Six sliders. No stars.
Nothing on this site is recommended because people liked it. Films are described by what they are (how heavy, how fast, how far from the real world), and you get the ones closest to what you asked for.
Neither of these is the better film. They are just at opposite ends.
57 films tagged abuse, showing 50
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2025 · Drama
A West Virginia basketball player wins a local boxing contest and lets the coach who spotted her run her career, then marry her. It follows her rise through the 1990s, with a controlling husband in her corner.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
An actress is raped on New Year's Eve and pours what it leaves her with into rehearsals for a production of Medea. Her brother cannot get past having failed to protect her.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Thriller
Eva has a settled new life with a writer and his teenage daughter, until the former partner who abused her starts turning up again. The threat stays close to home the whole way through.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Comedy
A graduate student at a small college in Maine is raped by her thesis adviser, and the film follows the years of her life around it. Quiet, often funny, with her best friend never far away.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Writing and swimming are a girl's way out of a house where her father abuses her, and she takes both to college in Texas. What follows is years of drinking, a bad marriage and real loss.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A literature student starts seeing a boy from her college, and slowly finds out what he expects of her: who she talks to, how she behaves. It stays with her for the length of the relationship.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A woman walks into the Indian mission in Islamabad saying she was taken across the border and forced to marry, and the diplomat handling her is not sure she is telling the truth. It is a true story, mostly talk.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Thriller
Twin sisters scarred as children in a fire their father set are called to the deathbed of the mother they thought died in it, and she asks them to kill him. A loud revenge story with a mean streak of comedy.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
Three young women marry outside their religion and find themselves caught in an abusive plot, in a story that moves across several Indian states. It follows them in parallel, and it has a political argument to make.
AI estimate, not yet described
2012 · Science fiction
Three high-school boys climb down a hole in a field and come out able to move things with their minds, and at first they mostly mess about. Shot as if one of them is filming the whole time.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
A girl raised by cult parents and beaten by her father runs away and lands in Tokyo's Kabukicho, where she falls in with the kids living around the square. Rough and loud, and hard in places.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Comedy
An allegation of sexual assault derails a French company's production of The Marriage of Figaro. It is a comedy drama, and the people involved still have to get the opera on.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
A pianist gives up her career and moves the family to the countryside for her partner's sake, and then he is arrested over child abuse images. The investigator on the case is caring for her own father.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2016 · Science fiction
A woman loses her job and her boyfriend, moves back to her hometown, and works out that a giant creature stomping around Seoul copies whatever she does in one particular playground. A small-town drinking story with a monster movie bolted on.
AI estimate, not yet described
2014 · Drama
A first-year drummer at a competitive music school wins a seat in the top band, which is run by a conductor who teaches through humiliation. It is mostly the two of them in one room.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2019 · Drama
A young television actor lives in a motel with the father who manages him, a former rodeo clown out on parole. Written by the actor it is based on, and it cuts between him as a boy and as a wrecked adult.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Comedy
An American figure skater comes up poor and hard in a sport that wants her sweet, told through interviews with everyone who was there. Funny and mean, and the people telling it keep contradicting each other.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2019 · Drama
Judy Garland arrives in London in 1968 for a run of sold-out shows, broke, worn out and thirty years past The Wizard of Oz. Mostly hotel rooms, dressing rooms and the stage.
AI estimate, not yet described
2023 · Drama
An actress spends a week with the woman she is about to play, whose relationship with a much younger boy was a tabloid story twenty years ago. Mostly two women watching each other very closely in a nice house.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2024 · Drama
Two Black teenagers meet at a brutal Florida reform school in the early 1960s and get each other through it. It is shot almost entirely from inside their eyes, so you see what they see and little else.
AI estimate, not yet described
2006 · Fantasy
A girl moves with her pregnant mother to the forest post of her new stepfather, an army captain hunting rebels in 1944 Spain, and finds something living in an old maze. Fairy tale and war run side by side, and both turn violent.
AI estimate, not yet described
2023 · Drama
A fourteen-year-old army daughter in Germany is invited to a party at Elvis Presley's house, and spends the next decade mostly waiting for him inside Graceland. Quiet and slow, almost entirely from her side of the room.
AI estimate, not yet described
2020 · Thriller
A woman in her thirties who walked out of medical school spends her nights pretending to be too drunk to stand, to see what men do next. Bright colours, pop songs, and a mean sense of humour.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2022 · Drama
Two New York Times reporters spend months trying to get women to go on the record about a film producer. Mostly phone calls, doorsteps and newsroom talk.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2018 · Drama
A family in Tokyo living off part-time work and small thefts takes in a little girl they find alone in the cold. It is quiet and slow, and most of it is the six of them crowded into a tiny house.
