Not Without My DaughterMovies like Not Without My Daughter
- Key Features:
- Cultural clash, Custody battle, Escape, Oppression, Survival, Mother-daughter relationship, True story, Political tension, Violence-moderate
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Drama viewers, Suspense fans, Viewers interested in true stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Entrapment → Desperation → Hope
Not Without My Daughter

An American woman, trapped in Islamic Iran by her brutish husband, must find a way to escape with her daughter as well.
Not Without My Daughter
In 1986 Iran, Sahebjam, whose car breaks down in a remote village, enters into a conversation with Zahra, who relays to him the story about her niece, Soraya, whose arranged marriage to an abusive tyrant ended in tragedy.

Working-class waitress Slim thought she was entering a life of domestic bliss when she married Mitch, the man of her dreams. After the arrival of their first child, her picture perfect life is shattered when she discovers Mitch's hidden possessive dark side, a controlling and abusive alter ego that can turn trust, love and tranquility into terror. Terrified for her child's safety, Slim flees with her daughter. Relentless in his pursuit and enlisting the aid of lethal henchmen, Mitch continually stalks the prey that was once his family.

An American is kidnapped while attending a conference in Cairo and ends up in prison in Iran on spying charges. His wife goes to Iran, determined to get him out.

Former FBI agent, now single mother Lisa Brennan, takes a holiday to escape an unhappy love affair and painful family memories. But in a heartbeat, she is not only faced with a daughter kidnapped by human traffickers, but also faces murder charges and must keep one step ahead of the foreign police.

A successful psychoanalyst's life is turned upside down by a very anxious and extremely clingy patient who starts dating his daughter.

Twenty-five years ago Adib, a promising young officer in the Syrian military police, suddenly left Damascus under suspicious circumstances. Abandoning the love of his life Fatima, he made his way to Canada and wiped the slate clean. When his daughter Muna suddenly disappears in Damascus, his past threatens to violently catch up to him. Teaming up with a Canadian emissary, Adib must now confront the turmoil he thought he left behind in order to find Muna.

After Shideh's building is hit by a missile during the Iran-Iraq War, a superstitious neighbor suggests that the missile was cursed and might be carrying malevolent Middle-Eastern spirits. She becomes convinced a supernatural force within the building is attempting to possess her daughter Dorsa, and she has no choice but to confront these forces if she is to save her daughter and herself.

When rancher and single mother of two Maggie Gilkeson sees her teenage daughter, Lily, kidnapped by Apache rebels, she reluctantly accepts the help of her estranged father, Samuel, in tracking down the kidnappers. Along the way, the two must learn to reconcile the past and work together if they are going to have any hope of getting Lily back before she is taken over the border and forced to become a prostitute.

On a family trip in the African desert, a research scientist unintentionally travels off course and is brutally murdered by an arms dealer. His girlfriend is put to the ultimate survival test as she attempts to evade the killers and protect his teenage daughter.

After the premature death of her estranged husband, Emma (Winter) regains custody of their young daughter Isla (Jones) and hopes to rebuild their relationship after many years apart. But when an evil entity begins to torment them, mother and daughter are forced to face the inexplicable presence that inhabits the walls of their new home.

Étienne is barely twenty when he falls in love with Valérie. They are hardly any more when their daughter Rosa is born. And then, one day, Valérie leaves and never returns. He chooses not to make a drama of it and builds a happy life for him and his child. Sixteen years later, when Rosa is about to lead her own life, Étienne recognizes his wife in a television report. The past brutally resurfaces, and father and daughter are propelled into one last chaotic family journey.

Somaieh, the youngest daughter of an indigent family, is getting married and fear is overwhelming each and every member of the family regarding how to overcome their difficulties after she's gone.

Bill Baker, an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison, who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.

Terri is a devoted wife and mother of two, living an ideal suburban life in Atlanta when Colin, a charming but dangerous escaped convict, shows up at her door claiming car trouble. Terri offers her phone to help him but soon learns that no good deed goes unpunished as she finds herself fighting for survival when he invades her home and terrorizes her family.

A father and daughter check out a small town escape room and discover there is something sinister about the place.

In their new overseas home, an American family soon finds themselves caught in the middle of a coup, and they frantically look for a safe escape in an environment where foreigners are being immediately executed.

Li and his wife A Yu run a small business in Thailand and enjoy a happy home life with their two daughters. When their eldest daughter is violently assaulted, blackmailed and left traumatised by another student, her parents intervene, leading to a dead body which needs to be hidden, and every trace of the boy buried to cover up the accident.

