Movies Like Rites of Passage

American History X

1998

Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two African-American men. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.

Clouds

2020

Young musician Zach Sobiech discovers his cancer has spread, leaving him just a few months to live. With limited time, he follows his dream and makes an album, unaware that it will soon be a viral music phenomenon.

Requiem for a Dream

2000

The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.

Ivan's Childhood

1962

In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.

Under the Same Moon

2007

Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.

Mississippi Burning

1988

Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.

Menace II Society

1993

A young street hustler attempts to escape the rigors and temptations of the ghetto in a quest for a better life.

Boys Don't Cry

1999

A young transgender man explores his gender identity and searches for love in rural Nebraska.

Pom, le poulain

2006

In the forest the mare Mirabelle has more than one reason to be proud : she's the mother of Pom and the best horse in the team to help the forestry workers. She loves towing the cut trunks with the other horses and the dockers. But then, she's held wrongly responsible for an accident in which the boss's son has got injured. She's sold and separated from her foal.

Zero Day

2003

Two troubled adolescents chronicle the events that ultimately lead up to a terrifying assault on their school.

Safe

1995

Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife in the late 1980s, comes down with a debilitating illness with no clear diagnosis.

Legacy

1993

A portrayal of the early Latter-day Saints' joys, sacrifices, hopes, and trials; their epic journey to the Salt Lake Valley; and their legacy of faith in Jesus Christ.

Pariah

2011

A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.

Bully

2001

A group of teenagers in South Florida enact a murder plot against their mutual bully, Bobby, who has emotionally, physically, and sexually abused them for years.

Suburbia

1984

When household tensions and a sense of worthlessness overcome Evan, he finds escape when he clings with the orphans of a throw-away society. The runaways hold on to each other like a family until a tragedy tears them apart.

Restaurant in the Forest

2022

Trafficked

2017

In this story inspired by real characters, three girls from America, Nigeria and India are trafficked through an elaborate global network and enslaved in a Texas brothel, and must together attempt a daring escape to reclaim their freedom.

Luckiest Girl Alive

2022

A successful woman in New York City finds her life upended when she is forced to confront a dark truth that threatens to unravel her meticulously crafted life.