Best movies like The Children Nobody Wanted

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Children Nobody Wanted Starring Fredric Lehne, Michelle Pfeiffer, Matt Clark, Noble Willingham, and more. If you liked The Children Nobody Wanted then you may also like: Yours, Mine and Ours, Where the Lilies Bloom, White Oleander, Winter Stories, Nowhere Special 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.

True story of Tom Butterfield and his crusade to provide family life for homeless children, becoming not only the first bachelor caretaker, but the youngest single adult to become a legal foster parent in the state of Missouri.

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Yours, Mine and Ours

When a widower with ten children marries a widow with eight, can the twenty of them ever come together as one big happy family?

Where the Lilies Bloom

A family of children decide not to tell anyone their father has died, and to live on their own in the backwoods of rural North Carolina. If the state finds out they are on their own, they will be split up and sent to live in foster homes.

White Oleander

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

Winter Stories

An adult Martin Roy reminisces about his life in the 1966/67 school year. At fifteen years old and in his last year of junior high school, he breathed, ate and slept hockey. He collected hockey cards, played street hockey with his friends, tried skating and ice hockey for the first time in his life, but was most fascinated with his local national league team, the Montréal Canadiens, and its star player, Henri Richard. He dreamed of growing up and working for the Canadiens franchise. But a more immediate goal was to get tickets to one of their games, using M. Richard and his banker father, Hervé, as possible conduits to that goal.

Nowhere Special

John, a 35-year-old window cleaner, has dedicated his life to bringing up his 4-year-old son, Michael, after the child's mother left them soon after giving birth. When John is given only a few months left to live, he attempts to find a new, perfect family for Michael, determined to shield him from the terrible reality of the situation.

Our Mother's House

Seven British children bury their mother and hide her death, until their long-lost father returns.

Anne of Green Gables

A retelling of L.M. Montgomery's story of Anne Shirley, an orphan who is accidentally sent to a couple looking to adopt a boy instead

Black Girl

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

The Deep End of the Ocean

A three-year-old boy disappears during his mother's high school reunion. Nine years later, by chance, he turns up in the town in which the family has just relocated.

6.6 / 10 2013 Drama
suggested by: user499bxanmvo3

Gimme Shelter

After running away from her abusive mother, a streetwise teen seeks refuge with her father, but he rejects her when he learns that she's pregnant.

7.6 / 10 2001 Drama
suggested by: user4802odlo6zh

I Am Sam

Sam, a neurodivergent man, has a daughter with a homeless woman who abandons them when they leave the hospital, leaving Sam to raise Lucy on his own. But as Lucy grows up, Sam's limitations as a parent start to become a problem and the authorities take her away. Sam convinces high-priced lawyer Rita to take his case pro bono and in turn teaches her the value of love and family.

My Girl

Vada Sultenfuss is obsessed with death. Her mother is dead, and her father runs a funeral parlor. She is also in love with her English teacher, and joins a poetry class over the summer just to impress him. Thomas J., her best friend, is "allergic to everything", and sticks with Vada despite her hangups. When Vada's father hires Shelly, and begins to fall for her, things take a turn to the worse...

Parenthood

The story of the Buckman family and friends, attempting to bring up their children. They suffer/enjoy all the events that occur: estranged relatives, the 'black sheep' of the family, the eccentrics, the skeletons in the closet, and the rebellious teenagers.

The Family

Anne Hamilton-Byrne was beautiful, charismatic and delusional. She was also incredibly dangerous. Convinced she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Hamilton-Byrne headed an apocalyptic sect called The Family, which was prominent in Melbourne from the 1960s through to the 1990s. With her husband Bill, she acquired numerous children – some through adoption scams, some born to cult members – and raised them as her own. Isolated from the outside world, the children were dressed in matching outfits, had identical dyed blonde hair, and were allegedly beaten, starved and injected with LSD. Taught that Hamilton-Byrne was both their mother and the messiah, the children were eventually rescued during a police raid in 1987, but their trauma had only just begun.

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

Young Jeremiah lives in a stable environment with loving foster parents until the day his troubled mother, Sarah, returns to claim him. Jeremiah becomes swept up in his mother's dangerous world of drugs, seedy hotels, strip joints and revolving lovers. Salvation comes in the form of the boy's ultrareligious grandparents, but soon Jeremiah's mother returns. Maternal love binds the pair together on the road until Sarah's desperate and depraved lifestyle finally consumes her.

Instant Family

When Pete and Ellie decide to start a family, they stumble into the world of foster care adoption. They hope to take in one small child but when they meet three siblings, including a rebellious 15 year old girl, they find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight.

A Private Matter

The true story of Romper Room host "Miss Sherri" Finkbine, who, after the devastating effects of thalidomide were discovered in the early 1960s, sparked a firestorm of controversy with her determination to obtain an abortion.