AI estimate, not yet described
2016 · Horror
A man with many personalities takes three teenage girls and locks them in a room underground, and they have to work out which of him they are talking to. Mostly a few rooms, one actor playing most of it.
AI estimate, not yet described
2022 · Drama
A famous conductor at the very top of the classical world prepares a live recording in Berlin while things from her past start pressing in. Long, talky, and she is in almost every scene.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Drama
The Boston Globe's investigations desk works a story about abuse in the Catholic church, and keeps finding it is bigger than the last version of it. Mostly documents, doorsteps and phone calls.
AI estimate, not yet described
2011 · Mystery
A disgraced journalist is hired by a rich old man to find out what happened to his niece forty years ago, and a young hacker ends up working the case with him. Long, cold, and some scenes are hard going.
AI estimate, not yet described
2012 · Drama
A kindergarten teacher in a small Danish town is accused by one child of something he did not do, and the town makes up its mind fast. Plain, tense, and it keeps you a step ahead of everyone in it.
AI estimate, not yet described
2020 · Horror
A woman escapes a controlling partner and starts over at a friend's house, then begins to feel that someone else is in the room with her. Long held shots of empty corners, tense most of the way.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2022 · Drama
The women of an isolated religious colony meet in a hayloft over two days to decide by vote whether to stay or leave. All talk, nearly all one room, and taken from a novel.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2018 · Thriller
A hired man who finds missing girls, and carries a hammer to work, is sent after a senator's daughter. Eighty-five minutes, barely any dialogue, and it looks away from the violence as often as at it.
AI estimate, not yet described
1971 · Science fiction
A teenage gang leader in a near-future Britain is caught and volunteered for a treatment meant to make him incapable of violence. Stylised and cruel, and funny in ways that are hard to sit with.
AI estimate, not yet described
1986 · Mystery
A student home from college finds a severed ear in a field and starts watching a nightclub singer's apartment. The town looks perfectly ordinary from the street.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Horror
A brother and his blind stepsister are placed with a foster mother who has recently lost a child of her own. It gets very unpleasant, and it does not look away.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2014 · Drama
A good priest in a small Irish town is told in confession that he will be killed in a week for another man's crimes, and carries on with his parish rounds. Bleak and often very funny.
AI estimate, not yet described
2008 · Drama
A nun running a Bronx Catholic school in 1964 becomes certain the popular priest has done something to a boy, and has nothing to prove it with. Four people and a great deal of argument.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2016 · Thriller
The head of a video game company is attacked in her own house and, instead of calling the police, sets about working out who it was. Cold, funny and hard to place.
AI estimate, not yet described
1987 · War
Marine recruits are broken down by a drill instructor in South Carolina, and the survivors are sent to Vietnam. Two very distinct halves that barely speak to each other.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
A mechanic is sure a customer is the man who tortured him in prison, takes him, and then starts asking others to confirm it. Mostly people arguing in a van.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2011 · Drama
A young woman escapes a farm commune and moves in with her sister, unable to say where she has been. It cuts between the two without telling you which one you are in.
AI estimate, not yet described
2008 · Horror
A woman who escaped a childhood of captivity goes to settle it twenty years later, with her only friend helping. It goes to extremes and then changes shape entirely.
AI estimate, not yet described
1996 · Family
A very clever girl whose parents cannot be bothered with her is sent to a school run by a headmistress who throws children. Broad, cartoonish and entirely on her side.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2016 · Animation
A boy is sent to a children's home after his mother dies, and meets the others living there. Stop-motion, sixty-six minutes, and it takes all of them seriously.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2006 · Drama
An older teacher at a London comprehensive discovers a colleague's affair with a pupil and offers to keep it quiet. Narrated from her diary, and she is on nobody's side.
AI estimate, not yet described
1975 · Drama
A convict fakes madness to serve his sentence in a hospital instead, and finds the ward run by a nurse who never raises her voice. All of it is the one ward.
AI estimate, not yet described
1980 · Drama
A middleweight boxer from the Bronx destroys his marriage and his brother with the same jealousy that makes him good in the ring. Black and white, and he is hard to like.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2021 · Drama
A washed-up adult film performer turns up broke at his estranged wife's house in Texas City and starts working on a seventeen-year-old at the doughnut shop. Sunny, and he never stops talking.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2013 · Drama
Staff at a residential home for at-risk teenagers look after them while managing their own histories. Handheld and warm, with very hard scenes in it.
AI estimate, not yet described