Best movies like The River You Step In
Some people handle change better than others.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The River You Step In Starring Astrid Van Wieren, Sharmila Dey, Daniel Briere, Claire Burns, and more. If you liked The River You Step In then you may also like: Unforgivable, Which Way Is Up?, Woman Thou Art Loosed, Nil by Mouth, No One Would Tell 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.
Set in an East Toronto neighborhood, THE RIVER YOU STEP IN is about a maverick social worker and the troubled people she tries to help, and engages with issues of domestic abuse, addiction, and racial prejudice.
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Which Way Is Up?
Orange picker Leroy Jones inadvertently becomes a union leader and is forced out of town, leaving behind his sex-obsessed father, Rufus, and timid spouse, Annie Mae. He heads for Los Angeles, where he falls for union organizer Vanetta. Annie Mae seeks solace from local preacher Lenox Thomas, who eventually impregnates her. When Leroy catches wind, he heads home for a showdown with Lenox.
Woman Thou Art Loosed
An adaptation of Bishop T.D. Jakes' self-help novel, chronciling a woman's struggle to come to terms with her legacy of abuse, addiction and poverty.
Nil by Mouth
The family of Raymond, his wife Val and her brother Billy live in working-class London district. Also in their family is Val and Billy's mother Janet and grandmother Kath. Billy is a drug addict and Raymond kicks him out of the house, making him live on his own. Raymond is generally a rough and even violent person, and that leads to problems in the life of the family.
No One Would Tell
Shy sixteen-year-old Stacy Collins can't believe that the most popular guy in school, an attractive athlete named Bobby Tennison, is interested in her. At first she is flattered by his constant attention, but then he becomes possessive and jealous-telling her who she can speak to and what she can wear. Threats escalate into violence when Bobby thinks Stacy has stepped out of line. Soon she is walking on egg shells and living in fear. Having seen the tell-tale bruises, Stacy's best friend convinces her to break things off with Bobby-but in a moment of weakness, Stacy goes to meet him. It will be the last time she is seen alive.
Nothing But a Man
A proud black man and his school-teacher wife face discriminatory challenges in 1960s America.
Another Happy Day
A wedding at her parents' Annapolis estate hurls high-strung Lynn into the center of touchy family dynamics.
Run for Your Life
A journalist must make a decision to flee with her two children from her abusive ex-husband or kill him before he kills her.
Sex and Lies in Sin City
Star-studded thriller about the sordid murder of reckless Las Vegas casino mogul Ted Binion. This gritty film delves into the twisted world of Binion's beauty-queen-turned-stripper girlfriend, Sandy, and her secret lover. When Binion turns up dead of an overdose, all fingers point to Sandy, the beneficiary of his millions. A shockingly true tale of love gone sour and greed gone wild on the dark side of Las Vegas.
Come Back, Africa
Come Back, Africa chronicles the life of Zachariah, a black South African living under the rule of the harsh apartheid government in 1959.
Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story
Donna Yaklich meets Dennis the policeman and thinks she might have found a good relationship. But Dennis is obsessed with weight-lifting and uses steroids, which make him aggressive and abusive. Getting out of the relationship isn't easy as Dennis isn't willing to let her go, and Donna's options are narrowed down to one remaining alternative.
A Raisin in the Sun
Walter Lee Younger is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with his wife, son, sister and mother, he seems like an imprisoned man. Until, that is, the family gets an unexpected financial windfall.
Firstborn
Because he's the oldest, Jake has been the man of the house, since his parents divorce. When Mom starts seeing Sam, who always seems to be trying some new way to get rich quick, and declares he's the man of the house now, Jake puts up with it. Until he discovers Sam's illegal activities.
If Someone Had Known
A young wife and mother is abused by her husband and keeps the secret from her friends and family.
Independence Day
Mary Ann Taylor loves the comforts of her hometown in Mercury, Texas. She has a steady job as a waitress in her father's diner, yet she can't help but feel unfulfilled by a life of pouring coffee and grilling hamburgers. Mary Ann's real passion is photography, but pursuing her dream of becoming a photographer means leaving Mercury behind.
