Poverty Movies

In the French harbor city of Le Havre, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa into the path of Marcel Marx, a well-spoken bohemian who works as a...

Julio, a young fisherman from a provincial village, descends into social alienation as he arrives in Manila to search for his loved one.

Stevie, fresh from prison in Scotland, finds a job on a London construction site. The working conditions are poor and most of the men are working...

This film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their...

An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better...

Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and...

This incredibly disturbing story follows the exploitation of an apprentice butcher, Hermógenes, and his trial after he murders his boss in...

The true story of the relationship between Alan Bennett and the singular Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who ‘temporarily’...

Young, impulsive Rosetta lives a hard and stressful life as she struggles to support herself and her alcoholic mother. Refusing all charity, she is...

The day she turns 40, Marguerite Flora, a successful rep for a nuclear power company, begins receiving letters she'd sent to herself at age seven....

Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò,...

In Brooklyn circa 1900, the Nolans manage to enjoy life on pennies despite great poverty and Papa's alcoholism. We come to know these people well...

A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle....

A young girl whose father is an ex-convict and whose mother is a junkie finds it difficult to conform and tries to find comfort in a quirky...

Follows a young cyclo driver on his poverty-driven descent into criminality in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. The boy's struggles to scratch out a...

A lottery win of $5,000 forever changes the lives of a miner turned dentist and his wife.

The story of a small-town man who comes to make it big in the city, where he is almost instantly relieved of all his possessions. Homeless and...

Abang and Adi are undocumented orphans living in present-day Malaysia. While the older brother, a deaf mute, has resigned himself to a life of...

A tale of revenge, honor and disgrace, centering on a poverty-stricken samurai who discovers the fate of his ronin son-in-law, setting in motion a...

In the late 19th century, two Swedish emigrants, Lasse Karlsson and his son Pelle, arrive on the Danish island of Bornholm hoping to find work on a...