Best movies like Xica da Silva

Quilombo dos Palmares was a real-life democratic society, created in Brazil in the 17th century. This incredibly elaborate (and surprisingly little-known) film traces the origins of Quilombo, which began as a community of freed slaves. The colony becomes a safe harbor for other outcasts of the world, including Indians and Jews. Ganga Zumba (Toni Tornado) becomes president of Quilombo, the first freely elected leader in the Western Hemisphere. Naturally, the ruling Portuguese want to subjugate Zumba and his followers, but the Quilombians are ready for their would-be oppressors. The end of this Brave New World is not pleasant, but the followers of Zumba and his ideals take to the hills, where they honor his memory to this day. Writer/director Carlos Diegues takes every available opportunity to compare the rise and fall of Quilombo with the state of affairs in modern-day Brazil.

“Rio 2096 – A Story of Love and Fury” is an animated film that portrays the love between an immortal hero and Janaína, the woman he has been in love with for 600 years. As a backdrop to the romance, the feature highlights four phases of Brazilian history: colonization, slavery, the Military Regime and the future, in 2096, when there will be a war for water.

Brazil, 18th century. The colony of Portugal endures a decline in gold production. A Portuguese minority rules over a corrupt and autocratic society. Joaquim is an efficient soldier, famous for capturing gold smugglers. While waiting for his promotion to Lieutenant, he leaves for a risky mission in search of new gold mines - the only way to buy the freedom of Blackie, a slave he is in love with. Inspired by the true story of Tiradentes, the first leader of the Brazilian revolutionary movement.

Story of a modest but talented soccer player for an obscure club in a small Brazilian town who comes to São Paulo and reaches stardom.

When a Spanish Jesuit goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region, a slave hunter is converted and joins his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portuguese aggressors.

England, 1763. After being convicted of a crime, the young and beautiful Abigail Hale agrees, to escape the gallows, to serve fourteen years as a slave in the colony of Virginia, whose inhabitants begin to hear and fear the sinister song of the threatening drums of war that resound in the wild Ohio valley.

For ten years, engineer Bill Markham has searched tirelessly for his son Tommy who disappeared from the edge of the Brazilian rainforest. Miraculously, he finds the boy living among the reclusive Amazon tribe who adopted him. And that's when Bill's adventure truly begins. For his son is now a grown tribesman who moves skillfully through this beautiful-but-dangerous terrain, fearful only of those who would exploit it. And as Bill attempts to "rescue" him from the savagery of the untamed jungle, Tommy challenges Bill's idea of true civilization and his notions about who needs rescuing.

An impoverished teen seeking to escape the clutches of a human trafficker must weigh living up to his moral code against his struggle to survive.

A Deusa Negra is a love story that spans two centuries. In 18th century Yorubaland, Prince Oluyole is taken prisoner in the course of internecine warfare fanned by overseas slave traders. He is sold into slavery in Brazil. In present day Nigeria, at his father's deathbed, the young Babatunde promises to go to Brazil and search for traces of their once-enslaved ancestors. Beginning with a Candomblé ritual, his journey takes him ever deeper into this culture and, in a dream-like sequence, affords him a deeper understanding of his ancestors' suffering and powers of resistance. Balogun effortlessly links present with past, real with magical worlds and discourse with trance. The hypnotic atmosphere is also heightened by the music of the Nigerian drummer Remi Kabaka, which plays with repetitive patterns and distortions.

In this film, Laerte conjugates the body in the feminine, and scrutinizes concepts and prejudices. Not in search of an identity, but in search of un-identities. Laerte creates and sends creatures to face reality in the fictional world of comic strips as a vanguard of the self. And, on the streets, the one who becomes the fiction of a real character. Laerte, of all the bodies, and of none, complicates all binaries. In following Laerte, this documentary chooses to clothe the nudity beyond the skin we inhabit.

Lovely and resourceful Daria and Tisa escape a space gulag only to crash land on a nearby world where a guy in tight pants named Zed is playing The Most Dangerous Game. Zed turns the girls and another guest loose in his jungle preserve to serve as the prey in a mad hunt. Armed only with knives and their wits, the girls must battle their way across the jungle to a hidden arms cache before Zed catches and kills them.

The story of egyptian princess Cleopatra's amorous adventures.

