune, despite his extremely flamboyant lifestyle that attracts the wrong women, including seductive Laura, whose rich boyfriend Frank is often dangerously nearby. Jake had it all: money, ladies, prestige-but then-he loses it all and just when he things he's hit bottom the bottom drops some more- until he is eating out of dumpsters and eventually ends up living in a literal pig pen. Coming to his senses he heads home, determined to work in an entry level position for his dad, who surprises him once again by running to him-but is it to kiss him or kill him?

Eat a Bowl of Tea

An American-Chinese man brings over his wife from China to America, but the challenges of making a living and adjusting to a new life, plus the attentions of a gambler threaten their marriage.

Greendale

Neil Young's "musical novel", telling the story of a family, the murder of a cop and the evolution of a young girl named Sun Green. This is not a concert film. YOung himself shot actors on locations on his native Northern California home turf to craete his Greendale, a rural town that is a microcosm of a world in crisis. There is lots of music featured by Young and Crazy Horse. Special bonus features include "Making of" with brand new interviews with Neil and the cast; also 3 live performances of "Greendale" songs, more.

The Image You Missed

An Irish filmmaker grapples with the legacy of his estranged father, the late documentarian Arthur MacCaig, through MacCaig's decades-spanning archive of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Drawing on over 30 years of unique and never-seen-before footage, 'The Image You Missed' is an experimental essay film that weaves together a history of the Northern Irish 'Troubles' with the story of a son's search for his father. In the process, the film creates a candid encounter between two filmmakers born into different political moments, revealing their contrasting experiences of Irish nationalism, the role of images in social struggle, and the competing claims of personal and political responsibility.

Abu

As a gay man, filmmaker Arshad Khan examines his troubled relationship with his devout, Muslim father Abu. Using family archives and movies, Khan explores his struggle with his identity and compares it to his parents attempts to fit into Canada.

The Things We've Seen

Accusations of guilt turns a father into a fugitive, leaving his son to find and bring him home after struggling to put the pieces together.

The Autumn Heart

When a school bus driving woman (Tyne Daly) has a heart attack, she makes one request of her three daughters (Ally Sheedy, Marla Sucharetza, Marceline Hugo) - she wants them to find their long lost brother, who was taken away by their father (Jack Davidson) 16 years ago. What they discover is that while they have struggled, their father has become a wealthy man and their brother is in school at Harvard.

Lolly-Madonna XXX

In the early 1970s, a young woman passing through rural Tennessee unintentionally gets caught in a feud between two local neighboring clans, the Feathers and the Gutshalls.

China Cry: A True Story

Drama set in the 1950s, based on a true story, about a young girl, Sung Neng Yee, who is brought as part of a wealthy Chinese family. She is eager to become part of Mao Tze Tung's "new society", but soon becomes disenchanted by the economic misery the changes bring to her family. Before long, the authorities become aware of Neng Yee's feelings and she is taken to a labour camp, overseen by the sadistic Colonel Cheng.

Johnny Bull

An English girl comes to America to join her American husband in a Pennsylvania coal town in the late 1950's. She faces the ire of her new mother-in-law, a former Hungarian with different ideas about the life and culture that her son should have.

A Million to Juan

Romantic comedy about an honest Mexican immigrant who struggles without a green card by selling oranges on a street corner. One day a limousine pulls up and he is handed a check for $1,000,000 with instructions that he is to give the check back in 30 days. Initially he uses the check to convince people to extend credit to him. In the meantime he also attracts a woman who is in a dead end relationship with a bossy businessman. At the end of the 30 days, he finds his life in turmoil, the things he got on credit are repossessed, and he is being evicted from his dwelling and being sent back to Mexico.

The House of Dies Drear

A young black man and his family move into a home in rural Ohio and discover that during the Civil War it was used by a Dutch immigrant to smuggle runaway slaves to freedom. Soon they begin to suspect that the ghosts of slaves who passed through there are haunting the house.

Once You're Born You Can No Longer Hide

The life of a Northern Italian middle-class family is turned upside down after their 12-year-old son falls overboard during a sea trip, only to be picked up by a boat of illegal immigrants.

Sarah, Plain and Tall: Winter's End

The third installment of the Sarah trilogy provides a glorious and touching story of a family drawn together by adversity. On a cold winter day a stranger shows up at the farm. He is slow to reveal his identity. When they find out he is Jacobs father, John Witting, thought long ago dead, hard questions about the past are difficult to get answered.

Born Equal

Four characters living in one neighborhood in London - all living dramatically different lives, all of them on the edge - see their stories unfold.

Amaraica

An undocumented immigrant, Roberto, seeks a way to become lawful, but all efforts are put on hold when he becomes a new father at the onset of the US government's 'Zero Tolerance' child separation policy at the US / Mexico border.

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