Movies that touched my heart

This film follows the life of Celie, a young black girl growing up in the early 1900's. The first time we see Celie, she is 14 - and pregnant - by her father. We stay with her for the next 30 years of her tough life...

The year is 1909. In the village of Sainte-Philomène de Fortierville, Marie-Anne Caron, wife to Télésphore Gagnon, gives birth to their second daughter, Aurore. The child grows up in a loving and happy family, but in 1918 her mother dies of tuberculosis. Shortly after, Télésphore Gagnon decides to remarry, having fallen under the spell of his beautiful cousin, Marie-Anne Houde. Marie-Anne is not the devoted stepmother everyone takes her to be, however. Following the death of Aurore, a coroner's inquest reveals that the young girl had died of blood poisoning, brought on by the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepmother. The sensational trial which followed these revelations had a profound and lasting impact on Québec society. Aurore depicts an almost-forgotten period and social milieu of Québec's history, finally giving voice to those who, at the time, knew what was going on but preferred to remain silent.

A teenager journeys through a series of foster homes after her mother goes to prison for committing a crime of passion.

The idealist William Wilberforce maneuvers his way through Parliament in 19th century England, endeavoring to end the British transatlantic slave trade.

Difficult tale of poor, struggling South Carolinian mother & daughter, who each face painful choices with their resolve and pride...

A Jewish man has a wonderful romance with the help of his humour, but must use that same quality to protect his son in a Nazi death camp.

In 1939 William Franklin, an anti-Franco veteran of the bloody Spanish Civil War, arrives as first-ever lay teacher in a strict Catholic Reformatory and Industrial School for wayward boys. He soon learns the academic challenge is formidable, many boys being still illiterate, but gradually earns their trust, respect, in time almost devotion, with 'paternal' kindness, making the layman the opposite of the cruel prefect, brother John, who frequently administers painful and humiliating punishments, even the gentle, old superior Father Damian has no authority against his disciplinary mandate from the grim bishop Conlon. Slowly even class rebel Liam Mercier is turned around, trough his gift for literature.

Set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the tale of Lily Owens a 14 year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother...

Forrest Gump, while not intelligent, has accidentally been present at many historic moments, but his true love, Jenny, eludes him.

Based on a true story that shocked the nation in 1965, the film recounts one of the most shocking crimes ever committed against a single victim. Sylvia and Jennie Fae Likens, the two daughters of traveling carnival workers are left for an extended stay at the Indianapolis (3850 E. New York St. is hardly suburban, nor was it in 1965, by any stretch of the imagination.) home of single mother Gertrude Baniszewski and her seven children. Times are tough, and Gertrude's financial needs cause her to make this arrangement before realizing how the burden will push her unstable nature to a breaking point. What transpires in the next three months is both riveting and horrific, leaving one child dead and the rest scarred for life.

Oskar Schindler uses Jews to start a factory in Poland during the war. He witnesses the horrors endured by the Jews, and starts to save them.

Set in Mississippi during the 1960s, Skeeter (Stone) is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends' lives -- and a Mississippi town -- upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen (Davis), Skeeter's best friend's housekeeper, is the first to open up -- to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community. Despite Skeeter's life-long friendships hanging in the balance, she and Aibileen continue their collaboration and soon more women come forward to tell their stories -- and as it turns out, they have a lot to say. Along the way, unlikely friendships are forged and a new sisterhood emerges, but not before everyone in town has a thing or two to say themselves when they become unwittingly -- and unwillingly -- caught up in the changing times.

A Polish Jewish musician struggles to survive the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto of World War II.

After 9 years of horrific foster care, a young brother and sister find themselves on the street, with no one to depend on aside from one another.

Based on writer Susanna Kaysen's account of her 18-month stay at a mental hospital in the 1960s.

After a prank goes disastrously wrong, a group of boys are sent to a detention center where they are brutalized; over 10 years later, they get their chance for revenge.

Claireece Precious Jones endures unimaginable hardships in her young life. Abused by her mother, raped by her father, she grows up poor, angry, illiterate, fat, unloved and generally unnoticed. So what better way to learn about her than through her own, halting dialect.

