20 best movies like Cracks (2009)

Comedy sequel to "East Is East". Manchester, North of England, 1975. The now much diminished, but still claustrophobic and dysfunctional, Khan family continues to struggle for survival. Sajid, the youngest Khan, the runt of the litter, is deep in pubescent crisis under heavy assault both from his father's tyrannical insistence on Pakistani tradition, and from the fierce bullies in the schoolyard. So, in a last, desperate attempt to 'sort him out', his father decides to pack him off to Mrs Khan No 1 and family in the Punjab, the wife and daughters he had abandoned 35 years earlier. It is not long before Ella Khan (Mrs Khan No2) with a small entourage from Salford, England, swiftly follows to sort out the mess, past and present.

A look inside an offbeat boarding school for young girls.

A boy growing up in Dublin during the 1980s escapes his strained family life by starting a band to impress the mysterious girl he likes.

The film centres on Moncho and his coming-of-age experience in Galicia in 1936. Moncho develops a close relationship with his teacher Don Gregorio who introduces the boy to different things in the world. While the story centres on Moncho's ordinary coming-of-age experiences, tensions related to the looming Spanish Civil War periodically interrupt Moncho's personal growth and daily life.

Days before the end of the school year, Liliana gives Janek an ultimatum, giving him 24 hours to either prove his love for her or forget about her altogether.

Ishaan Awasthi is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate. Colours, fish, dogs, and kites don't seem important to the adults, who are much more interested in things like homework, marks, and neatness. Ishaan cannot seem to get anything right in class; he is then sent to boarding school, where his life changes forever.

A drama teacher's taboo relationship with an unstable student strikes a nerve in her jealous classmate, sparking a vengeful chain of events within their suburban high school that draws parallels to 'The Crucible'.

Three suburban English families' lives intertwine with tragic consequences.

Santiago, capital of Chile during the Marxist government of elected, highly controversial president Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports his leftist views by introducing a program at the prestigious "collegio" (Catholic prep school) St. Patrick to allow free admission of some proletarian kids. One of them is Pedro Machuca, slum-raised son of the cleaning lady in Gonzalo Infante's liberal-bourgeois home. Yet the new classmates become buddies, paradoxically protesting together as Gonzalo gets adopted by Pedro's slum family and gang. But the adults spoil that too, not in the least when general Pinochet's coup ousts Allende, and supporters such as McEnroe.

In a Turkish village, five orphaned sisters live under strict rule while members of their family prepare their arranged marriages.

Set in 1974, an authentic and uplifting tale of two friends whose horizons are opened up by the discovery of black American soul music.

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.

Famed but tormented artist Vincent van Gogh spends his final years in Arles, France, painting masterworks of the natural world that surrounds him.

During a medical examination, 13-year-old Aslan is humiliated in front of a load of his fellow pupils. The incident unleashes his latent personality disorder. Plagued by self-doubt, he strives for cleanliness and perfection and is obsessed with trying to control everything around him. His compulsion draws Aslan, who lives with his grandmother in a village in Kazakhstan, into increasingly difficult situations. He abhors the way most of his fellow pupils are held in the sway of a criminal scheme, in which Bolat, one of Aslan’s tormentors, is also involved. Bolat blackmails the younger children into paying him protection money; he has nothing but contempt for ostracised Aslan.

Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.

Sixteen year old Jude discovers each and every one of his fears is true.

A manipulative childhood acquaintance worms her way into a teenager's circle of friends at an all-girls boarding school.

Stet, a troubled and angry 11-year-old orphan from a small Texas town, ends up at a Boy Choir school back East after the death of his single mom. Completely out of his element, he finds himself in a battle of wills with a demanding Choir Master who recognizes a unique talent in this young boy as he pushes him to discover his creative heart and soul in music.

A philosophy professor has an illicit affair with one of his students, a bright yet troubled girl who lives alone.

Set in 1940's France, a new teacher at a school for disruptive boys gives hope and inspiration.

A forged 500-franc note is passed from person to person and shop to shop, until it falls into the hands of a genuine innocent who doesn't see it for what it is - which will have devastating consequences on his life, causing him to turn to crime and murder.

1921 England is overwhelmed by the loss and grief of World War I. Hoax exposer Florence Cathcart (Hall) visits a boarding school to explain sightings of a child ghost.

Based on the 1973 rock opera album of the same name by The Who, this is the story of 60s teenager Jimmy. At work he slaves in a dead-end job. While after, he shops for tailored suits and rides his scooter as part of the London Mod scene.

Rebellious 16 year old Poppy from Mailibu is sent to an English boarding school. Realising her Father isn't coming back to rescue her she tries to get expelled.

Nono, a Dutch kid lacking two days being thirteen, runs away from problems at home and, disguised as a girl, takes up with the world's cleverest thief, who unbeknownst to Nono, may hold the bizarre key to his true identity.

Musical film about the trials and tribulations of an idealistic drama teacher as she tries to put on the end of year show.

Thomas, a father in his fifties, returns by chance to the town where he grew up. He collapses and wakes up forty years earlier in the body of his teenage self. Thrown back into his past, Thomas will not only have to re-live his first love, but also try to understand the reasons for his father’s mysterious departure. Can you change the past by living it again?

The greatest Olympic Wrestling Champion brother team joins Team Foxcatcher led by multimillionaire sponsor John E. du Pont as they train for the 1988 games in Seoul - a union that leads to unlikely circumstances.

Charts the headlong fall of Pinkie, a razor-wielding disadvantaged teenager with a religious death wish.

