The PawnbrokerMovies like The Pawnbroker
- Key Features:
- Holocaust, Loss of faith, Guilt, Redemption, Urban decay, Moral conflict, Trauma, Social commentary, Existentialism, Psychological drama
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Drama enthusiasts, Art house cinema fans, Viewers interested in historical trauma
- Emotional Arc:
- Despair → Regret
The Pawnbroker

A Jewish pawnbroker, a victim of Nazi persecution, loses all faith in his fellow man until he realizes too late the tragedy of his actions.
The Pawnbroker
When his young wife commits suicide with no explanation, an introspective pawnbroker looks back on their life together.

The story of Jewish counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch, who was coerced into assisting the Nazi operation of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II.

A hardcore US racist skinhead who, because of his intelligence, leads a gang dedicated to fighting the enemy: the supposed American-Jewish conspiracy for domination. However, he's hiding a secret: he's Jewish-born, a brilliant scholar whose questioning of the tenets of his faith has left him angry and confused, turning against those who he thinks have a tragic history of their own making.

The stories of a missing wife, a couple of meth heads and an Elvis impersonator are connected by the items found in a small town's pawn shop.

A Swedish housewife begins an adulterous affair with an American archaeologist, unaware of his emotional scars as a Holocaust survivor; consequently, their relationship will be painfully difficult.

Paris 1942. François Mercier is an ordinary man who only aspires to start a family with the woman he loves, Blanche. He is also the employee of a talented jeweler, Mr. Haffmann. But faced with the German occupation, the two men will have no other choice but to conclude an agreement whose consequences, over the months, will upset the fate of our three characters.

A blind man who regains his vision finds himself becoming metaphorically blinded by his obsession for the superficial.

With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the death of his family.

Seemingly mild-mannered businessman Edmond Burke visits a fortuneteller and hears a remark that spurs him to leave his wife abruptly and seek what is missing from his life. Encounters with strangers and unsavory people weaken the barriers encompassing his long-suppressed rage, until Edmond explodes in violence.

Determined to survive at any price, Edith, a young Jewish woman deported to an extermination camp, manages to survive by accepting the role of kapo, a privileged prisoner whose mission is to ruthlessly guard other prisoners.

A debt collector who looks intimidating, but actually has a warm heart, ends up becoming the guardian of a child, who has been left behind as collateral by her illegal immigrant mother.

After a pawn shop robbery goes askew, two criminals take refuge at a remote farmhouse to try to let the heat die down, but find something much more menacing.

In a small town in Nazi-occupied Slovakia during World War II, decent but timid carpenter Tono is named "Aryan comptroller" of a button store owned by an old Jewish widow, Rozalie. Since the post comes with a salary and standing in the town's corrupt hierarchy, Tono wrestles with greed and guilt as he and Rozalie gradually befriend each other. When the authorities order all Jews in town to be rounded up, Tono faces a moral dilemma unlike any he's known before.

After again attempting to commit murder, a Jewish man with a mysterious past and extraordinary intelligence, charisma, and body control returns to an insane asylum, where he makes a startling discovery.

Michaela, an epileptic, enrolls in college to study education. She goes off her medication and soon begins hearing voices and seeing apparitions that tell her to avoid religious objects, although she is devoutly Roman Catholic. One priest scoffs at the idea that Michaela could be possessed by demons, but a younger pastor arranges an exorcism for the young woman.

In the Jewish tradition of arguing with God, Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz decide to put God on Trial.

A man providing overnight watch to a deceased member of his former Orthodox Jewish community finds himself opposite a malevolent entity.

In 1930s Prague, a Czech cremator who firmly believes cremation relieves one from earthly suffering is drawn inexorably to Nazism.

A Jewish homicide detective investigates a seemingly minor murder and falls in with a Zionist group as a result.

Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.

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 small-time conman has his loyalties torn between his estranged mother and his new girlfriend, both of whom are high-stakes grifters with their own angles to play.