In this adaptation of the critically acclaimed debut novel by Iranian American author Dalia Sofer, a secular Jewish family is caught up in the maelstrom of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

A Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich flees Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances, bringing with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown. While Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor.

In 1993, Maureen’s six-year-old daughter Amina is snuck out of the country by her ex-husband, Karim. After years of unsuccessful attempts to find her, Maureen intersects with a professional retriever of internationally abducted children who promises to help her find Amina in exchange for her collaboration.

Investigating judge Iman grapples with paranoia amid political unrest in Tehran. When his gun vanishes, he suspects his wife and daughters, imposing draconian measures that strain family ties as societal rules crumble.

Set in a Tex-Mex border town, Not Forgotten is a classic psychological thriller about Jack and Amaya Bishop, a couple who must come to terms with their tortured pasts in order to save their kidnapped daughter. It is a tale taut with intrigue and steeped in Latino mysticism, where the line between what's real and what's imagined becomes hopelessly blurred.

Kate and her daughter Beth live alone in an isolated farmhouse in the woods, but when Kate slowly begins to suspect that something sinister is happening, her motherly instincts are put to the test.

A daughter torn between two mothers, one who raised her with love and her biological mother, who instinctively claims her back.

After a mysterious global crisis, a young girl is left alone to hide from a malevolent power that stalks her home. Her parents eventually return and the struggle begins to save their daughter.

Tormented and left for dead by a scorned lover, a woman finds the strength within herself to recover and retaliate against her abuser.

A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been barred from leaving the country, arrives at a village on the Iran-Turkey border to supervise a film based on a real-life couple seeking passports to Europe being shot in Turkey, but both his stay and the production run into trouble.

Swedish intelligence officer Carl Hamilton's 7-year-old goddaughter Nathalie is kidnapped. When the kidnapping's underlying motive becomes known, the Swedish authorities assume a passive role, forcing Hamilton to action. With the help of international contacts, Hamilton manages to get them on track. Hamilton, along with some military colleagues, plans a daring rescue mission.

A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. But when a small mistake tips them off to authorities, they are sent on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.

At the turning point of the Iran-Contra affair, Elena McMahon, a fearless investigative journalist covering the 1984 US presidential campaign, puts herself in danger when she abandons her assigned task in order to fulfill the last wish of her ailing father, a mysterious man whose past activities she barely knows.

Fatima, an Algerian-born woman who now lives in France with her two teenage daughters, with whom she is barely able to communicate.

A counter-terrorism expert takes a job protecting a young heiress. After an attempted kidnapping puts both of their lives in danger, they must flee.

Cielo is a mother whose teenage daughter is kidnapped in Northern Mexico. When the authorities offer no support in the search, Cielo takes matters into her own hands and transforms from housewife into a vengeful militant.

Abla runs a modest local bakery from her home in Casablanca where she lives alone with her 8-year-old daughter Warda. Their routine of housework and homework is interrupted one day by a knock on the door. It is Samia, a young woman looking for a job and a roof over her head. The little girl is immediately taken with the newcomer, but her mother initially refuses to allow a pregnant stranger into their home. Gradually, however, Abla's resolve softens and Samia's arrival begins to offer all of them the prospect of a new life.

Iranian female judokas Leila and her coach Maryam, travel to the Judo World Championship, intent on bringing home Iran’s first gold medal. Midway through the Judo World Championships, they receive an ultimatum from the Islamic Republic ordering Leila to fake an injury and lose, or she will be branded a traitor of the state. With her own and her family’s freedom at stake, Leila is faced with an impossible choice: comply with the Iranian regime as her coach Maryam implores her to do, or fight on, for the gold.

Amanda and her daughter live a quiet life on an American farm, but when the remains of her estranged mother arrive from Korea, Amanda becomes haunted by the fear of turning into her own mother.

A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.

On his wedding anniversary, Yusef and his young daughter set out in the West Bank to buy his wife a gift. Between soldiers, segregated roads and checkpoints, how easy would it be to go shopping?

In 1915 a man survives the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, but loses his family, speech and faith. One night he learns that his twin daughters may be alive, and goes on a quest to find them.

An Iranian family survives the shah and the ayatollah and moves to France. This story follows the family through it all. Despite the politics, revolution, prison, beatings, assassinations and suicides this is a comedy.

A 5-year-old girl embarks on a harrowing quest for survival amid the sudden rise and terrifying reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.

A former Marine races against time to save a group of hostages -- including his young daughter and a congressman — when armed militants take over his stepfather's store.

In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

Drama about a father and son who set out to find their missing daughter/sister with the help of an American headhunter.