A Patch of Blue
A blind, uneducated white girl is befriended by a black man, who becomes determined to help her escape her impoverished and abusive home life.
Sparkle
Musical prodigy, Sparkle struggles to become a star while overcoming issues that are tearing her family apart. From an affluent Detroit area and daughter to a single mother, she tries to balance a new romance with music manager Stix while dealing with the unexpected challenges her new life will bring as she and her two sisters strive to become a dynamic singing group during the Motown-era.
Murder in Mississippi
In 1964, members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered three Civil Rights workers who had traveled to the South to encourage African-American voter registration. Examines the last three weeks in the lives of the slain activists.
The River Niger
An intimate look at life in the ghetto: Johnny Williams is a house painter who moonlights as a poet, struggling to financially and emotionally support his cancer-ridden wife Mattie. But times are tough and the poverty-troubled streets are even tougher, and it takes every ounce of Johnny's love and courage for the couple to make it through their strife, finding redemption in the River Niger.
What Happened, Miss Simone?
The film chronicles Nina Simone's journey from child piano prodigy to iconic musician and passionate activist, told in her own words.
East Side, West Side
Director Allan Dwan’s excellent use of New York locations enlivens a rags-to-riches tale that fully exploits star George O’Brien’s championship boxing prowess.
Bollywood Queen
A cross cultural romance set in London's East End about a young girl of Indian heritage.
Take Two
Is God really the giver of second chances? Can He take a worthless, selfish, self-serving and self-centered, drug addicted broken down life and restore it with forgiveness, mercy and love? Is he able to guide and direct someone facing hopelessly seeming impossible circumstances, and lead them through to amazing grace? TAKE TWO is the True Story about a decadent Hollywood film producer who bottoms out in Los Angeles California and loses everything. Frustrated that he continues to wake up every morning to his same failed life he decides to leave L.A. to seek a new life, only to quickly realize he has taken himself with him. In the beginning of his trek he meets a beautiful young woman in a small bar in Wyoming. Unaware that she is already married and has children, they have a one-night affair that leads to the birth of a baby girl.
A Vigilante
A once-abused woman devotes herself to ridding victims of their domestic abusers while hunting down the one she must kill to be truly free.
The Lesser Blessed
Larry, a 16-year-old Tlicho Indian, lives in the small northern town of Fort Simmer. He has a crush on his classmate, Juliet Hope. Larry's past holds a variety of terrors—his father is abusive and he once had an accident that nearly killed him. When Johnny Beck , a young Métis from Hay River, moves to town, things heat up, for better or worse.
Paris Trout
Paris Trout is a vile Southern bigot. He owns a store and is a loanshark. He often sues people, and so his lawyer, Harry Seagraves, eventually meets Paris' wife Hannah. A former schoolteacher, she made the mistake of her life when she married Paris, who brutalizes her. Soon Paris goes beyond the overgenerous bounds of what a man in his position can get away with even in the segregated South, leading to a spiral of perverse insanity.
The Brute
Glamour model Diane Shepherd is routinely being beaten by her husband Tim, who accuses her of infidelity. When she can't take it anymore, she finds shelter with photographer Mark and his girlfriend Carrie. They introduce Diane to Millie, who is in a similar situation. Meanwhile, Tim informs Diane that if she doesn't come back to him, he will see to it that he gains custody of their son, Timmy.
Deadly Intentions
Katherine married Dr. Charles Raynor. She later discovers that Raynor is a sadist who torments her physically and mentally. She divorces him and take their child away. He then decides to kill her but when his plot is discovered he is charged with attempted murder and brought to trial.
Men Don't Tell
This movie shows another side to spousal abuse that not too many people thought is possible--the husband being abused and the wife the abuser.
