RadicalMovies like Radical
- Key Features:
- Inspirational, Education, Social issues, Mexican setting, Teacher-student relationship, Overcoming adversity, Hope, Disillusionment, Violence-moderate, Corruption
- Tone:
- earnest, serious
- Target Audience:
- Inspirational movie fans, Educators, Social issue enthusiasts, Drama lovers
- Emotional Arc:
- Apathy → Curiosity → Inspiration
Radical

In a Mexican border town plagued by neglect, corruption, and violence, a frustrated teacher tries an unorthodox new method to break through his students’ apathy and unlock their curiosity, their potential... and perhaps even their genius.
Radical
Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students.

Mario Moreno portrays a professor in this movie. A small town in the middle of no where requests the school Mario Moreno is working in for a teacher. He ends up going to give the town a hand. When he arrives he comes to know the corrupt leaders who through out the movie try to make him leave. Although he is being harassed you can see how much he cares for the kids and their circumstances. He deals with problems by using his hilarious comments.

Passionate and innovative teacher Ron Clark leaves his small hometown to teach in one of Harlem's toughest schools. But to break through to the students, he must use unconventional methods, including his ground-breaking classroom rules, to help them reach their potential. Based on a true story.

Meet Chala, an eleven year-old boy with a hard life and strong respect for Carmela, his sixth grade teacher. The pair develops a solid bond, but after Carmela suffers an accident, things get complicated…

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

Magdalena makes a journey to find her son, who has disappeared on his way to the Mexican border with the United States. Her odyssey takes her to meet Miguel, a man recently deported from the US. They start to travel together, Magdalena looking for her son, and Miguel hoping to see his mother again.

Introverted Girona student Nacho meets two delinquents from the city's Chinatown and gets caught up in a summer onslaught of burglaries and hold ups that will change his life.

A deadbeat teacher helps an angry, aimless teenager find direction in life during his final year of high school.

Cagalera and Moloteco are two teenagers from San Gregorio Atlapulco who are desperate to get out and move up and away from oppressive circumstances. When they hear of an opportunity to buy a spot in the electrician’s union, which could transform their lives, they quickly devolve into the criminal, adult underworld of Mexico City in a bid to buy their freedom.

Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.

An ex-con struggling to readjust to life in his small town forms an intense bond with his former high-school teacher.

An abandoned child steals to survive and has problems when he decides to steal from the priest who helps him.

Georgina is a teacher determined to make a difference in the lives of the children she educates in the classroom of a wagon school in rural Mexico.

Something terrible is happening in class 3A at Calmecatl Junior High. No one can leave the classroom until the guilty party is found. This is the device that gives us a glimpse of the ethics, games, esthetics and eroticism of these girl-women. It is not easy to say what the subject is, there are so many: the discovery of sexuality, discrimination, chance, drugs, maternity, traditions, betrayals, power, love. A mural of a complex reality from the point of view of twenty-something women in the skin of 14 to 15 year old girls.

While leading a police investigation of a massacre in a public school at the border of Mexico and U.S.A, special Agent Emanuel Ritter links this strange case to the coming and rising of the ancient demon Belzebuth. But in order to stop the trail of upcoming infanticides, Ritter shall have to confront himself before dealing with the forces of good and evil.

Former Marine Louanne Johnson lands a gig teaching in a pilot program for bright but underachieving teens at a notorious inner-city high school. After having a terrible first day, she decides she must throw decorum to the wind. When Johnson returns to the classroom, she does so armed with a no-nonsense attitude informed by her military training and a fearless determination to better the lives of her students -- no matter what the cost.

An art instructor and an English teacher form a rivalry that ends up with a competition at their school in which students decide whether words or pictures are more important.

1960s Turkey countryside. A newly assigned teacher finds out that the solitary village is missing a school. He gets fond of the village people and especially a disabled man. The teacher helps the village to build a new school and educate the children and the disabled man.

When principal Joe Clark takes over decaying Eastside High School, he's faced with students wearing gang colors and graffiti-covered walls. Determined to do anything he must to turn the school around, he expels suspected drug dealers, padlocks doors and demands effort and results from students, staff and parents. Autocratic to a fault, this real-life educator put it all on the line.

Luis, an 18-year-old Mexican boy with indigenous roots, enters the Heroico Military College with the hope of securing a better future. There, he encounters a rigid and institutionally violent system designed to make him a perfect soldier.

The life of a melancholy professor is turned upside down when he discovers that a rebellious teenager he is tutoring is actually his son.

At 2 Ela lost her ability of seeing and hearing because of a severe illness. And then she became a total disappointment of her family due to her untamed behaviors. But everything changed after an unorthodox teacher stepped into their lives to educate Ela while healing himself.

