Best movies like The Old Oak

Sandra is a young woman who has only one weekend to convince her colleagues they must give up their bonuses in order for her to keep her job — not an easy task in this economy.

An immigrant in search of the American dream is forced to take a room in a boarding house and soon finds herself in a nightmare from which she can't escape.

As Magdalena's 15th birthday approaches, her simple, blissful life is complicated by the discovery that she's pregnant. Kicked out of her house, she finds a new family with her great-granduncle and gay cousin.

Stevie, fresh from prison in Scotland, finds a job on a London construction site. The working conditions are poor and most of the men are working under aliases, due to immigration status and to not conflict with their "signing on" for unemployment benefits. Some coworkers help Stevie secure housing, squatting in a council estate. Then Stevie meets Susan, from Ireland, who's struggling to be a professional singer.

Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells king Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. These are stories based on whatever will be happening in Portugal during the production time of the film. As in the book, these stories will be tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events. This film will be about the reality of a disgraced country, Portugal, under the effects of a global economic crisis.

Drama telling the story of Blue, a young man of Jamaican descent living in Brixton in 1980, as he hangs out with his friends, fronts a dub sound system, loses his job, struggles with family problems and has his friendships tested by racism.

Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink in 'the Bathtub', a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe—for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack—temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.

A Yorkshire coal mine is threatened with closure and the only hope is for the men to enter their Grimley Colliery Brass Band into a national competition. They believe they have no hope until Gloria appears carrying her Flugelhorn. At first mocked for being a woman, she soon becomes the only chance for the band to win.

Jimmy Gralton returns from New York and reopens his beloved community hall, only to meet opposition from the local parish.

A small town girl is caught between dead-end jobs. A high-profile, successful man becomes wheelchair bound following an accident. The man decides his life is not worth living until the girl is hired for six months to be his new caretaker. Worlds apart and trapped together by circumstance, the two get off to a rocky start. But the girl becomes determined to prove to the man that life is worth living and as they embark on a series of adventures together, each finds their world changing in ways neither of them could begin to imagine.

It's mid 19th century, north of France. The story of a coal miner's town. They are exploited by the mine's owner. One day the decide to go on strike, and then the authorities repress them.

Chilean exiles in Paris discuss the problems facing them. They kidnap and attempt to re-educate a touring singer from their fatherland.

A middle aged carpenter, who requires state welfare after injuring himself, is joined by a single mother in a similar scenario.

It’s 2017 in Bisbee, Arizona, an old copper-mining town just miles from the Mexican border. The town’s close-knit community prepares to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bisbee’s darkest hour: the infamous Bisbee Deportation of 1917, during which 1,200 striking miners were violently taken from their homes, banished to the middle of the desert, and left to die. Townspeople confront this violent, misunderstood past by staging dramatic recreations of the escalating strike. These dramatized scenes are based on subjective versions of the story and “directed,” in a sense, by residents with conflicting views of the event. Deeply personal segments torn from family history build toward a massive restaging of the deportation itself on the exact day of its 100th anniversary.

In the Belgian town of Liege, in order to buy a moped for the wife of their friend Patrick, three men decide to organise a large-scale hold-up. As expected, nothing goes to plan.

A man in his fifties reminisces about his childhood growing up in a Welsh mining village at the turn of the 20th century.

A fisherman and a rising lawyer who grew up together as brothers fall in love with the same woman.

In Milagro, a small town in the American Southwest, Ladd Devine plans to build a major new resort development. While activist Ruby Archuleta and lawyer/newspaper editor Charlie Bloom realize that this will result in the eventual displacement of the local Hispanic farmers, they cannot arouse much opposition because of the short term opportunities offered by construction jobs.

Like a Candide dreaming of Eldorado, Jallel lands in France, hoping to try his luck. From encounter to encounter, hostel to social welfare group, Jallel will make his way through a Paris of outcasts. Although failing to achieve his hopes, he discovers and shares in the solidarity felt by the destitute. –uniFrance

In a Welsh coal mining valley, a young man with a beautiful singing voice is called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice when a pit disaster threatens.

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

A married, middle-class London couple are shocked when they seem to have been blessed — or cursed — with an immaculate conception.

Upon discovering that their town is up for sale, crafty Irish villagers scheme to raise the money to prevent the buy-out. They hold a poetry contest with a tempting grand prize -- the deed to their local pub. But what could happen when a duplicitous American rapper emerges as the best poet around?

Khorshid, a blind child growing up in Tajikistan, is constantly distracted by music and sounds. This frequently causes him to be late to his job as an instrument tuner even though he runs the risk of being fired at a time when his family is in danger of being evicted from their house.

A union pensioner and his wife are robbed, but find that merely getting the assailants brought to justice is not enough for their consciences.

Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by social services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her history still haunts her.

Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.

