SkinMovies like Skin
- Key Features:
- Apartheid, Racial identity, True story, Biographical, Family drama, Social injustice, Discrimination, Identity crisis, South Africa, Historical drama
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Viewers interested in social justice, Fans of biographical dramas, Those interested in South African history, Viewers seeking thought-provoking films
- Emotional Arc:
- Confusion → Struggle → Acceptance
Skin

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Skin
A destitute young man, raised by racist skinheads and notorious among white supremacists, turns his back on hatred and violence to transform his life, with the help of a black activist and the woman he loves.

Elle Marja, 14, is a reindeer-breeding Sami girl. Exposed to the racism of the 1930s and phrenological examinations at her boarding school, she starts dreaming of another life. To achieve this other life she has to become someone else and break all ties with her family and culture.

While investigating the global phenomenon of caste and its dark influence on society, a journalist faces unfathomable personal loss and uncovers the beauty of human resilience.

Based on the writer/director's childhood, FARMING tells the story of a young Nigerian boy, 'farmed out' by his parents to a white British family in the hope of a better future. Instead, he becomes the feared leader of a white skinhead gang.

Mahree Bok lives on a farm in South Africa. Her father is a policeman who cannot hide his joy when activist Steve Biko is caught by the South African authorities. Piper Dellums is the daughter of a US congressman from California and who lives in a nice home in Washington DC. When Mahree is chosen to spend a semester at the Dellums' house, she doesn't expect that her host family would be black. Nor do her hosts suspect that she is not a black South African.

In a small supermarket in a blue collar town, a black man smiles at a 10 year old white boy across the checkout aisle. This innocuous moment sends two gangs into a ruthless war that ends with a shocking backlash.

As a child, Ali Neuman narrowly escaped being murdered by Inkhata, a militant political party at war with Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. Only he and his mother survived the carnage of those years. But as with many survivors, the psychological scars remain.

In a strange world where people share numerous deformities, the same problem we all face challenges each of them: to find someone who accepts you as you are. Sometimes, that means finding yourself first.

A Marine veteran working as a school janitor tries to mend his relationship with his son after a divorce. When his son is killed by a police officer found innocent without standing trial, he takes matters into his own hands.

In 1931, three Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a trek across the Outback.

Agathe Clery, a marketing manager for a cosmetics company, is snobbish, stubborn and racist. When she is diagnosed with Addison Syndrome, an disorder that darkens the pigmentation of one's skin, she suddenly finds herself resembling a black woman.

During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.

An American reporter and an Afrikaans poet meet and fall in love while covering South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.

The inspiring true story of Seretse Khama, the King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments. Seretse and Ruth defied family, Apartheid and empire - their love triumphed over every obstacle flung in their path and in so doing they transformed their nation and inspired the world.

A couple and their young son retreat to their woodland vacation home, only to face sinister neighbors who intend to kill them and steal their identities.

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.

Dido Elizabeth Bell, the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, plays an important role in the campaign to abolish slavery in England.

The true story of Mamie Till Mobley’s relentless pursuit of justice for her 14 year old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi.

A young woman struggles to defend her Sámi heritage in a world where xenophobia is on the rise, climate change is threatening reindeer herding, and young people choose suicide in the face of collective desperation.

The true story of a white South African racist whose life was profoundly altered by the black prisoner he guarded for twenty years. The prisoner's name was Nelson Mandela.

The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

Norway, 1942, during World War II. After being separated from her family, Esther, a young Jewish girl from Trondheim, arrives at an isolated farm where she must assume a new identity in order to survive the Nazi persecution.

A drama centered on two women who engage in a dangerous relationship during South Africa's apartheid era.

A woman has a close bond with her beloved Algeriann grandfather, who protected her from a toxic home life as a child; his death triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate, revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.

A woman grows increasingly fascinated with her body after suffering a disfiguring accident.

A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.

In 1920s New York City, a Black woman finds her world upended when her life becomes intertwined with a former childhood friend who's passing as white.