The Promise
Lisa's husband, Bill, abuses her. With her sister's encouragement, she takes their three kids and leaves her husband. Bill keeps interfering with Lisa's attempts at a new life. She gets an order of protection against him, but the police can't do anything else to help her. One night Bill breaks into Lisa's apartment and shoots her. As she dies in the hospital, Lisa asks her sister to promise to take care of her three children. The sister takes the kids into her home, but Bill is still on the loose, an ever present threat.
Cesar Chavez
A biography of the civil-rights activist and labor organizer Cesar Chavez. Chronicling the birth of a modern American labour movement, Cesar Chavez tells the story of the famed civil rights leader and labour organiser torn between his duties as a husband and father and his commitment to securing a living wage for farm workers. Passionate but soft-spoken, Chavez embraced non-violence as he battled greed and prejudice in his struggle to bring dignity to working people.
Sally in Our Alley
Sally, a girl of the tenements, is being raised by three bachelor foster-fathers, a pawnbroker, an organ-grinder and a peddler, and is very happy preparing their meals and keeping the house, while the old men bask in the attention she gives them. However, this happy home is broken up when Sally wealthy aunt appears on the scene and takes Sally back to her luxurious penthouse in order to give her the advantages of money and social position. But Sally's heart is back across the river with her plumber sweetheart, Jimmie Adams.
One Year in a Life of Crime
Their job is stealing, their lives a cruel dead end. Director Jon Alpert takes his cameras undercover for this hard-hitting look at men who live by theft and suffer addiction. Focusing on a year in the lives of three professional criminals, this gritty profile—which includes hidden-camera footage of actual thefts—exposes the "petty" crimes that are paralyzing America.
I, Pedophile
Pedophiles have long been the most demonized people in society, but new research is showing that understanding them is the first step in lowering instances of child sexual abuse. Meet the men born attracted to the impossible, and the maverick doctors who dare advocate on their behalf.
American Jail
In this deeply personal film, director Roger Ross Williams sets out on a journey to understand the complex forces of racism and greed currently at work in America's prison system.
Beaten by My Boyfriend
Stacey Dooley goes behind closed doors and speaks to the now younger face of domestic violence. She questions victims and abusers to try and understand how deep the issues surrounding domestic abuse are for those who have survived and those currently experiencing the abuse.
Women on Trial
"Women On Trail" exposes the innate corruption and sexism in the family court system as children are removed from their mothers and given to fathers who often either don't want them or have been convicted of domestic violence.
I Was Lorena Bobbitt
Meet the once-battered woman who overcame years of abuse and a sensational televised trial to become an advocate for victims of domestic violence everywhere.
Dreams I Never Had
A teenage girl is held captive in the home of a wealthy family. She is befriended by the family's young gardener, himself an illegal from Mexico. Their friendship carries both of them through their hopeless, sequestered lives and ultimately inspires them to break free.
Fists of Love
A cynical NYPD domestic violence officer ends up falling in love with a woman running away from her obsessive and abusive husband.
Blink
The calmest seas are the most turbulent underneath. So is the case in Blink, a story of domestic abuse and human brokeness. Nailah Belle is the epitome of beauty and strength. She is known to be committed to her classroom, community, and marriage. Her husband Chris appears to be the perfect accessory to accompany what reveals to be her perfect lifestyle, however; all is not what it seems to be, as this riveting story unfolds; in just one Blink.
Saving Dreams
A naive girl with dreams of stardom, marries a powerful man, who abuses her while running a foundation that protects abused women.
Untold: Deal with the Devil
Christy Martin broke boundaries and noses as she rose in the boxing world, but her public persona belied personal demons, abuse and a threat on her life.
The American Society of Magical Negroes
A young man, Aren, is recruited into a secret society of magical Black people who dedicate their lives to a cause of utmost importance: making white people’s lives easier.
Unforgivable
Paul Hegstrom is a so-called family man who puts his wife through domestic violence and his children through emotional torture. After leaving his family and almost killing his new girlfriend in one of his rages, Paul is ordered to either seek professional help through an innovative therapy program or go to jail.