In Northeastern Brazil, twelve-year-old Maria is sold to have a better life as a housemaid. However, Maria is resold and sent to a brothel in the Amazon gold fields and put to work by the despicable Saraiva.

The first screen adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel to star a black man in the title role.

Cafundó is a 35 mm color film which blends fact with fiction in the life of João de Camargo, a former black slave (1858-1942, Sorocaba, Brazil) who, in his old age, works miracles and devotes himself to assisting others in order to attain his freedom. João de Camargo represents the genesis of religious and cultural syncretism in Brazil.

Young women in the Amazon are kidnapped by a ring of devil-worshipers, who plan to sell them as sex slaves. Some of the women escape, but are pursued into the jungle by their captors. The women must band together to turn the tables on their kidnappers.

Based on the life of a legendary capoeira fighter from Bahia, "Besouro" spins a fantastic tale of a young Brazilian man of African descent in search of his mission.

Nancy Allen plays an investigative news reporter Jillian Gray, who, along with her daughter is kidnapped by white slave king Cicero, after getting too close with her investigation. Now that she has escaped, she seeks revenge on Ciero

Based on the biography of Luiz Gama, one of the most important characters in Brazilian history, a black man who used the laws and courts to free more than 500 slaves. Born of a free womb, Gama was sold into slavery at the age of 10 to pay off his father's gambling debts. Even as a slave, he became literate, studied and earned his own freedom, becoming one of the most respected lawyers of his time. An abolitionist and republican who inspired an entire country.

The agitated and tragic life of poet Castro Alves, and his romance with actress Eugênia Câmara.

A docufiction film about the fall of Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, widely known as Lampião – the mythical bandit leader from the Brazilian northeast who fought the local power and put his name in history.

A pawn shop proprietor buys used goods from desperate locals – as much to play perverse power games as for his own livelihood, but when the perfect rump and a backed-up toilet enter his life, he loses all control.

Shy countryboy from Itu (a town in Brazil where everything is unusually big) is invited to work in the house of a rich woman, who ends up discovering the boy's hidden (and big) qualities...

Tenement women from the Bexiga neighborhood become prostitutes, induced by a mulatto woman and a crook.

Fantasy comedy about Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade, one of the most important icons of Modernism in Brazil. In the film, Oswald is played by two actors: Ítala Nandi, as his feminine anima, and Flávio Galvão, as the masculine half.

A young Romanian woman is snatched in broad daylight from a London street, trafficked to Ireland and used as a sex slave in a series of pop-up brothels. Her shocking true story offers a tense and thought-provoking thriller exposing how, in modern Britain, slavery can hide in plain sight.

During the slavery period in Brazil, a sugar cane farm was the stage for the darkest kinds of horrors. Years later, the place's cruel past is still stained in its walls, even if unnoticed, until a series of strange events starts happening and death returns to the farm. The film is divided in five short horror stories.

The story of the decline of the Soares family in the final months of the 19th century. Isabel is the dying mother, and her daughters are Maria and Ana. The three women try hard to forget about their pasts in the coffee farm and face the industrial times that start to take over Brazil.

In Bahia, an educated black man returns to his home fishing village to try and free people from mysticism, in particular the Candomblé religion, which he considers a factor of political and social oppression, with tragic outcome.

The life of a runaway slave who founded the Quilombo dos Palmares, an outlaw community of Brazilian slaves.

Based on the life of Brazilian poet Anderson Bigode Herzer who committed suicide at the age of 20, this intense drama tells the story of Bauer, a transman who navigates a difficult life in an orphanage before finding love with young librarian Clara.

In 19th century Brazil, young people in the State of São Paulo fight against black slavery and the farmers who support it. Against this backdrop, Sinhá Moça falls in love with a young lawyer, and they get involved in a great love story.

The film tells the story of sixteen people in the hottest day of the year in the city of Porto Alegre.

Augusto moves with his family to an abandoned farm, inherited from his grandfather, hoping to put his life back on track. The property, however, carries the karma of the betrayal of the slave Couraça who seeks revenge against Augusto's family.

A cautionary tale for these times of democracy in crisis—the personal and political fuse to explore one of the most dramatic periods in Brazilian history. With unprecedented access to Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva, we witness their rise and fall and the tragically polarized nation that remains.