Social Realism
see all genres ›Gritty looks at life as most folks live it. Not neatly plotted but often hand-to-mouth, coping with the vagaries of survival in harsh societal or natural environments.
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Genres / Drama / Realism / Social Realism
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In the City of Sylvia
A young artist searches the winding streets of Strasbourg for an old love in Jose Luis Guerin's acclaimed and exceedingly beautiful IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA. During a languid summer, a young man spends his afternoons sketching in an outdoor café. He is looking for a woman he met...Watch Movie
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Wendy and Lucy
Named to over sixty "Best of 2008" lists (and even many "Best of the Decade" lists), WENDY AND LUCY solidified filmmaker Kelly Reichardt's reputation for films that are (according to the New York Times) "a touchstone of the new realism in American cinema." Drifting upwards to Alaska like a 21st...Watch Movie
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Elles
Director Ma_gorzata Szumowska's ELLES paints an unromantic picture of upper-crust domesticity. ELLES stars the fearless Juliette Binoche (CHOCOLAT) as Anne, a well-off Parisian journalist investigating the lives of two student prostitutes (Joanna Kulig and AnaпїЅs Demoustier) for a magazine...Watch Movie
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Neighboring Sounds
One of the most acclaimed films of the year, NEIGHBORING SOUNDS is the thrilling debut from filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho. On a quiet block in the coastal city of Recife, ruled by an aging patriarch and his sons, a recent spate of petty crime has rattled the nerves of the...Watch Movie
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Where the Green Ants Dream
Werner Herzog's films have taken him from the jungles of Peru to the peaks of Himalayas to the sole human outpost in Antarctica in a quest to find landscapes to inspire him and the dreamers who embrace those lands. WHERE THE GREEN ANTS DREAM is the Australian outback,...Watch Movie
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Children of Invention
One of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film," writer-director Tze Chun makes "a fine feature film debut" (New York Times) with one of the most-awarded and best-reviewed films of the year. CHILDREN OF INVENTION, winner of 16 festival awards, is by turns...Watch Movie
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Kisses
On the fringes of Dublin two kids, Kylie and Dylan, live in a suburban housing estate devoid of life, colour and the prospect of escape. Kylie lives with five other siblings and her overworked mother. Next door, Dylan lives in the shadow of an alcoholic father and the memory of an elder brother...Watch Movie
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Echoes of Silence
Peter Emmanuel Goldman's rarely screened debut, an underappreciated landmark of the New American Cinema, chronicles the lives of twenty-somethings adrift in New York City, finding tremendous pathos in the smallest moments: a furtive glance across a museum gallery, girls...Watch Movie
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All the Light in the Sky
Jane Adams stars as an actress living in Malibu who faces harsh realities of the industry as her age exempts her from more and more acting opportunities. Amidst this career and life crisis enters the actress's niece, played by Sophia Takal, who arrives for a weekend stay and...Watch Movie
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As Tears Go By
Though as gritty as any 80s Hong Kong gangster picture, AS TEARS GO BY is a watershed film heralding one of the most auspicious directorial debuts in international cinema. Wong Kar-Wai's visually stunning, tough and romantic 1988 first feature deftly smuggles the director's now celebrated genius...Watch Movie
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Paulista
In this steamy Brazilian drama, SпїЅo Paulo is a hotbed for intrigue amongst the young, restless and alive. A freespirited actress who leaves her devoted provincial boyfriend behind to make it in the big city, Marina (Sylvia Laurenco) dives into the big city's nightlife-driven energy. She finds...Watch Movie
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Little Brown Boy
For his follow-up to MY JOSEPHINE, Barry Jenkins turned to an issue closer to his Florida home in the early 2000s: the spate of young black boys being tried as adults for the gunshot deaths of other kids. But this is no crime drama. There is no trial in this short film and the...Watch Movie
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Accattone
The first of Pier Paolo Pasolini's highly acclaimed films and the winner of numerous film festival prizes, ACCATTONE uses a talented cast to present a vivid picture of the Roman slums. Based on one of the filmmaker/poet's novels, this story of a pimp, his friends, his enemies and his girls is...Watch Movie
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Days of Gray
It is a world without language. A world where one is raised to respect the rules. No things are owned except the essentials. All must wear masks when venturing from home. All adult males must protect society from outsiders who do not follow the rules. Faith is dead. Hope is dead. Joy is dead....Watch Movie
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The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
The birth, life, teachings and death on the cross of Jesus Christ presented almost as a cinéma-vérité documentary. Pasolini's second feature seemed a strange choice for such a revolutionary director, but it is an attempt to take Christ out of the opulent church and present him...Watch Movie
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24 City
A masterful film from Jia Zhangke, the renowned director of STILL LIFE, 24 CITY chronicles the dramatic closing of a once-prosperous state-owned aeronautics factory in Chengdu, a city in Southwest China, and its conversion into a sprawling luxury apartment complex. Bursting with poetry, pop songs...Watch Movie
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Hunger
HUNGER, a Scandinavian co-production (filmed in Oslo, Norway, and featuring Swedish actor Per Oscarsson), is a portrait of poverty in the 1890s. Danish writer/director Henning Carlsen adapts Knut Hamsun celebrated novel-of-the-same-name, boiling the book down to its necessary core. Pontus, a...Watch Movie
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Four in the Morning
It is a moment before dawn and the river traffic on the Thames begins to ease its way through the fog. The River police find the body of a young girl left dry by the ebb tide. Her body is brought ashore and her possessions examined. Who is she? And what drove her to take her...Watch Movie
