Poverty Movies

A near-penniless drifter's journey to Alaska in search of work is interrupted when she loses her dog while attempting to shoplift food for it.

Monica is 13 years old and has already created her own world, on the street, where she fights courageously to defend what little she has: her...

A European immigrant endures a challenging voyage only to get into trouble as soon as he arrives in New York.

Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò,...

The lives of five prostitutes employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in...

In the affluent, gated community of Camelot Gardens, bored wives indiscriminately sleep around while their unwitting husbands try desperately to...

A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.

Sixteen-year-old Lilja and her only friend, the young boy Volodja, live in Russia, fantasizing about a better life. One day, Lilja falls in love with...

Young, impulsive Rosetta lives a hard and stressful life as she struggles to support herself and her alcoholic mother. Refusing all charity, she is...

An Irish Catholic family returns to 1930s Limerick after a child's death in America. The unemployed I.R.A. veteran father struggles with poverty,...

A lottery win of $5,000 forever changes the lives of a miner turned dentist and his wife.

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in...

Somewhere in the spanish country, in the 60s. Paco and his wife Régula are very poor. They work as tenant farmers for a very wealthy...

Stevie, fresh from prison in Scotland, finds a job on a London construction site. The working conditions are poor and most of the men are working...

A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers...

This film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their...

Bill is a penniless drifter who scams strangers out of just enough money to feed himself and his partner in crime, an orphan girl known as Curly Sue....

In the late 19th century, two Swedish emigrants, Lasse Karlsson and his son Pelle, arrive on the Danish island of Bornholm hoping to find work on a...

In Brooklyn circa 1900, the Nolans manage to enjoy life on pennies despite great poverty and Papa's alcoholism. We come to know these people well...