Best movies like The Birth of a Nation

The Untold Story of Nat Turner

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Birth of a Nation Starring Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King, Jackie Earle Haley, and more. If you liked The Birth of a Nation then you may also like: 12 Years a Slave, What's Love Got to Do with It, The Woman, The Keeping Room, Amazing Grace 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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12 Years a Slave

In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty as well as unexpected kindnesses Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist will forever alter his life.

What's Love Got to Do with It

Singer Tina Turner rises to stardom while mustering the courage to break free from her abusive husband Ike.

The Woman

A lawyer puts his family in jeopardy when he captures the last member of a violent clan and tries to forcibly tame her.

The Keeping Room

In this radically reimagined American Western set towards the end of the Civil War, Southerner Augusta encounters two renegade, drunken soldiers who are on a mission of pillage and violence. After escaping an attempted assault, Augusta races back to the isolated farmhouse that she shares with her sister Louise and their female slave Mad. When the pair of soldiers track Augusta down intent on exacting revenge, the trio of women are forced to take up arms to fend off their assailants, finding ways to resourcefully defend their home––and themselves––as the escalating attacks become more unpredictable and relentless.

6.9 / 10 2006 Drama
suggested by: OceanicOstrich

Amazing Grace

The true story of William Wilberforce and his courageous quest to end the British slave trade. Along the way, Wilberforce meets intense opposition, but his minister urges him to see the cause through.

Bastard Out of Carolina

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

Beloved

After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved". Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things start to happen...

Braveheart

Enraged at the slaughter of Murron, his new bride and childhood love, Scottish warrior William Wallace slays a platoon of the local English lord's soldiers. This leads the village to revolt and, eventually, the entire country to rise up against English rule.

The Butler

A look at the life of Cecil Gaines who served eight presidents as the White House's head butler from 1952 to 1986, and had a unique front-row seat as political and racial history was made.

Cold Mountain

In this classic story of love and devotion set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, a wounded Confederate soldier named W.P. Inman deserts his unit and travels across the South, aiming to return to his young wife, Ada, who he left behind to tend their farm. As Inman makes his perilous journey home, Ada struggles to keep their home intact with the assistance of Ruby, a mysterious drifter sent to help her by a kindly neighbor.

Glory

Robert Gould Shaw leads the US Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates.

The Crow

Exactly one year after young rock guitarist Eric Draven and his fiancée are brutally killed by a ruthless gang of criminals, Draven—watched over by a hypnotic crow—returns from the grave to exact revenge.

Black Snake

A man searches for his brother on an island where a vicious woman keeps slaves on a plantation.

The Beguiled

During the Civil War, at a Southern girls’ boarding school, young women take in an injured enemy soldier. As they provide refuge and tend to his wounds, the house is taken over with sexual tension and dangerous rivalries, and taboos are broken in an unexpected turn of events.

Mudbound

In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.

Hotel Rwanda

Inspired by true events, this film takes place in Rwanda in the 1990s when more than a million Tutsis were killed in a genocide that went mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world. Hotel owner Paul Rusesabagina houses over a thousand refuges in his hotel in attempt to save their lives.

Emperor

An escaped slave travels north and has chance encounters with Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Based on the life story of Shields Green.

A Dry White Season

During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.

Ghosts of Mississippi

A Mississippi district attorney and the widow of Medgar Evers struggle to bring a white supremacist to justice for the 1963 murder of the civil rights leader.

Gods and Generals

The film centers mostly around the personal and professional life of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, a brilliant if eccentric Confederate general, from the outbreak of the American Civil War until its halfway point.

Goodbye Uncle Tom

Two documentary filmmakers go back in time to the pre-Civil War American South, to film the slave trade.

I Spit on Your Grave

Jennifer is a writer working on a new novel and, needing to get out of the city to finish it, hires a riverside apartment in upstate New York to finish her book—attracting the attention of a number of rowdy male locals.

Harriet

The extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history.

The Liberation of L.B. Jones

Undertaker L.B. Jones, the richest black man in his county of Tennessee, is divorcing his wife for infidelity with a white policeman. Taking a stand against racism, he is greeted with a hostile bunch of Southern bigots and other various stereotypes.

The Magdalene Sisters

Four women are given into the custody of the Magdalene sisterhood asylum to correct their sinful behavior: Crispina and Rose have given birth to a premarital child, Margaret got raped by her cousin and the orphan Bernadette had been repeatedly caught flirting with the boys. All have to work in a laundry under the strict supervision of the nuns, who break their wills through sadistic punishment.

I Spit on Your Grave 2

Naturally beautiful, Katie has just settled into New York where she, like many other young women, is trying to make it as a model. But what starts out as an innocent and simple photo shoot soon turns into something disturbingly unthinkable! Raped, tortured and kidnapped to a foreign country, Jessica is buried alive and left to die. Against all odds, she manages to escape. Severely injured, she will have to tap into the darkest places of the human psyche to not only survive, but to exact her revenge…

Manderlay

In 1933, after leaving Dogville, Grace Margaret Mulligan sees a slave being punished at a cotton farm called Manderlay. Officially slavery is illegal and Grace stands up against the owners of the farm. She stays with some gangsters in Manderlay and tries to influence the situation. But when harvest time comes Grace sees the social and economic reality of Manderlay.