Begin Again

Gretta, a budding songwriter, finds herself alone after her boyfriend Dave ditches her. Her life gains purpose when Dan, a record label executive, notices her talent.

The Short History of the Long Road

Nola grew up living on a van with her father, Clint; two nomads against the world. When tragedy strikes, Nola must confront the reality of life on the road alone, learning to own her grief, her past and her new destination.

Second Best

The difficult relationship between a british postal officer and his adoptive son.

Beyond the Blackboard

Inspired by a true story, “Beyond the Blackboard” is about a 24-year-old first-time teacher who makes a difference in the lives of the homeless children she teaches in a shelter’s makeshift classroom. Set in 1987 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this movie tells the story a brand-new teacher and Mom who is given a tougher than expected teaching job and winds up teaching homeless children in a school that is housed in a room and called, literally, The School with No Name. She has some personal prejudicial hurdles to cross before she is able to be a true teacher for these children and of course there are hurdles like the lack of books and supplies.

In the Best Interest of the Children

Fact-based story of a legal battle fought over custody of five siblings.

7.0 / 10 1998 Drama
suggested by: user4471nu7g7fz

A Father for Brittany

Keith and Kim Lussier are a childless couple who are given custody of a 3-month-old foster child, Brittany. However, tragedy strikes when Kim dies of cancer in the middle of the adoption process, leaving Keith to fight for Brittany's custody alone.

The Trial of Old Drum

Inspired by a true story set in Missouri, "The Trial of Old Drum" tells the story of a valiant golden retriever, Old Drum, an orphan dog that becomes a boy's best friend and is then forced to stand trial for killing a neighbor's sheep.

The Elizabeth Smart Story

Based on the true story of the kidnapping of teenager Elizabeth Smart,in June 2002, by two people in Salt Lake City, Utah.

A Place for Annie

Baby Annie is HIV positive and has been left in the clinic by her drug addicted mother. To prevent that she's deported to a home where they'd just wait for her to die, nurse Susan takes charge of Annie at her home. Two years later she plans too adopt her -- but suddenly Annie's mother reappears and demands her back. And under the law, Susan, as foster-mother, has no claim to the child.

Magnificent 7

Inspired by the life of Jacqui Jackson, the story follows a self-sacrificing mother of seven children, four of whom are, in one form or another, autistic.

Love's Unending Legacy

Missie three years later: being a single mother after her husband Willie was shot during a poker scuffle. She and Maddy move back in with her parents Clark and Marty. She finds a new home, and finds a new teaching position that she settles right into, but Missie has lost all faith in herself, until a chance encounter at her father's church where she adopts homeless orphan Belinda Marshall.

Ordinary Angels

A hairdresser single-handedly rallies an entire community to help a widowed father save the life of his critically ill young daughter.

Escaping My Stalker

A street kid, Taylor, has been adopted by Sandy (Alexandra Paul) & Larry. They run a shelter for people in need, and rescued Taylor from the street, and a life of crime. Unfortunately, Taylor's past may be catching up with her. She's got a stalker, and he means business. Can she figure out who's behind this, and why before her new life is snatched away?

For the Love of a Child

1959, support from US troops based in Asia and later from the Sates enables two actresses to start a charity for mixed-race 'orphans' who are locally neglected as outcasts. Thus originates Childhelp, which later runs multi-disciplinary centers for abused and/or neglected children in the States. Among them is bright Jacob Fletcher, whose stepfather, a lawyer, terrorized him into utter trauma and reclaims him shortly after 10 months in jail. Jacob's peers have distressing stories of their own, but competent, devoted staff helps most of them decisively on the former farm, using animal therapy.

The First of May

Cory (Dan Byrd) is a foster child nobody wants. Carlotta (Academy Award-nominee Julie Harris) is an elderly woman the world has forgotten. Together, they find friendship and family when they join a traveling circus. Also features Mickey Rooney and Joe DiMaggio, in his last screen appearance.

The Christmas Bunny

The Christmas Bunny tells the story of a lonely foster child (Sophie Bolen) who finds a lost, injured rabbit in the woods on Christmas Eve. The rabbit is nursed back to health by The Bunny Lady (Florence Henderson), who runs a rabbit rescue in an old barn behind her Michigan farmhouse.

5.3 / 10 1988 Drama
suggested by: user8795aqfs9tj

Zelly and Me

A young orphan who lives with her grandmother in a large Virginian home infatuates herself with the voices of Joan d'Arc. Her French nanny seeks out the help of a rich suitor to take her and the orphan away when she realizes that the grandmother cannot offer the orphan the love that she needs.

Dying for A Family

Life with the latest foster family seems good for teenage siblings Darcie and Hannah. But when Hannah disappears without a trace, it’s down to younger sister Darcie to solve the mystery – and save the family from dark truths that threaten to destroy everything.

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