Anna Fitzgerald looks to earn medical emancipation from her parents who until now have relied on their youngest child to help their leukemia-stricken daughter Kate remain alive.

Inspired by actual events that occurred in 1920s-era Los Angeles, Clint Eastwood's "Changeling" tells the story of a woman driven to confront a corrupted LAPD after her abducted son is retrieved and she begins to suspect that the boy returned to her is not the same boy she gave birth to.

Based on the life of Aileen Wuornos, a Daytona Beach prostitute who became a serial killer.

After a blurred trauma over the summer, Melinda enters high school a selective mute. Struggling with school, friends, and family, she tells the dark tale of her experiences, and why she has chosen not to speak.

In April 1994, after the airplane of the Hutu President of Rwanda is shot down, the Hutu militias slaughter the Tutsi population...

A woman provokes sensual awakenings in a group of adolescent boys.

Adriana is a 13-year-old girl from Mexico City whose kidnapping by sex traffickers sets in motion a desperate mission by her 17-year-old brother.

After a brilliant but asocial mathematician accepts secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn to the nightmarish.

Based on the Jack Ketchum's novel with the same title, which is based on the true story of Sylvia Likens, who was tortured and killed in 1965 in Indiana.

A poor, oversized and under-educated teenager is recruited by a major college football program where he is groomed into an athletically and academically successful NFL prospect. Based on Michael Lewis' book, "The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game."

On a business trip to New Orleans, a damaged man seeks salvation by caring for a wayward young woman.

When a young woman named Meryem (Özgü Namal) is raped, her village custom requires that she be killed in order for the dishonour to be expunged from her family. A young man named Cemal (Murat Han), the son of the village leader, is given the task.

After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters that shape his life.

Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.

Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe escape into the Belarussian forests, where they join Russian resistance fighters and endeavor to build a village in order to protect themselves and about 1,000 Jewish non-combatants.

Iraq. Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb.

After a family tragedy, a racist prison guard reexamines his attitudes while falling in love with the African American wife of the last prisoner he executed.

Gilbert has care for his brother Arnie and his obese mother, which gets in the way when love walks into his life.

"The Lovely Bones" centers on a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family - and her killer - from heaven. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal.

A film detailing the final hours and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Disgruntled Korean War vet Walt Kowalski sets out to reform his neighbor, a young Hmong teenager, who tried to steal Kowalski's prized possession: his 1972 Gran Torino.

Beyond Borders is an epic tale of the turbulent romance between two star-crossed lovers set against the backdrop of the world's most dangerous hot spots.

A fisherman, a smuggler, and a syndicate of businessmen match wits over the possession of a priceless diamond.

The true-life story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who housed over a thousand Tutsi refugees during their struggle against the Hutu militia in Rwanda.

The hopes and dreams of four ambitious people are shattered when their drug addictions begin spiraling out of control.

A college co-ed is brutally raped and struggles alone to rebuild her life.

he story of James Braddock, a supposedly washed up boxer who came back to become a champion and an inspiration in the 1930s.

A young girl is relegated to servitude at a boarding school when her father goes missing and is presumed dead.

AMISTAD is about a 1839 mutiny aboard a slave ship that is traveling towards the Northeast Coast of America. Much of the story involves a court-room drama about the free-man who led the revolt.

A drama set in 1986 Iran and centered on a man, Sahebjam, whose car breaks down in a remote village and enters into a conversation with Zahra, who relays to him the story about her niece, Soraya, whose arranged marriage to an abusive tyrant had a tragic ending.

The lives of two lovelorn spouses from separate marriages, a registered sex offender, and a disgraced ex-police officer intersect as they struggle to resist their vulnerabilities and temptations.

The story about the relationship between a rebellious 50s teenager and his abusive father, based on the memoirs of writer and literature professor Tobias Wolff.

Three young Irish women struggle to maintain their spirits while they endure dehumanizing abuse as inmates of a Magdalene Sisters Asylum.