A Texas cop, whose own daughter might have been forced into sexual slavery, joins forces with a Mexican youth to find the boy's sister, who was abducted and forced into prostitution. Meanwhile, a Polish woman who was promised a better life in America also becomes a victim.

Teacher in the most prestigious highschool in the country, François enjoys the life he’s always known, in the intellectual and bourgeois society of Paris. Trapped in a situation where he’s forced to accept a job in a school of a tough underprivileged suburb, he finds himself confronted to his own limits and to the upheaval of his values and certainties.

A teacher discovers his calling. Marco relocates to Palermo from Milan and takes a job teaching in a reform school while he waits for a high school position. He tries to understand and motivate his handful of students, reading them colloquial poetry, encouraging them to stand up for their rights, finding out about their histories. Natale, in for murder, enamoured of the Mafia, the King Rat within the group; Mery, a drag queen, arrested for assault when defending himself, in love with Mario and, in daylight, rejected by all; Pietro, illiterate, muscular, believing his destiny is set; the callow Claudio, vulnerable, learning to harden himself. What can Mario learn and do in such a short time?

Richard Clark has just left the well-known Wellington Academy to teach at Marion Barry High School. Now, he will try to inspire the D-average students into making good grades and try to woo a fellow teacher.

Ana meets Rafa in a chance encounter and they embark on a road trip to try and save him from bankruptcy, or worse.

An inner-city high school teacher discovers she is pregnant at the same time as one of her most promising students and the two develop an unlikely friendship while struggling to navigate their unexpected pregnancies.

Professor Lipari teaches in a public school and is in a full-on existential crisis. He has no faith in himself and in the possibility of changing the world for the better. At school, a former student of his who is also a teacher will change his attitude.

A shocking assault inspires horrific violence when a group of teens encounters a girl from their school while camping in a remote spot.

Sebastiano teaches high school gym classes and coaches swimming. He’s got a job, a girlfriend, and a pretty normal life. But as young Martin starts to infiltrate Sebastiano’s life, his world will get turned upside down. Eerie from the first frame, this Hitchcockian thriller portrays sexual obsession with terrifying realism.

After the death of her abusive husband, Matilde finds her new best friend in Miguel, her young, insecure, and disoriented neighbor.

A young and fiercely independent woman, Carmen, is forced to flee her home in the Mexican desert following the brutal murder of her mother. She survives an illegal border crossing into the US, only to be confronted by a lawless volunteer border guard. When the border guard and his patrol partner Aidan become embroiled in a deadly standoff, the pair is forced to escape together.

A blind teacher breaks the rules to help a female student rediscover the pleasures of life.

Defiant 18-year-old Adela León pushes her father and an unbending headmistress to the limit in this delicious comedy.

After crossing the border illegally for work, Miguel, a hard-working father and devoted husband, finds himself wrongfully accused of murdering a former sheriff’s wife. After learning of his imprisonment, Miguel’s pregnant wife tries to come to his aid and lands in the hands of corrupt coyotes who hold her for ransom. Dissatisfied with the police department’s investigation, the former sheriff tries to uncover the truth about his wife’s death and discovers disturbing evidence that will destroy one family’s future, or tear another’s apart.

María's routine at school is altered by the arrival of a very special child. Soon, they become close friends.

A group of teachers must defend themselves from a gang of murderous kids when their school comes under siege after hours.

Based on a true story from 1998, five Latino and Black teenagers from the toughest underserved ghetto in Miami fight their way into the National Chess Championship under the guidance of their unconventional but inspirational teacher.

After his grandfather's death, a man travels with his wife and kids to his hometown, where chaos ensues with his relatives over the inheritance.

Paz seems to have a perfect life. She has a job, a partner and friends but something's missing. In reality, there are things she is unhappy about. She feels anxious and burdened but can't bring herself to express these feelings. Until one day she turns to a strange therapy that will make her say absolutely everything she thinks. How would your life be if you only said what you think?

Paulina is a young lawyer with a promising career in Buenos Aires, who chooses to go back to her home town. Her father, Fernando, is a well known judge. Against his will, Paulina decides to teach in a suburban high school as part of an inclusion program. One night, after the second week working there, she's brutally assaulted by a gang. With the disapproval of the people around her, she decides to go back to work, in the neighborhood where she was attacked, without realizing that her attackers may be even closer than she thought.

Despite his dedication to the junior-high students who fill his classroom, idealistic teacher Dan Dunne leads a secret life of addiction that the majority of his students will never know. But things change when a troubled student Drey makes a startling discovery of his secret life, causing a tenuous bond between the two that could either end disastrously or provide a catalyst of hope.