He’s lived for too long off his parents. It’s time for 40-year-old slacker Jacques to get by on his own. One-time gigolo and a borderline bum, he knows what he wants – to become rich and famous. He even has a business plan: tourism combined with cheap plastic surgery. Jacques moves in with his older sister, Monique, who manages an Emmaus village in the south west of France. And before long, the smooth-talking chancer has convinced a group of workers to pool their meagre funds and set out on a trip to a clinic in Bulgaria, where all their dreams of a brighter and more beautiful future will all come true. If only…

A mentally disturbed man named Jérémie is scouring the area in search of women he can strangle with his scarf, which is embroidered with an ibis.

Antoine and Olga, a French couple, have been living in a small village in Galicia for a long time. They practice eco-responsible agriculture and restore abandoned houses to facilitate repopulation. Everything should be idyllic but for their opposition to a wind turbine project that creates a serious conflict with their neighbors. The tension will rise to the point of irreparability.

A dark tale of working-class life in Marseilles, a city in crisis. Interesting characters include a hard-bitten but compassionate fish market worker with a drug addicted daughter and a moody bartender with a shocking secret life.

The first part of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.

When Jamie's maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated - Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.

A Kentucky woman whose mine-worker husband is nearly killed in a cave-in, and whose father is slowly dying of black lung disease, joins the picket lines for a long, violent strike.

A comedy in which the tenants of a high rise work together to defeat a cruel loan shark.

A Sicilian family deals with the arrival of a group of immigrants on their island.

After promising 1100 employees that they would protect their jobs, the managers of a factory decide to suddenly close up shop. Laurent takes the lead in a fight against this decision.

Spencer is a cat person. Laura is a dog person. Spencer is headed to a beach town to work on his thesis. Laura is coming to the same beach town to escape the shambles of her life. Their personalities couldn’t be more different, but when a reservation screw up lands them – and their pets – in the same vacation rental house, they all have to figure out how to get along with each other.

Jeannette is a single mother living in a working-class community in Marseilles; she tries to support herself and her two kids on her salary as a check-out girl at a supermarket and lives in an apartment complex where everyone is thrown into close proximity with everyone else. Marius is working as a security guard at a cement factory that has gone out of business; he's also squatting in the building, since the plant is soon to be demolished and he'll be needing his money later on. One day, Jeannette happens by the factory, and spotting several cans of paint, tries to take two of them home with her. Marius spots her and tries to chase her away, while she rails at him with curses against the capitalist system. The next day, an apologetic Marius appears at her doorstep, cans of paint in hand; the two soon become friendly, and a romance begins to bloom, though it quickly becomes obvious that Jeannette's romance novel fantasies are a bit off the mark from what Marius has in mind.

Documentary telling the story of the shale oil industry and its lasting impact on the community of West Lothian. Presented by geologist Professor Iain Stewart.

Hear about three cases of individuals and communities whose lives were forever altered by rabies: a village under attack from a rabid beast; a town plunged into darkness that claims their children; and a young woman saved by medical experimentation.

Looks at the work of Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado (b.1944). In his monumental photo-essay, Workers, Salgado’s dominant theme is the displacement of manual labor by technological advances. He documents the effects of this new industrial revolution on laborers in Eastern Europe, Cuba, Gdansk, Brazil, India, Sicily, and Bangladesh. Includes archival footage of Salgado’s life and commentary by artists, photographers, critics, and writers such as Jorge Armado, Robert Delpire, Jimmy Fox, and Arthur Miller.

Since 24 February 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, several million refugees have already been taken in by Poles. In the Lublin region, near the Bug River, which marks the border with Ukraine and Belarus, farmers, shopkeepers, a photographer, and a teacher tell how their daily lives have been transformed by the outbreak of this war.

A glance at the divided U.S. political system through the eyes of a young Syrian refugee on the streets of Memphis, TN, as he faces the harsh realities of chasing the American dream.

At the age of 51 and after 20 months on unemployment, Thierry starts a new job that soon brings him face to face with a moral dilemma. How much is he willing to accept to keep his job?

Dreams and reality collide as a young woman navigates a tumultuous relationship amid rising social tensions, protests and tragedies in Paris.

In the turbulent aftermath of the Tunisian revolution, young Samia flees her homeland. She braves hostile seas in the crossing to France, but once there she finds that her struggles have only just begun. With no friends, no family, and — most crucially — no immigration papers, Samia has to figure out how to make a life and a living in a foreign land. She meets a young man, Imed, and soon finds work in the employ of the elegant Leila. But her presence in Leila's middle-class household triggers a shift in its dynamics, and soon Samia is enmeshed in a web of sexual tension.

A poor young Scandinavian immigrant couple winds up in Canada in search of prosperity, but the hardship of the Great Depression takes a toll in a way they never feared when they went in search of the dream.

Carmen Aguirre and Tony Nardi star in a remarkable story of friends, lovers, seekers and thieves. Set at the intersection of the Latin American, First Nations and Italian communities, "Bella Ciao!" captures a struggle towards solidarity in East Vancouver's urban mix.

With the closure of the sugar mill, the little town of Molasses is devastated, lifeless. Aldo and Monica form a young married couple that do not find a way to survive. By supporting each other, they try to save their world without loosing their faith.