Harry Haft is a boxer who fought fellow prisoners in the concentration camps to survive. Haunted by the memories and his guilt, he attempts to use high-profile fights against boxing legends like Rocky Marciano as a way to find his first love again.

A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.

A charismatic New York City jeweler always on the lookout for the next big score makes a series of high-stakes bets that could lead to the windfall of a lifetime. Howard must perform a precarious high-wire act, balancing business, family, and encroaching adversaries on all sides in his relentless pursuit of the ultimate win.

After suffering a brutal defeat and being told he can no longer fight, 37-year-old, scar-ridden prizefighter Louis 'Mountain' Rivera struggles to find a new direction in life

Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.

A pawn shop proprietor buys used goods from desperate locals – as much to play perverse power games as for his own livelihood, but when the perfect rump and a backed-up toilet enter his life, he loses all control.

A recently divorced man and an emotionally devastated widow begin a love affair.

The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.

German-Jewish cabaret singer Nelly survived Auschwitz but had to undergo reconstructive surgery as her face was disfigured. Without recognizing Nelly, her former husband Johnny asks her to help him claim his wife’s inheritance. To see if he betrayed her, she agrees, becoming her own doppelganger.

Tormented by a past life, garbage man Clean attempts a life of quiet redemption. But when his good intentions mark him a target of a local crime boss, Clean is forced to reconcile with the violence of his past.

Two troubled men face their terrible destinies and events of their past as they join together on a mission to find the Holy Grail and thus to save themselves.

A recovering gambling addict attempts to reconcile with his family and friends but finds trouble and temptation when caught between feelings for his ex-wife and her dangerous hoodlum boyfriend.

In seaside Italy, a Holocaust survivor with a daycare business takes in a 12-year-old street kid who recently robbed her.

After losing his parents, a young Jewish boy wanders Eastern Europe, seeking refuge during World War II.

A boy in New York is taken in by a wealthy family after his mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In a rush of panic, he steals 'The Goldfinch', a painting that eventually draws him into a world of crime.

In New York, a Pakistani native finds that his American Dream has collapsed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being caught out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto.

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.

A cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.

A small, wealthy family in New York City gets progressively torn apart by secrets, lies, and the theft that orchestrates all of it.

Paris, France, 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Robert Klein, a successful art dealer who benefits from the misfortunes of those who are ruthlessly persecuted, discovers by chance that there is another Robert Klein, apparently a Jewish man; someone with whom he could be mistakenly identified, something dangerous in such harsh times.

When a Jewish songstress is plucked from the stage and sent to Auschwitz, she and other musicians find themselves assigned to a terrible task—using their talents to soothe fellow prisoners who are sentenced to die in the gas chambers.

The life of a woman is transformed after she is diagnosed with a terminal disease, fired from her job and abandoned by her boyfriend. Given two months to live, she throws caution to the wind to pursue her dreams.

A troubled hedge fund magnate, desperate to complete the sale of his trading empire, makes an error that forces him to turn to an unlikely person for help.

Germany 1945, Max, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, meets a radical group of Jewish resistance fighters, who, like him, lost all hope for their future after they were robbed of their existence and their entire families were killed by the Nazis. They dream of retaliation on an epic scale for the Jewish people. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Max starts identifying with the group's monstrous plans...

A charismatic psycho suspected of killing two innocent campers in a cold-blooded double homicide grows increasingly unstable as his suburban empire starts to crack at the foundations.

A young boy has lost his mother and is losing touch with his father and the world around him. Then he meets Hesher who manages to make his life even more chaotic.

After his young son dies from the negligence at a hospital, Harry Fertig takes matters into his own hands and kills the doctor, nurse and clerk responsible. Slick lawyer Roy Bleakie, looking only to win a case and not caring of the matters involved, is asked by Fertig's boss to defend him. Shocked to hear that his client wants to plead guilty, the case causes Bleakie to question his own morals by defending an honorable man.

After the liberation of Auschwitz, an Italian prisoner of War begins a torturous voyage home to Turin, through a Europe caught between war and peace.