Ana and her two best friends, Maria and Paula, navigate life in their oppressive countryside village. Whilst their families struggle in the poppy fields harvesting opium, the girls try to grow alongside the creeping terror of their cartel oppressors.

A clique of four young teachers at a high school looks critically at their colleagues. To avoid falling in the same routine, they bring new ideas into the school lessons and play little games and pranks in their spare time -- sometimes get even more childish than their pupils. When they get opposition from the other teachers, they play tricks to get rid of them.

Checo and Chuma decide to use their criminal skills to do good and help people. Along the way, they learn that friendship and love are more than just clichés.

A high school coach, whose teenage daughter was murdered, takes matters into his own hands by going after the men who kidnap his students for their sex trafficking operation.

In the near future, a popular uprising in Mexico City interrupts a wedding held at the home of a wealthy family. After the riots have been quashed, they discover the bride has gone missing and plea with the military to help locate her.

Over one intense day, the devoted head teacher of a last-chance reform school strives to keep his students in line while facing pressures of his own.

After retiring to the beautiful Mexican town of Guanajuato, a 70 year old decides to follow his dreams and enroll at the university where he stumbles upon a new generation and they are bound together by the novel Don Quijote de la Mancha.

Two teenage Mexican-American loners in 1987 El Paso explore a new, unusual friendship and the difficult road to self-discovery.

Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.

After being deported back to Mexico, a man has no choice but to join the vicious drug cartel that has corrupted his hometown in order to survive.

When Cindy decides that she doesn't want to marry her boyfriend, she runs to Mexico City, where new friendships and unexpected paths teach her that there are so much more possibilities on her life and her talent than she imagines.

Diana Watts, a high school teacher in Austin, Texas, is in the midst of an affair with one of her students, Eric Tull. As the reality of their situation forces itself upon them, Diana puts the relationship on hold. It’s only a matter of time before she gives in again to her desire; this time even more recklessly than before.

After a teacher dies, his best friend — a former cop — takes a job at the school where he worked to confront the gang he thinks was responsible.

Sister Marina, a very unorthodox nun, is sent during the summer of 1994 to El Parral, a boarding school for boys threatened to be closed soon. Even though the kids welcome Marina with all kinds of pranks, they will, little by little, become something very close to the family they never had.

Ernesto lives in depression and decides to hire a hit-man to end his own life. However, his plan takes an unexpected turn when he meets Rita, whose love gives him a new reason to live.

Bernadinho and Pedro are students and face the classic tasks of fulfilling school obligations, taking good grades, being well behaved and complying with school rules, increasingly elaborated thanks to director Ademar. Frustrated, Pedro ends up finding a diary of how to cause chaos in school without being caught, which leads the two friends to follow the tips of the notebook.

In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.

After etching their love on a stalk, a boy and girl reunite years later, reigniting their romance amidst the Mexican Revolution.

Clement, a young philosophy teacher, is sent to Arras for a year. He meets Jennifer, a pretty hair stylist, and the two freely share their hearts and bodies as they try to overcome the cultural and social divide between them.

When some very creepy things start happening around school, the kids at Herrington High make the chilling discovery that confirms their worst suspicions: their teachers really are from another planet!

In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.

Carmen is a gypsy teenager, destined to live a life that is repeated every generation: getting married and raising as many children as possible. But one day she meets Lola, an uncommon gypsy who dreams about going to university, does graffiti and is very different. Carmen quickly develops a complicity with Lola and discovers a world that, inevitably, leads them to be rejected by their families.

When her mother suddenly disappears with no one to care for her, young Estrella ends up on the street and joins a gang of children, triggering a dangerous and tragic chain of events.

Joan is a naïve, 16-year-old who falls in love easily. One day he decides to escape to the provinces with Luciana, a beautiful 35-year-old woman and a teacher at his school, in order to give free rein to his love. Soon, Joan discovers with horror that he has fallen into a trap that is a mix between sex, money, politics and violence.

Daniela, raised in the bosom of a strict Evangelical family and recently unmasked as a fornicator by her shocked parents, struggles to find her own path to spiritual harmony.

A heroic high school teacher leads a band of students trapped in school by violent drug-runners.

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

A corrupted border agent decides to clean up his act when an impoverished woman's baby is put up for sale on the black market.

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.

In Sonora, Mexico. Jeremías, an eight year old, who finds out he is a gifted child initiates a journey of self discovery. When an opportunistic physiologist makes contact with Jeremías, a new world of experiences open up to him but at the expense of being away from the family he loves. Jeremías must choose between this exciting but lonely new world he finds himself in or returning home to his loving family.