Inspired by the gripping true story of a man who would do anything for his family—and for freedom. When Peter, an enslaved man, risks his life to escape and return to his family, he embarks on a perilous journey of love and endurance.

Eva Arctander is born with hypertrichosis, meaning that she is covered from head to toe with fine blonde hair. Her father is so ashamed of her that he hides her away from the world in their apartment. However, Eva’s nanny fights for her right to be treated like everyone else.

A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life and consider their daughter to be “misbehaving” whenever she’s trying to find her own way in life.

The incredible true story of how an orphaned Jamaican baby, adopted by an elderly white couple and brought up in an all white area of London, became one of the most feared and respected men in Britain.

In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.

After the sudden death of her mother, Aurore Gagnon is abused by her disturbed step-mother as her town remains in the silence followed by her death. Based on a true story.

Fourteen-year-old Charlie's life changes when Jasper takes his help to dispose of the body of his girlfriend, Laura. He decides to look for the murderer and falls in love with Laura's younger sister.

Amy, an 11-year-old girl, joins a group of dancers named “the cuties” at school, and rapidly grows aware of her burgeoning femininity—upsetting her mother and her values in the process.

Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.

A young man in 1981 South Africa must complete his brutal and racist two years of compulsory military service while desperately maintaining the secrecy of his homosexuality.

A drama centered on the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name.

A promising teenage dancer enrolls at a prestigious ballet school while grappling with her gender dysphoria.

The incredible true story behind the most controversial Italian court cases in recent years. Stefano Cucchi was arrested for a minor crime and mysteriously found dead during his detention. In one week's time, a family is changed forever.

A bright student in Nigeria takes on the academic establishment when she reports a popular professor who tried to rape her. Based on real events.

A young black man named Bigger Thomas takes a job working for a highly influential Chicago family, a decision that will change the course of his life forever.

Real-life young couple Wim and Floor spend an afternoon in the sunwashed rooms of a crumbling home in Belgium. In a unique twist, this artistic erotic documentary is edited in nearly real-time. In the slowness, we get the build, the sweetness, and the sexiness. Forget about fingersnapping fast editing. Slow is where it’s at.

A teenager struggles to keep her scandal-ridden past and a big secret from getting out when she strikes up an unlikely romance with the crown prince.

Kira's skin starts to age rapidly, dry out and crumble away. But then she discovers that she can replace her own skin with somebody else's.

A 13 years old girl is forced to go living with another family for reasons unknown.

When a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.

Two girls from very different social backgrounds discover, at the age of 25, that they had been switched at birth.

7-year-old Sasha has always known that she is a girl. Sasha’s family has recently accepted her gender identity, embracing their daughter for who she truly is while working to confront outdated norms and find affirmation in a small community of rural France.

Warren Maxwell, the owner of a run-down plantation, pressures his son, Hammond, to marry and produce an heir to inherit the plantation. Hammond settles on his own cousin, Blanche, but purchases a sex slave when he returns from the honeymoon. He also buys his father a new Mandingo slave named Mede to breed and train as a prize-fighter.

A young South African boy from the Johannesburg ghetto named Tsotsi, meaning Gangster, leaves home as a child to get away from his helpless parents. Now a teenage thug, Tsotsi finds a baby in the back seat of a car he's just stolen. He decides that it is his responsibility to care for the infant and in the process learns that maybe the criminal life isn’t the best way.

Nat Turner, a former slave in America, leads a liberation movement in 1831 to free African-Americans in Virginia that results in a violent retaliation from whites.

The definitive documentary on the history of nudity in feature films from the early silent days to the present, studying the changes in morality that led to the use of nudity in films while emphasizing the political, sociological and artistic changes that shaped that history. Skin will also study the gender inequality in presenting nude images in motion pictures and will follow the revolution that has created nude gender equality in feature films today.

Somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Komona a 14-year-old girl tells her unborn child growing inside her the story of her life since she has been at war. Everything started when she was abducted by the rebel army at the age of 12.

