Movies Similar to Kicking Up Dirt

Girl, Interrupted(1999)

Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.

7.6

Changeling(2008)

Los Angeles, 1928. When single mother Christine Collins leaves for work, her son vanishes without a trace. Five months later, the police reunite mother and son. But when Christine suspects that the boy returned to her isn't her child, her quest for truth exposes a world of corruption.

7.6

Children of a Lesser God(1986)

Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.

6.9

Inherit the Wind(1960)

Schoolteacher Bertram Cates is arrested for teaching his students Darwin's theory of evolution. The case receives national attention and one of the newspaper reporters, E.K. Hornbeck, arranges to bring in renowned defense attorney and atheist Henry Drummond to defend Cates. The prosecutor, Matthew Brady is a former presidential candidate, famous evangelist, and old adversary of Drummond.

7.7

Exodus(1960)

Ari Ben Canaan, a passionate member of the Jewish paramilitary group Haganah, attempts to transport 600 Jewish refugees on a dangerous voyage from Cyprus to Palestine on a ship named the Exodus. He faces obstruction from British forces, who will not grant the ship passage to its destination.

6.7

The Sugarland Express(1974)

Married small-time crooks Lou-Jean and Clovis Poplin lose their baby to the state of Texas and resolve to do whatever it takes to get him back. Lou-Jean gets Clovis out of jail, and the two steal their son from his foster home, in addition to taking a highway patrolman hostage. As a massive dragnet starts to pursue them across Texas, the couple become unlikely folk heroes and even start to bond with the captive policeman.

6.6

Arthur the King(2024)

Over the course of ten days and 435 miles, an unbreakable bond is forged between pro adventure racer Michael Light and a scrappy street dog companion dubbed Arthur. As the team is pushed to their outer limits of endurance in the race, Arthur redefines what victory, loyalty and friendship truly mean.

7.6

In the Realm of the Senses(1976)

A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.

6.6

Roe vs. Wade(1989)

Holly Hunter plays a lonely, single, poorly educated Texan who finds herself pregnant with no means to support a child. To avoid giving up the child, she seeks an abortion. Denied an abortion in Texas the young woman hires a novice lawyer to plead her case in the US supreme court. Eventually the law is changed, but for the character it takes longer than nine months.

6.3

Against the Law(2017)

United Kingdom, March 24, 1954. Ten years before the decriminalization of homosexuality, journalist Peter Wildeblood and his friends Lord Montagu and Michael Pitt-Rivers are convicted and imprisoned for indecency and sodomy.

7.0

Soldier Boy(2019)

This is a story about exciting events that occurred in the life of the smallest soldier - the hero of the Great Patriotic War, six-year-old Sergei Aleshkov. He lost all his relatives and got into the army. With a six-year-old boy, they started playing the soldier game in order to preserve his childhood, and he, in order to comply with this honorary title, became a real defender of the Motherland.

6.8

The Great Escape(1963)

The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.

7.9

Salvador(1986)

In 1980, an American journalist covering the Salvadoran Civil War becomes entangled with both the leftist guerrilla groups and the right-wing military dictatorship while trying to rescue his girlfriend and her children.

7.0

The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case(1976)

Fact-based story of the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr., son and namesake of the famed pilot, and ensuing trial of accused and convicted killer, Bruno Hauptmann.

6.4

Charlie Wilson's War(2007)

In the 1980s U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, Texas socialite Joanne Herring and CIA agent Gust Avrakotos form an unlikely alliance to boost funding for Afghan freedom fighters in their war against invading Soviets. The trio's successful efforts to finance these covert operations contributes to the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

6.5

Buried Alive and Survived(2024)

After Alicia's obsessive ex-husband Victor is released from prison, she is determined to protect herself and their son Malcolm. Alicia resists Victor's demands to reconcile and reunite as a family, but in a twisted turn of events, Victor traps Alicia underground and buries her alive. Alicia pushes down the panic and fear of suffocating and manages to claw her way of out of her grave. Now freed, she searches desperately for her son who she fears may be next. Inspired by a true story.

5.4

A Bridge Too Far(1977)

The story of Operation Market Garden—a failed attempt by the allies in the latter stages of WWII to end the war quickly by securing three bridges in Holland allowing access over the Rhine into Germany. A combination of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two crack German panzer divisions meant that the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) was doomed to failure.

7.2

Into the Wild(2007)

After graduating from Emory University in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity, and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness.

7.8

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.

7.7

Freedom Writers(2007)

A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.

7.9