Selma

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Freedom

Two men separated by 100 years are united in their search for freedom. In 1856 a slave, Samuel Woodward and his family, escape from the Monroe Plantation near Richmond, Virginia. A secret network of ordinary people known as the Underground Railroad guide the family on their journey north to Canada. They are relentlessly pursued by the notorious slave hunter Plimpton. Hunted like a dog and haunted by the unthinkable suffering he and his forbears have endured, Samuel is forced to decide between revenge or freedom. 100 years earlier in 1748, John Newton the Captain of a slave trader sails from Africa with a cargo of slaves, bound for America. On board is Samuel's great grandfather whose survival is tied to the fate of Captain Newton. The voyage changes Newton's life forever and he creates a legacy that will inspire Samuel and the lives of millions for generations to come.

The Rosa Parks Story

A seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.

Race to Freedom: The Underground Railroad

A number of slaves risk their lives to escape their masters with their only help coming from the famous secret slave escape network.

White Lie

A black New York man returns to his southern hometown to investigate his father's lynching at the hands of a white mob.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

In February, 1962, as the civil rights movement reaches Bayonne, Louisiana, a New York journalist arrives to interview Jane Pittman, who has just turned 110. She tells him her story dating back to her earliest memories before slavery ended. In between the chapters of her life, the present-day struggles of Blacks in Bayonne, urged on by Jimmy, are dramatized.

A House Divided

In the aftermath of the terrible Civil War which has devastated the South, Amanda America Dixon returns home to find she has become the sole heir to a vast cotton plantation. But the dreadful secret which has blighted her life threatens to deprive her of the birthright which her beloved father David had struggled for so long to create. Raised by her father and grandmother to be the perfect white Southern Belle, Amanda's true mother was a black slave Julia. Confronted with the forces of greed and bigotry, Amanda has to face not only the hatred of a racist world, but the complex truth of a family whose lives have been built on a lie.

Skin

A destitute young man, raised by racist skinheads and notorious among white supremacists, turns his back on hatred and violence to transform his life, with the help of a black activist and the woman he loves.

Antebellum

Successful author Veronica finds herself trapped in a horrifying reality and must uncover the mind-bending mystery before it's too late.

The Tuskegee Airmen

During the Second World War, a special project is begun by the US Army Air Corps to integrate African American pilots into the Fighter Pilot Program. Known as the "Tuskegee Airman" for the name of the airbase at which they were trained, these men were forced to constantly endure harassement, prejudice, and much behind the scenes politics until at last they were able to prove themselves in combat.

Skin Game

Quincy Drew and Jason O’Rourke, a pair of friends and con men—the former white, the latter a Northern-born free Black man— travel from town to town in the pre–Civil War American West. In their scam, Quincy sells Jason into slavery, frees him, and the two move on to the next town of suckers . . . until a con gone wrong leads Jason into real danger.

I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance Is Mine

Jennifer Hills is still tormented by the brutal sexual assault she endured years ago. She’s changed identities and cities, reluctantly joining a support group where she begins to piece together a new life. But when her new friend’s murderer goes free and the tales of serial rapists haunt her, Jennifer will hunt down the men responsible and do what the system won’t – make them pay for their crimes in the most horrific ways imaginable. Only this time, no jury may be able to save her.

Trade

A Texas cop, whose own daughter might have been forced into sexual slavery, joins forces with a Mexican youth to find the boy's sister, who was abducted and forced into prostitution. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian woman who was promised a better life in America also becomes a victim.

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.

Black Fox: The Price of Peace

After blaming Britt for his wife's decision to stay with the Native Americans who captured her, an abusive husband organizes a party of vigilantes to accompany him into Indian territory.

Free State of Jones

In 1863, Mississippi farmer Newt Knight serves as a medic for the Confederate Army. Opposed to slavery, Knight would rather help the wounded than fight the Union. After his nephew dies in battle, Newt returns home to Jones County to safeguard his family but is soon branded an outlaw deserter. Forced to flee, he finds refuge with a group of runaway slaves hiding out in the swamps. Forging an alliance with the slaves and other farmers, Knight leads a rebellion that would forever change history.

Slaves

A Kentucky slave fights for his freedom from cruel overseer whose mistress eventually joins Davis and the other slaves in their revolt.

I Am Not Your Negro

Working from the text of James Baldwin’s unfinished final novel, director Raoul Peck creates a meditation on what it means to be Black in the United States.

Class of '61

Three West Point 1861 generation cadets and friends go on opposite sides after the breakout of The Civil War, with tragic consequences. A subplot involves Lucius, a Shelby Peyton's slave, who kills a slave trader and goes on the run.

Red Mountain

Towards the end of the American Civil War, a rebel captain flees to Colorado to join a band of Southern mercenaries. He drags an innocent gold prospecting couple into trouble when the husband is accused of a murder he committed.

Christmas in Canaan

Set in the 1960s, Christmas in Canaan is a drama about a black family and a white family that learn to love each other out of their Christian beliefs.

Death of a Prophet

After breaking ties with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became a man marked for death...and it was just a matter of time before his enemies closed in. Despite death threats and intimidation, Malcolm marched on - continuing to spread the word of equality and brotherhood right up until the moment of his brutal and untimely assassination. Highlighted by newsreel footage and interviews, this is the story of the last twenty-four hours of Malcolm X. Featuring the music of jazz percussionist Max Roach.

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