Movies: Poverty

In the affluent, gated community of Camelot Gardens, bored wives indiscriminately sleep around while their unwitting husbands try desperately to climb the social ladder. Trent, a 21-year-old outsider who mows the neighborhood lawns, quietly observes ...

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 penniless, he is taken in by a woman who looks after him....

A day in the life of Azucena, who is running out of time to keep herself and her family from being evicted; Rafael, a lawyer who sets out to reunite a mother with her daughter; and Teodora, a sick old woman who searches for her long-lost son before i...

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 shoe-shiner. With innate optimism and the tireless support of his community, Marcel stands up to offi...

Poucet is a kid from a family of numerous children. The parents, too poor to feed them, decide to abandon them in the forest. Their, the brothers try to find their way out making fantastic encounters. This film is based on the French fairy tale "Le p...

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

The true story of Saartje Baartman, a black South African worker who moves to London with her master in the early 19th century. Although she dreams of being an artist, once in Europe she is exploited as a sideshow attraction due to her large buttocks...

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 farm and save enough money to travel to the United States of America....

Fashion icon Coco Chanel, steeped in wealth and fame, still issues game-changing designs and collections. The audience is taken backwards in time to the woman's upbringing in an orphanage, and traces her path to ubiquity as it winds through poverty, ...

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 through big and little troubles: Aunt Sissy's scandalous succession of "husbands"; the removal of the on...

Angela and Jessie are best friends intent on taking a wild beach trip, but when their roommate loses all of their money in a drug scam, the girls -- blissfully stoned -- go to increasingly daring and absurd lengths to get it back....

Three kids in a low-income neighborhood find friendship and community in an unlikely place....

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

Yuzo and his fiancée Masako spend their Sunday afternoon together, trying to have a good time on just thirty-five yen. They manage to have many small adventures, especially because Masako's optimism and belief in dreams is able to lift Yuzo from his ...

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

Oscar François de Jarjayes was born female, but her father insisted she be raised as a boy as he had no sons. She becomes the captain of the guards at Versailles under King Louis XVI and Marie Antonette. Her privileged, noble life comes under fire as...

A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison....

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, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He en...

Born a lower-caste girl in rural India's patriarchal society, "married" at 11, repeatedly raped and brutalized, Phooland Devi finds freedom only as an avenging warrior, the eponymous Bandit Queen. Devi becomes a kind a bloody Robin Hood; this extraor...

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 under aliases, due to immigration status and to not conflict with their "signing on" for unemployment be...