Just when Lola, 18 years old and transgender, learns that she can finally have surgery, her mother, who is her only financial support, passes away. Abiding by her mother’s last wishes, Lola and her father, who are permanently in conflict and have not seen each other for two years, undertake a journey all the way to the Belgian coast. They realize the outcome of the journey may not be the one they were both expecting...

In the midst of a volatile regime change in a Francophone African state, Maria Vial is fighting to sustain her family’s coffee plantation. With rebels and the army struggling for control, French peacekeeping forces move out, warning the remaining white residents that they’re on their own. But Maria refuses to be driven off the land, even as tragedy looms.

Inspired to a true story, on November 5th 1991, Rita Atria a young 17-year-old Sicilian girl, goes to see an anti-Mafia judge Paolo Borsellino to denounce the Mafia system that was responsible for the murder of her father and her brother. It is the first time that such a young woman from a Mafia family rebels and betrays the Mafia. From that moment on, Rita's days are numbered. She only has nine months to live...

A star athlete and top student, Luce's idealized image is challenged by one of his teachers when his unsettling views on political violence come to light, putting a strain on family bonds while igniting intense debates on race and identity.

In a dystopian future, the Brazilian government decrees a measure that forces black citizens to migrate to Africa in an attempt to return to their origins. Seeing themselves in the center of terror, two cousins take refuge in an apartment, where they debate social and racial issues, and share the same yearning for the change of country.

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.

The true story of a rich girl who was abducted by American revolutionaries in the 1970's. Her time spent with her captors made her question herself and her way of life and she joined forces with the cause that her abductors were fighting for. This created a US scandal and Patty Hearst has become a pop culture fixture.

Thirty years ago, aliens arrive on Earth. Not to conquer or give aid, but to find refuge from their dying planet. Separated from humans in a South African area called District 9, the aliens are managed by Multi-National United, which is unconcerned with the aliens' welfare but will do anything to master their advanced technology. When a company field agent contracts a mysterious virus that begins to alter his DNA, there is only one place he can hide: District 9.

The story of Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who went into hiding with her family in Amsterdam and became a victim of the Holocaust.

In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty as well as unexpected kindnesses Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist will forever alter his life.

A teenager who went missing and was presumed dead returns home after eight years to find a family deeply affected by his disappearance. Gradually, doubts arise about whether he really is the missing boy or an impostor.

After being sent to a detention centre, a teenage skinhead clashes with the social workers who want to conform him to the status quo.

Nazi skinheads in Melbourne take out their anger on local Vietnamese, who are seen as threatening racial purity. Finally the Vietnamese have had enough and confront the skinheads in an all-out confrontation, sending the skinheads running. A woman who is prone to epileptic seizures joins the skins' merry band, and helps them on their run from justice, but is her affliction also a sign of impurity?

A young girl overcomes her disadvantaged upbringing in the slums of Uganda to become a Chess master.

Husband and wife Gabe and Adelaide Wilson take their kids to their beach house expecting to unplug and unwind with friends. But as night descends, their serenity turns to tension and chaos when some shocking visitors arrive uninvited.

The illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, Joseph Bologne rises to improbable heights in French society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer, complete with an ill-fated love affair and a falling out with Marie Antoinette and her court.

South Africa, 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white political activists from the African National Congress imprisoned by the apartheid regime, put a plan in motion to escape from the infamous Pretoria Prison.

Alice spends her days enslaved on a rural Georgia plantation, restlessly yearning for freedom. After a violent clash with plantation owner Paul, Alice flees through the neighboring woods and stumbles onto the unfamiliar sight of a highway, soon discovering the year is actually 1973.

Gab has a well-ordered life: a fiancée, a wealthy family. Leïla, who struggles to juggle her studies, odd jobs, and a brother to support, does not allow herself to live her own life... When Gab meets Leïla, it is a clash of worlds, the beginning of a great love story that will collide violently with reality.

