Movies: Ghetto

Cour interdite is about drugs, naïve dreams, and the demise of values. A young Arab from the Paris suburbs, where poverty, unemployment and drugs are very much the reality, Djamel Ouahab saw many people around him dying, which led him to this project...

A young ghetto kid despairs of ever getting out of that environment and making something of himself, until one day he gets a job as an assistant in a veterinarian's office, and working with all the animals begins to affect his outlook on life....

The film tells the story of Ramón Antonio Brizuela, who since childhood has to deal with rampant violence and the drugs, sex and petty thievery of a Caracas slum. Starting with delinquency, Ramón moves on to serious gang activity and robberies. He gr...

A story of two men who become heroin addicts, what they must do to support their habit and how it affects their lives....

FLYIN' CUT SLEEVES, completed in 1993, portrays street gang presidents in the Bronx. Their world was the streets, set against a backdrop of uprooted families, cultural alienation, drugs and violence. Neighborhood teenagers responded by organizing int...

In this modern adaptation of the classic Greek myth two young lovers bound by a tragic fate plot to escape their homes to start a new life somewhere far from their families....

Sanem is a working girl sharing a flat with three transvestites in Istanbul. Every day she dreams of a savior who will take her away. One day a young man named Gokhan moves into the neighborhood, and soon Sanem gets his attention. This will be the be...

A drama set in the brutal world of Africa's ghettos, Bronx-Barbes opens with an introduction to Toussaint and Nixon, two teenaged friends who are out of work and commit petty thievery in order to eat. After accidentally murdering a ganglord one night...

First broadcast in 1987 on the UK's Channel 4, Bombin' is a documentary about Afrika Bambaataa's Zulu nation bringing American hip-hop culture to the UK for first time. The main focus is the graffiti art of Brim and the variety of reactions he is f...

Leon Gast's musical documentary reveals New York City's Latin culture and features live performances of salsa greats The Fania All Stars and The Spanish Speaking People of New York. A document of urban American Hispanic culture, Gast's film captures ...

Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent three months in 1976 riding along with patrol officers in the 44th Precinct of the South Bronx, which had the highest crime rate in New York City at that time....

A cinematic love letter to a pre-gentrification New York City...

The devastating story of brothers Lafayette and Pharoah Rivers, children of the Chicago ghetto, is powerfully told here by a Wall Street Journal reporter who first met the boys in 1985 when they were 10 and 7, respectively. Their family includes a mo...

Gehtto Ballet follows the inter-linked stories of a number of students in a groundbreaking program called Dance For All. The raison d'etre of the program - founded by Philip Boyd and his late wife Phyllis Spira - is to give disadvantaged kids in the ...

Belgrade in the 1990s seen through the eyes of Goran Čavajda 'Čavke', the late drummer of Serbian rock band "Electric Orgasm". Under dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević, his city became one of the worst places to live in Europe, while the country suff...

A low-budget film about a father who's proffession is unknown to his 3 daughters. He is a don in the BMF (Black Mafia Family) in New York. But his family is about to find out, as some lowgrade criminals want to take his spot at the top....

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This 1979 documentary depicts the daily life of gangs in the South Bronx. It deals primarily with two African American and Puerto Rican gangs known as the "Savage Skulls" and the "Savage Nomads"....

On a garbage dump, people try to make a living in the poorest of conditions....

KYRIE and SHAKA come from two different worlds. Kyrie insists that no one picks him up directly from his home in East Cleveland and Shaka, who is far more well off, is more than willing to flaunt what he has and throw out money on the newest games an...