Determined to help her son, who has cerebral palsy, Bárbara takes her family to India for an experimental treatment.

Lucía lives with an incurable disease, and Bruno was deported to Mexico with no place to sleep. An unexpected phone call brings them together in an emotional story of overcoming, reconstruction and hope.

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.

The principal of an elementary school calls a special parents meeting after it’s alleged that the seemingly empathetic and kindly-looking teacher Mrs. Drazděchová uses her students to manipulate their parents.

Two siblings who haven't seen each other in 15 years mend their relationship while fulfilling a childhood dream: a motorcycle road trip through Mexico.

To find his therapy dog, a 17-year-old escapes from juvie and embarks on a journey of reconnection with his brother and grandmother through Cantabria.

After hiding a murderer, a Catholic priest is forced into self-exile and decides to embark on a pilgrimage through the Mexican countryside.

After being released from prison, Zequi, a bank robber, sets out to recover money buried by his accomplice; but is horrified to learn that a high school gymnasium is now over the site where the loot is hidden.

Two high school misfits join forces in an attempt to overtake the local school board. Guided by their families, they enter the perilous word of politics and, in the process, learn a thing or two about love.

A troubled man runs away to Mexico and is recruited to join a paramilitary group of teens fighting the drug cartels. He proves himself to the group, but questions their motive.

Young priest Father Sebastián is assigned to a parish in San Jeronimo el Alto, where he is not welcomed by the community, particularly the resident priest Father Damián. The newcomer gradually earns the trust of the people through humor, but firmly captures their hearts by saving the town fiesta by fighting a bull when the hired torero failed to show. Father Sebastián counsels the townspeople, lecturing them on their duties in a modern society. He used the collection plate to redistribute the town's wealth more evenly.

El Bola is a 12-year-old boy raised in a violent and sordid environment. Embarrassed by his family life, he avoids becoming close to classmates. The arrival of a new boy at school changes his attitude towards his classmates and friendship. The heart of the story is the change in El Bola's life, at almost all levels, after befriending this new classmate.

In the Mexican-Guatemalan border, young teenage lovers, Sabina and Jovany, both Hondurans, accidentally meet again after some years without seeing each other. She plans to get to the United States and dreams about being a great singer; he commits all the required atrocities to be accepted by the gang: la Mara Salvatrucha. Sabina and Jovany crashed with the most adverse conditions at the border like white slavery, the Mexican and American migratory agents Burrona and Patrick, the brothel matron Doña Lita, Don Nico the Mexican Consul in Tecún Umán, the drug trafficking networks, the army and la Mara Salvatrucha.

A teacher reconnects with an old student who is now an attorney representing a family who is suing the school for graduating their son who still cannot read or write. Amid the daily chaos of teaching in an inner city school, Alex Jurel tries to decide if he will lie at his deposition to protect the school or tell the truth and risk throwing away his career.

On October 2, 1968, a student uprising descends into violence after the Mexican government begins to use lethal force against the protesters.

Pierre Hoffman joins a prestigious school as a substitute teacher and soon notices, among some of his students, an unjustified hostility and a spark of violence in their eyes. Is it because the unspeakable tragedy they have just experienced? Is it because they seem to be extraordinarily gifted children? Is it because they have lost all hope for the future? From curiosity to obsession, Pierre will try to unlock their secret.

When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.

Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.

At Léon Blum High School in Créteil, France, a history teacher decides to have her weakest 10th grade class participate in a national history competition.

A young Mexican woman crosses the border in search of the American dream, only to instead find her worst nightmare lying within.

The story of a dysfunctional couple, whose problems will inevitably deteriorate their marriage and their son's life.

In one of the poorest areas of Paris, a school counselor devotes herself to working with disadvantaged students, while facing challenges of her own.

After thirty years teaching in London, Mark Thackeray retires and returns to Chicago. There, however, the challenge of teaching kids in an inner city school proves to be too much to resist.

Elementary school teacher Michele Cortese is about to start a whole new life. After 40 years of teaching in the metropolitan Roman jungle, he had to move to a village in Central Italy, to teach in a tiny school with just a few children aged 7-10. Struggling to overcome his urban inadequacy, he finds a friendly face in vice-principal Agnese and gradually manages to fit in, thanks to her and their spirited pupils. As everything seems to be falling into place, unwelcome news comes through: the school has failed to meet its student quota for the next year and will soon be shut for good.

The residents of an isolated town look to revive their home's identity when a group of foreigners unexpectedly arrive, bringing culture shock with them.