New York cop Frank Serpico blows the whistle on the rampant corruption in the force only to have his comrades turn against him.

Katja's life collapses after the deaths of her husband and son in a bomb attack. After a time of mourning and injustice, Katja seeks revenge.

Jesus, a humble Judean carpenter beginning to see that he is the son of God, is drawn into revolutionary action against the Roman occupiers by Judas -- despite his protestations that love, not violence, is the path to salvation. The burden of being the savior of mankind torments Jesus throughout his life, leading him to doubt.

Suave antiques dealer Alfredo Martelli is picked up by the police with no justification. At the precinct, Martelli realizes what the investigation is all about-- that he is the main suspect in the killing of his wealthy ex-lover. Is he guilty, or is he just a sleaze?

In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival trying to save from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son, seeking to give him a proper jewish burial.

A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.

Based upon the final confession of Adolf Eichmann, made before his execution in Israel, of his role in Hitler's plan for the final solution.

Two Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. Ultimately, they are hunted down by a group of old, armed home-guardists.

New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.

While subjected to the horrors of WWII Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. Under the stairs in her home, a Jewish refugee is being sheltered by her adoptive parents.

Two close friends' plan to execute a flawless crime is crushed when one of them inadvertently leaves his glasses at the crime scene.

A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.

An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.

Vienna, 1937, on the eve of the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The young and inexperienced Franz Huchel begins to learn about both the joys and hardships of life by working as an apprentice to the mutilated war veteran Otto Trsnjek in a small tobacco shop, where he meets the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, who will become a valuable friend in times of chaos and uncertainty.

The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.

A man searches for his childhood best friend, a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust, who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.

After the funeral of one of their own, a criminal family decides to embark on an emotionally unnerving journey in an attempt to exact bloody revenge.

Maria, who's not as young as she used to be and who helps people older than her, is living from hand to mouth. She can't quite accept her precarious situation and steals a few euros here and there from all those lovely people she looks after with such devotion, and who adore her for it… But after an accusation of abuse of a vulnerable person, Maria winds up in police custody.

In Argentina, one daughter of patriarch Madariaga is married to a Frenchman while the other is married to a German thus leading to a crisis when Nazi Germany occupies France and some Madariaga family members fight on opposite sides.

Aging wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson is long past his prime but still ready and rarin' to go on the pro-wrestling circuit. After a particularly brutal beating, however, Randy hangs up his tights, pursues a serious relationship with a long-in-the-tooth stripper, and tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter. But he can't resist the lure of the ring and readies himself for a comeback.

A German woman on a ship returning to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she had been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life.

Owing to his alleged involvement with communist parties, film director David Merrill is forbidden from working in Hollywood. He decides to fight for his rights and faces numerous challenges.

David Berman and his friends, all Holocaust survivors, have only one purpose: to go to America as soon as possible. For this they need money. Close to his aim, David is not only deprived of his savings but also overtaken by his shady past.

A young policewoman slowly goes insane while tracking down an elusive serial rapist/killer through Italy when she herself becomes a victim of the brutal man's obsession.

Rachel Singer is a former Mossad agent who tried to capture a notorious Nazi war criminal – the Surgeon of Birkenau – in a secret Israeli mission that ended with his death on the streets of East Berlin. Now, 30 years later, a man claiming to be the doctor has surfaced, and Rachel must return to Eastern Europe to uncover the truth. Overwhelmed by haunting memories of her younger self and her two fellow agents, the still-celebrated heroine must relive the trauma of those events and confront the debt she has incurred.

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.

Literature professor Jim Bennett leads a secret life as a high-stakes gambler. Always a risk-taker, Bennett bets it all when he borrows from a gangster and offers his own life as collateral. Staying one step ahead, he pits his creditor against the operator of an illicit gambling ring while garnering the attention of Frank, a paternalistic loan shark. As his relationship with a student deepens, Bennett must risk everything for a second chance.