A man without attachments or responsibilities suddenly finds himself with an abandoned baby and leaves for London to try and find the mother. Eight years later after he and his daughter become inseparable Gloria's mother reappears.

A married couple's life is turned upside down when the wife is accused of murdering her boss. Her husband John would spend the next few years trying to get her released, but there's no evidence that negates the evidence against her. When the strain of being separated from her husband and son gets to her, John decides to find a way to break her out.

When a container washes ashore the residents of a sleepy cul-de-sac are plunged into violence, terror and paranoia. Ring fenced by the military a single mother must overcome all the odds to save her daughter.

Set against the backdrop of Iran's strict and oppressive legal system, this anthology film tells the stories of four men who each face a moral crisis when having to deal with death penalties.

Stranded at a rest stop in the mountains during a blizzard, a recovering addict discovers a kidnapped child hidden in a car belonging to one of the people inside the building which sets her on a terrifying struggle to identify who among them is the kidnapper.

A rich man's daughter is held captive in an abandoned apartment by two former convicts who abducted her and hold her ransom in exchange for her father's money.

When an Egyptian terrorism suspect "disappears" on a flight from Africa to Washington DC, his American wife and a CIA analyst find themselves caught up in a struggle to secure his release from a secret detention facility somewhere outside the US.

Dolores Claiborne was accused of killing her abusive husband twenty years ago, but the court's findings were inconclusive and she was allowed to walk free. Now she has been accused of killing her employer, Vera Donovan, and this time there is a witness who can place her at the scene of the crime. Things look bad for Dolores when her daughter Selena, a successful Manhattan magazine writer, returns to cover the story.

A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.

A mother attempts to keep her family safe as war rages and a sniper lies in wait outside her home.

A female FBI agent holidaying in Eastern Europe with her family gets her life upside down when her daughter is kidnapped. She has to team up with a criminal on the run to save her daughter before time runs out.

A portrait of the myth of maternity around the story of Pepa and her daughter, who are evicted from their home and forced to wander for a place to live with no support network.

A young pregnant woman named Mia escapes from a country at war by hiding in a maritime container aboard a cargo ship. After a violent storm, Mia gives birth to the child while lost at sea, where she must fight to survive.

An exploration of the United States of America's war on drugs from multiple perspectives. For the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the war becomes personal when he discovers his well-educated daughter is abusing cocaine within their comfortable suburban home. In Mexico, a flawed, but noble policeman agrees to testify against a powerful general in league with a cartel, and in San Diego, a drug kingpin's sheltered trophy wife must learn her husband's ruthless business after he is arrested, endangering her luxurious lifestyle.

A Taliban soldier struggles to survive after he escapes his captors and flees into the Polish countryside.

Shivaay , a fearless Himalayan mountaineer covered in Lord Shiva tattoos, heads to Bulgaria to fulfill his nine-year-old daughter Gaura’s wish of seeing her mother Olga, who abandoned them years ago. But their plan goes for a toss when the little girl gets kidnapped in the foreign land. Rescuing her from the masked child-traffickers becomes his only reason for survival.

A young woman is returned home to her biological parents after living with her abductor for 17 years.

Monty is a mechanic struggling to make ends meet as he raises his three young daughters. When the court awards custody of his daughters to his shady ex-wife, Monty desperately tries to win them back with the help of Julia, a beautiful, Ivy League-educated attorney. Monty and Julia couldn't be less alike, but a flame is ignited... touching off a firestorm of love and conflict.

The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.

The true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.

At the age of 40, Leila has spent her entire life caring for her parents and four brothers. A family that is constantly arguing and under pressure from various debts in the face of sanctions against Iran. While her brothers are struggling to make ends meet, Leila makes a plan.

A former U.S. Navy Seal is forced to become the international criminal he once fought against when a powerful and violent drug cartel kidnaps his wife and daughter.

Upon hearing his wife was killed in the Iraq war, a father takes his two daughters on a road trip, all the while searching for the right time and place to tell them about their mother's fate.

A mother and her 10-year old daughter are trapped in a forest. There is something in this forest. Something unlike anything they have heard before. Something that lurks in the darkness and it’s coming after them.

A master thief coincidentally is robbing a house where a murder—in which the President of the United States is involved—occurs in front of his eyes. He is forced to run, while holding evidence that could convict the President.

While waiting for the brain surgery of his daughter Angela, victim of a motorcycle accident, the surgeon Timoteo recalls his torrid affair with and passion for Italia, a simple woman from slums in the periphery of the big city where he lives. The ghost of the beloved and sexual object of desire Italia chases him in his memories.

Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a camping site near Takumi's house offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to nature.

An Iranian couple living in the US become trapped inside a hotel when insidious events force them to face the secrets that have come between them, in a night that never ends.

The film follows 24 hours in the life of father and daughter Leo and Molly, as they weave their way around New York City, until their ordinary but stressful day takes on a hallucinatory and epic quality.

Air-supply is scarce in the near future, forcing a mother and daughter to fight for survival when two strangers arrive desperate for an oxygenated haven.

Bryan Mills, a former government operative, is trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter Kim. After reluctantly agreeing with his ex-wife to let Kim go to Paris on vacation with a friend, his worst nightmare comes true. While on the phone with his daughter shortly after she arrives in Paris, she and her friend are abducted by a gang of human traffickers. Working against the clock, Bryan relies on his extensive training and skills to track down the ruthless gang that abducted her and launch a one-man war to rescue his daughter.

A once-abused woman devotes herself to ridding victims of their domestic abusers while hunting down the one she must kill to be truly free.

John James is a writer; his wife has left him. He moves with his two middle-school children to an isolated house off a dirt road in South Carolina. The property has an Indian burial mound, which fascinates his daughter, Louisa, who's entering puberty.

A chronicle of the unconditional love between a mother and her daughter, from 1958 to the present day, which is endangered by an unsteady and manipulative father.

An overnight flight to Miami quickly becomes a battle for survival when Lisa realizes her seatmate plans to use her as part of a chilling assassination plot against the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. If she refuses to cooperate, her own father will be killed. As the miles tick by, she's in a race against time to find a way to warn the potential victims before it's too late.

It is 1654, in the South of France. When horsemen follow a runaway slave into the convent where he's taken sanctuary and kill both the fugitive and the Mother Superior, they little realise that one of the novices is the spirited daughter of retired musketeer D'Artagnan.

Soviet Georgia, 1983. Preparations for Nika and Ana's wedding are in full swing and it's a big day for both of their elite families. For the newlyweds and their friends, however, the celebrations are in fact part of a cover-up, as they plot an audacious escape from the Soviet Union.

Elyas, a former Special Forces soldier who has become paranoid since a mission in Afghanistan, is recruited to ensure the safety of Amina and her daughter Nour, 13 years old, both of whom came from the Middle East for the holidays. As he takes office, Elyas senses something is up.

After a public spat with a movie star, a disgraced director retaliates by kidnapping the actor's daughter, filming the search for her in real-time.

Between light and darkness stands Olfa, a Tunisian woman and the mother of four daughters. One day, her two older daughters disappear. To fill in their absence, the filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania invites professional actresses and invents a unique cinema experience that will lift the veil on Olfa and her daughters' life stories. An intimate journey of hope, rebellion, violence, transmission and sisterhood that will question the very foundations of our societies.

When their daughter is abducted by experienced kidnappers, the Jennings turn the tables on their seemingly fool-proof plan.

After a comet releases a mysterious virus that begins to kill all of the women in the world, a young couple's relationship is severely tested. They hide out (from both the illness and the savages who hunt the remaining women) in their over-sterilized apartment. Ultimately the duo escapes their self-imposed quarantine to head to the wilderness.

Paris, spring 2015. Faustine travels to Syria with her little son to join ISIS; but, once in Raqqa, she soon realizes the hell she is gotten herself into. Her husband Sylvain quickly understands that the French government is powerless to help him, so he plans with some friends a high-risk extraction operation to get his family back.

A working single mother comes home one day to find that her daughter and the nanny have disappeared -- and this is just the beginning of her nightmare.

Desperate to keep custody of his daughter, a mixed martial arts fighter abandons a big match and races across Berlin to attend her birthday party.

A deadly female assassin comes out of hiding to protect the daughter that she gave up years before, while on the run from dangerous men.

Ex-military specialist Clair Hamilton returns home from her tour in the Middle East due to her father's passing and to claim her inheritance. Her son is then kidnapped and held for ransom by a gang led by a mysterious figure known only as “Father”.

When a nuclear strike causes an electromagnetic pulse that cuts off all power, water, and communication to the entire western United States, Reese finds herself plunged into an all-too-real fight to survive. As pandemonium grips her city, Reese and her father set out on a desperate journey in search of safety--a perilous trek through a world gone mad where every encounter with a stranger could be your last.

When the daughter of a psychiatrist is kidnapped, he is horrified to discover that the abductors' demand is that he break through to a young woman, suffering from PTSD, who knows a secret six digit code number.