Raised in a poverty-stricken slum, a 16-year-old girl named Starr now attends a suburban prep school. After she witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend, she's torn between her two very different worlds as she tries to speak her truth.

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

Marco Lopez, a former Neo-Nazi and skinhead, tries to leave his violent, racist and hateful past behind him.

Set in France during the struggle for Algerian independence, Messaoud's mother is terminally ill and his father, needing to work long hours in the factory, can't look after him, so decides to put him and his older brother Abdel in foster care. Sent to the countryside, Abdel has to work on a farm, but Messaoud is taken in by a childless woman, who conceals his Arab origins from her fiercely Gaullist ex-army husband. Re-named Michel/Michou, and with his hair comically dyed blond, the young boy quickly steals the hearts of both foster-parents, and eventually is instrumental in saving their troubled marriage.

Sugihara, a Japanese-born, third-generation Korean teenager struggles to find a place in a society that will not accept him.

The true story of Saartje Baartman, a black South African worker who moves to London with her master in the early 19th century. Although she dreams of being an artist, once in Europe she is exploited as a sideshow attraction due to her large buttocks and genitalia.

A chronicle of Nelson Mandela's life journey from his childhood in a rural village through to his inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa.

The true story of a part Aboriginal man who finds the pressure of adapting to white culture intolerable, and as a result snaps in a violent and horrific manner.

After losing their baby, a married couple adopt 9-year old Esther, who may not be as innocent as she seems.

Driss and Manuel both grew up on the same council estate. An estate where the sense of belonging to your patch is much stronger than the sense of belonging to a country, a nation or a culture... Manuel has assimilated this belonging, and he has even benefited from it and built his life on it. Driss, meanwhile, has shunned it. They will both have to face up to the consequences of their decisions – because they will each have a price to pay…

A seductive stranger prowls the streets of Glasgow in search of prey: unsuspecting men who fall under her spell.

The oldest son of a loving and strong family of black sharecroppers comes of age in the Depression-era South after his father is imprisoned for stealing food.

After the high-profile killing of Damilola Taylor, Cornelius' family move out of London. But when they discover their new town is run by racists, Cornelius takes a drastic step to survive.

The true story of an 84 year-old Kenyan villager and ex Mau Mau freedom fighter who fights for his right to go to school for the first time to get the education he could never afford.

In the 1960s, two entrepreneurs hatch an ingenious business plan to fight for housing integration—and equal access to the American Dream.

The true story of Gabby Douglas who becomes the first African American to be named Individual All-Around Champion in artistic gymnastics at the Olympic Games.

A teenage girl gets diagnosed with a reproductive condition that upends her plans to have sex and propels her into exploring unusual methods to have a sex life, challenging her relationships with everyone in her life, but most importantly, herself.

A family of Irish immigrants adjusts to life on the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen while also grieving the death of a child.

1759, Mauritius Island, Indian Ocean. The island is controlled by French settlers and the deported slave population live in fear while toiling in the sugar cane plantations. Unlike her disillusioned father Massamba, 16-year-old Mati refuses to keep her head down and accept her fate.

Ian begins a relationship with Drew's daughter, who works in the financial sector. The couple gets involved in a tragic accident that will change their lives forever. At the same time, the accident has a major impact on both their families who, despite the class difference, cross paths.

Ten-year-old Laure isn't like most girls. She prefers football to dolls and sweaters to dresses. When Laure and her family move to a new neighbourhood, local girl Lisa mistakes Laure for a boy. Indulging in this exciting new identity, Laure becomes Mickaël, and so begins a summer of long sunny afternoons, playground games and first kisses. Yet with the school term fast approaching, and with suspicions arising amongst friends and family, Laure must face up to an uncertain future.

In the late 19th century, a young woman moves to Amsterdam with her family and tries to make a living. Preyed upon by various men, she nonetheless rises in society.

Exploring the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini's startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.

About existence from the perspective of 20 nameless black females. Each of the women portray one of the characters represented in the collection of twenty poems, revealing different issues that impact women in general and women of color in particular.