Based on a true story. In Léon Blum high school in Créteil (France), a history teacher decides to have her weakest 10th grade class take a national history competition. This will change them.

A teenager finds himself transported to an island where he must help protect a group of orphans with special powers from creatures intent on destroying them.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1971. Carlos Robledo Puch is a 19-year-old boy with an angelic face, but a vocational thief as well, who acts ruthlessly, without remorse. When he meets Ramón, they follow together a dark path of crime and death.

NEDs (Non Educated Delinquents) is the story of a young man’s journey from prize-winning schoolboy to knife-carrying teenager. Struggling against the low expectations of those around him, John McGill changes from victim to avenger, scholar to NED, altar boy to glue sniffer. When he attempts to change back again, his new reality and recent past make conformity near impossible and violent self determination near inevitable.

Bucharest 1989 - the last year of Ceausecu's dictatorship. Eva lives with her parents and her 7 year old brother, Lalalilu. One day at school, Eva and her boyfriend accidentally break a bust of Ceausescu. They are forced to confess their crime before a disciplinary committee and Eva is expelled from school and transferred to a reformatory establishment. There she meets Andrei, and decides to escape Romania with him. Lalalilu becomes convinced that Ceausescu is the main reason for Eva's decision to leave. So with his friends from school he devises a plan to kill the dictator.

For teenage twins Robert and Elena, a weekend can seem endless yet still fly by. Time almost stands still while discussing philosophy, lying in a blissful cornfield near a remote gas station. They are in their own little world, a twin world of twin games and twin love. A confined world where emotions rise, where pressure mounts into rage… The turmoil of adolescence.

Set two years after his daughter went missing, The Child In Time follows Stephen Lewis, a children's author, as he struggles to find purpose in his life without her. His wife Julie has left him, and his best friends Charles and Thelma have retired to the countryside, battling demons of their own. With tenderness and insight, the movie explores the dark territory of a marriage devastated, the loss of childhood, the fluidity of time, grief, hope, and acceptance. The Child In Time is a lyrical and heart-breaking exploration of love, loss, and the power of things unseen.

An Italian high school student becomes infatuated with a woman he sees outside his class window. Her fiancée is in jail for being involved in a radical movement, and she spends much time in court providing moral support. At first she resists the student's advances, but eventually begins an affair with him. Their situation is condemned by her family and his father, who is the woman's psychologist.

Growing up in a rural town filled with violent delinquents, Jack has learned to do what it takes to survive, despite having an oblivious mother and no father. After his aunt falls ill and a younger cousin comes to stay with him, the hardened 15-year-old discovers the importance of friendship, family, and looking for happiness even in the most desolate of circumstances.

Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster who wears an old wedding dress and lives in the dilapidated Satis House, asks Pip's "Uncle Pumblechook" (who is actually Joe's uncle) to find a boy to play with her adopted daughter Estella. Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with whom he falls in love,then Pip a humble orphan suddenly becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor.

In the Yorkshire countryside, working-class tomboy Mona meets the exotic, pampered Tasmin. Over the summer season, the two young women discover they have much to teach one another, and much to explore together.

Awaking from a coma to discover his wife has been killed in a car accident, Ben's world may as well have come to an end. A few weeks later, Ben's out of hospital and, attempting to start a new life, he moves home and is befriended by a beautiful young neighbour Charlotte. His life may be turning around but all is not what it seems and, haunted by visions of his dead wife, Ben starts to lose his grip on reality.

Juan lives in clandestinity. Just like his mum, his dad and his adored uncle Beto, outside his home he has another name. At school, Juan is known as Ernesto. And he meets María, who only has one name. Based on true events, set in the Argentina of 1979, this film is one about love.

In Justine’s family everyone is a vet and a vegetarian. At 16, she’s a gifted teen ready to take on her first year in vet school, where her older sister also studies. There, she gets no time to settle: hazing starts right away. Justine is forced to eat raw meat for the first time in her life. Unexpected consequences emerge as her true self begins to form.

A veteran high school teacher befriends a younger art teacher, who is having an affair with one of her 15-year-old students. However, her intentions with this new "friend" also go well beyond platonic friendship.

About the young life and loves of artist Salvador Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico García Lorca.

Charlie, a 17-year-old girl tortured by doubt, is thrilled when she becomes friends with Sarah, but when Sarah tires of Charlie and looks for a new friend, their relationship takes an ominous turn.

A group of catholic school girls are victimized by a sadistic and jealous nun, "Sister Ursula". The girls drown the nun in a pool of "holy" water. Eighteen years later circumstances arise in which the nuns spirit is released to take her revenge. She possesses the body of Eva, the daughter of one of her killers. In order for the Sister Ursula to be properly laid to rest Eva herself must be killed.

Burglary. Drugs. Assault. Rape. The students at Brandel High are more than new Principal Rick Latimer bargained for. Gangs fight to control the school using knives - even guns - when they have to. When Latimer and the head of security try to clean up the school and stop the narcotics trade, they run up against a teenage mafia. A violent confrontation on the campus leads to a deadly showdown with the drug dealer's gang, and one last chance for Latimer to save his career... and his life.

Set in the beautiful high Pyrenees in south-west France, Damien lives with his mother Marianne, a doctor, while his father, a pilot, is on a tour of duty abroad with the French military. At school, Damien is bullied by Thomas, who lives in the farming community up in the mountains, nut learns to fight back. The boys find themselves living together when Marianne invites Thomas to come and stay with them while his mother is ill in hospital. Damien must learn to live with the boy who terrorised him.

A psychological thriller of a grieving mother turned cold-blooded avenger with a twisty master plan to pay back those who were responsible for her daughter's death.