Movies Like A Town Torn Apart

If you liked A Town Torn Apart (1992), a drama and tv movie movie directed by Daniel Petrie, here are 20 movies with a similar feel, based on TMDB's recommendations. Each one links to its cast, trailer and where it's streaming.

1
Steve (2025)
★ 6.3/10Also drama
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.
2
Won't Back Down (2012)
★ 6.2/10Also drama
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…
3
Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
★ 6.8/10Also drama and tv movie
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
4
Girl in the Box (2016)
★ 6.7/10Also drama and tv movie
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
5
Lean On Me (1989)
★ 7.3/10Also drama
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…
6
Dead Poets Society (1989)
★ 8.3/10Also drama
At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern…
7
Touchback (2011)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
A former high-school football star loses his shot at a college scholarship due to a devastating gridiron injury, but gets a second chance at living his dream.
8
The Substitute 2: School's Out (1998)
★ 6.5/10Also tv movie
When teacher Randall Thomasson is killed during a carjacking, an unexpected visitor shows up at his funeral - his estranged brother, Karl Thomasson. An ex-Green Beret turned mercenary, Karl signs on as a new substitute…
9
if.... (1968)
★ 7/10Also drama
In an English boys' boarding school, social hierarchy reigns supreme and power remains in the hands of distanced and ineffectual teachers and callously vicious prefects in the Upper Sixth. Three Lower Sixth students…
10
Light It Up (1999)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
On a winter day in a southside Queens high school, events collide and six students are suddenly in an armed standoff with the NYPD. At the school, classrooms freeze, teachers come and go, resources are scant.
11
40 Acres (2025)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
Hailey Freeman and her family are the last descendants of African American farmers who settled in rural Canada after the Civil War. In a famine-decimated near future, they now struggle to safeguard their farm, as they…
12
Only the Strong (1993)
★ 6.9/10Also drama
Former Green Beret Louis Stevens returns to his hometown of Miami after completing military service in Brazil, only to learn that his old high school has become a haven for gangs and drug dealers. After Stevens uses…
13
A Dry White Season (1989)
★ 6.7/10Also drama
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.
14
Normal (2003)
★ 6.7/10Also drama and tv movie
A Midwestern husband and father announces his plan to have a sex change operation.
15
The Young One (1960)
★ 7/10Also drama
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
16
Mexicali (2026)
★ 7.7/10Also drama
A former special forces contractor is forced out of retirement as an avocado farmer in Mexico when local gangsters try to force him and his family off their farm.
17
Coach Carter (2005)
★ 7.6/10Also drama
Based on a true story, in which Richmond High School head basketball coach Ken Carter made headlines in 1999 for benching his undefeated team due to poor academic results.
18
The Uprising (2026)
★ 7.8/10Also drama
As war and plague devastate 14th-century England, a humble peasant ignites a rebellion, uniting an army of commoners to defy the King’s might in a desperate fight for justice and survival.
19
Affliction (1998)
★ 6.3/10Also drama
A small town policeman must investigate a suspicious hunting accident. The investigation and other events result in him slowly disintegrating mentally.
20
The Parts You Lose (2019)
★ 6.7/10Also drama
An unlikely friendship unfolds between a young deaf boy, Wesley, and a fugitive criminal who takes refuge in an abandoned barn on the family’s rural North Dakota farm.