Best movies like Wasteland
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Wasteland Starring Mónica Galán, Nicolás Mateo, Gabriel Corrado, Rafael Spregelburd, and more. If you liked Wasteland then you may also like: What's Love Got to Do with It, American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, Bright Lights, Big City, Citizen Ruth, The Panic in Needle Park 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.
Brisa’s daily life alternates between the world of show business, appearances, and the stark reality presented by his son Hilario, who fell into poverty as a result of his addiction to drugs. The film portrays an intense fragment of Susana and Hilario’s story, the difficulties that arise when she tries to keep her professional commitments, the elegance with which she manages to avoid the low blows and her pain; but, fundamentally, the film reveals how this woman faces a difficult process without losing her dignity or sense of humor.
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American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince
Martin Scorsese spends an evening with larger-than-life raconteur Steven Prince—a former drug addict, road manager for Neil Diamond, and actor—as he recounts stories from his colorful life.
Bright Lights, Big City
A disillusioned young writer living in New York City turns to drugs and drinking to block out the memories of his dead mother and estranged wife.
Citizen Ruth
"Citizen Ruth" is the story of Ruth Stoops, a woman who nobody even noticed -- until she got pregnant. Now, everyone wants a piece of her. The film is a comedy about one woman caught in the ultimate tug-of-war: a clash of wild, noisy, ridiculous people that rapidly dissolves into a media circus.
The Panic in Needle Park
A stark portrayal of life among a group of heroin addicts who hang out in Needle Park in New York City. Played against this setting is a low-key love story between Bobby, a young addict and small-time hustler, and Helen, a homeless girl who finds in her relationship with Bobby the stability she craves.
Fragment of Fear
A reformed drug addict travels to Italy to find out who murdered his aunt.
Dreamcatcher
Longinotto's documentary is about Brenda Myers-Powell, who fights against sexual exploitation and supports prostitutes in Chicago. Brenda knows what she is talking about: her own story, involving teenage prostitution and a life of violence and abuse, is in stark contrast to her dauntless energy and optimism.
Four Good Days
A mother helps her daughter work through four crucial days of recovery from substance abuse.
The Poker House
Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.
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.
Interstate 60
An aspiring painter meets various characters and learns valuable lessons while traveling across America.
It's All Gone Pete Tong
Its All Gone Pete Tong is a comedy following the tragic life of the legendary Frankie Wilde. The story takes us through Frankie's life from being one of the best DJs alive, through a subsequent battle with a hearing disorder, culminating in his mysterious disappearance from the scene.
Payday
Country singer Maury Dann lives life in the fast lane, counting on his rakish charm and raw talent to excuse his reckless behavior. Touring on the road in the rural south with his dedicated manager, his loyal driver and his long-suffering girlfriend, Maury seduces groupies, brawls and breaks the law, brashly relying on his team to cover for him. Heedlessly alienating all those who care for him, Maury blindly keeps the pedal to the metal.
Permanent Midnight
Juggling increasing career success and a growing heroin habit, a television comedy writer attempts to go down a path of improvement.
Holiday Heart
After losing his police officer lover, Christian drag queen Holiday Heart meets 12-year-old Niki and her drug-addicted mother, Wanda. Heart finds relief from heartache and a renewed sense of purpose when he steps in as a father figure to Niki and welcomes the two women into his life. But when Wanda becomes romantically involved with her drug dealer, Silas, it may endanger Niki and threaten to destroy the makeshift family.
River Road
A rock musician and a free-spirited woman start an intense relationship which soon spirals into a world of drug addiction and crime.
Livin' for Love: The Natalie Cole Story
The true life story of famed singer Natalie Cole, daughter of Nat 'King' Cole. Gripping drama of her struggle with addiction and living in her father's shadow while still maintaining her own celebrity status.
Stay Awake
Set against the backdrop of the prescription drug and opioid crisis in the USA, Jamie Sisley depicts the individual consequences of a societal tragedy, while taking an unflinching yet gentle look at a complicated web of relationships.
Monkey on My Back
The painfully true story of welterweight boxing champion Barney Ross is detailed in Monkey on My Back. Cameron Mitchell stars as Ross, whose meteoric ring career is interrupted when he joins the Marines at the outset of WWII. A highly decorated hero, Ross contracts malaria oversees and is given morphine to assuage the pain. By the time he returns to the states, Ross is a confirmed drug addict. Before he can rise to the top again, he must hit rock bottom and his descent into the hell of narcotics dependency is graphically illustrated (so much so that the film was almost denied a Production Code seal). Though a cured Barney Ross served as technical advisor for Monkey on My Back, he ended up suing the producers for defamation of character -- and lost.
Adam in Fragments
After a prolonged disappearance, Adam reluctantly returns to sex work. Following the urge to protect a young aspiring adult film star, Lucy, from their terrorizing handler, Felix, Adam’s actions trigger a series of events that send violent ripples through Los Angeles underground sex-trade.
The Best Hotel on Skid Row
America Undercover goes to the Madison Hotel in the skid-row section of downtown Los Angeles and talks to some of the desperate people living there. It talks to a prostitute and heroin addict named Becky, a drug dealer and traveler names John, and an heavy drinking alcoholic named Jack Woodrow Wilson.
Queens of Jazz: The Joy and Pain of the Jazz Divas
The documentary tracks the diva's difficult progress as she emerges from the tough, testosterone-fuelled world of the big bands of the 30s and 40s, to fill nightclubs and saloons across the US in the 50s and early 60s as a force in her own right. Looking at the lives and careers of six individual singers (Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone and Annie Ross), the film not only talks to those who knew and worked with these queens of jazz, but also to contemporary singers who sit on the shoulders of these trailblazing talents without having to endure the pain and hardship it took for them to make their highly individual voices heard above the prejudice of mid-century America.
1982
1982, a film inspired by true events at the onset of the crack epidemic in Philadelphia, tells the story of a father and his efforts to protect his gifted daughter from the insidious epidemic which has literally come home via her drug-addicted mother. As his wife becomes more distant and unreliable, he struggles to raise his daughter on his own, while still striving to help his wife become clean. In the process, he learns some hard truths about his marriage and his life, which will ultimately test him as a parent, a husband, and a man.
Animals
ANIMALS tells the story of Jude and Bobbie: a young couple that exist somewhere between homelessness and the fantasy of their imaginations. Though they masterfully con and steal in an attempt to stay one step ahead of their addiction, they are ultimately forced to face the reality of their situation when one of them gets hospitalized.
Junk
Bafta-winning drama. Following difficulties with her parents, teenager Gemma Brogan leaves home. She falls under the spell of a young woman who introduce her to the world of alternative youth culture and drugs. Initially her new life seems glamorous and exciting but she soon discovers its dark side as she slides uncontrollably into heroin addiction.
Whoever Dies, Dies in Pain
A botched police raid on a crack house turns into a 36 hour long siege in which the junkies share their perspective to the cameraman of a reality program.
Black Metal Veins
Black Metal Veins unflinchingly documents the dark realities of despair and morbid self annihilation surrounding the lives of five heroin junkies. The addicts' intertwining stories of pain, loss, sadness, and abandonment lead the viewer down the agonizing and hideous path of horrifying psychological and spiritual destruction as the grim disease of heroin addiction infects and decays the bodies and minds of five young people.
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.