In the wake of a young Jewish girl’s disappearance, the son of a Hasidic funeral director returns home with his pregnant wife in hopes of reconciling with his father. Little do they know that directly beneath them in the family morgue, an ancient evil with sinister plans for the unborn child lurks inside a mysterious corpse.

New York City factory worker Eddie Marino is a solid citizen and regular guy, until the day a sadistic street gang brutally assaults his wife and murders his child. When a corrupt judge sets the thugs free, he goes berserk and vows revenge.

Adrien is a young pianist prodigy. He collapsed psychologically having failed in a renowned competition and henceforth works as a piano tuner. As remedy to this life, he invents a blind person's mask to penetrate into the intimacy of his customers. This subtlety allows Adrien to get back the taste for music. But since he sees things he should not see, Adrien ends up witnessing a murder.

Alejandro, a tough and ambitious Latino street orphan on the verge of adolescence, lives and works in an auto-body repair shop in a sprawling junkyard on the outskirts of Queens, New York. In this chaotic world of adults, young Alejandro struggles to make a better life for himself and his 16-year-old sister, Isamar.

A serial killer whose mother was a prostitute starts killing streetwalkers as a way of paying back his mother for her abuse.

A lonely telephone operator leading an empty, amoral life finds God – only to have her faith continually tested in ways beyond what she could have imagined.

William Tell just wants to play cards. His spartan existence on the casino trail is shattered when he is approached by Cirk, a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel. Tell sees a chance at redemption through his relationship with Cirk. But keeping Cirk on the straight-and-narrow proves impossible, dragging Tell back into the darkness of his past.

After nine years in psychiatric detention Theo, who has brutally assaulted and raped three women, is released. Living in a supervised community, he connects well with his social worker Sascha, finds a job at a print shop and even a girlfriend, Nettie, his principal's brittle and estranged daughter. But even though superficially everything seems to work out Theo's seething rage remains ready to erupt.

When an innovative modern architect flees post-war Europe, he is given the opportunity to rebuild his legacy. Set during the dawn of the modern United States (in Pennsylvania), his wife joins him, and their lives are forever changed by a demanding, wealthy patron.

At an elder-care facility, a geriatric con artist tries to prevent his new friend with early Alzheimer's symptoms from being transferred to the 'lost causes' floor.

A naive young man assumes a dead man's identity and finds himself embroiled in an underground world of power, violence, and chance where men gamble behind closed doors on the lives of other men.

A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lvov (formerly Poland).

A number of complicated relationships develop between a circus ringmaster, his estranged wife and his lover.

A brother and sister's battle over a prized heirloom piano unleashes haunting truths about how the past is perceived — and who defines a family legacy.

Willy Loman is an over-the-hill salesman who faces a personal turning point when he loses his job and attempts to make peace with his family: Willy's long-suffering wife Linda, and Biff and Happy, his troubled sons and his life.

Eddie Dodd is a burnt out former civil rights lawyer who now specializes in defending drug dealers. Roger Baron, newly graduated from law school, has followed Eddie's great cases and now wants to learn at his feet. With Roger's idealistic prodding, Eddie reluctantly takes on a case of a young Korean man who, according to his mother, has been in jail for eight years for a murder he didn't commit.

In a touring Shakespearean theater group, a backstage hand - the dresser, is devoted to the brilliant but tyrannical head of the company. He struggles to support the deteriorating star as the company struggles to carry on during the London blitz. The pathos of his backstage efforts rival the pathos in the story of Lear and the Fool that is being presented on-stage, as the situation comes to a crisis.

Fleeing from the Russian secret police, a young Estonian fencer is forced to return to his homeland, where he becomes a physical education teacher at a local school. The past however catches up and puts him in front of a difficult choice.

James, down on his luck and desperate for some quick cash, agrees to drive a small truck across country. He soon realizes that he's made a huge mistake and has inadvertently become involved in a dangerous human trafficking ring. The unlikely hero risks it all to shut down the trafficking ring and save the woman he is falling in love with.


