15 Movies Like News from a Personal War

Caught between family life and his obligations to the criminal underworld, Nando faces an impossible choice about where his true loyalties lie.

In this retelling of a real case, a former escort discovers her wealthy husband's infidelity and struggles to cope as betrayal poisons their marriage.

Brazil, 1977. Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run. Hoping to reunite with his son, he travels to Recife during Carnival but soon realizes that the city is not the safe haven he was expecting.

In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.

In 1997, before the visit of the pope to Rio de Janeiro, Captain Nascimento from BOPE (Special Police Operations Battalion) is assigned to eliminate the risks of the drug dealers in a dangerous slum nearby where the pope intends to be lodged.

Aileen Wuornos remains a rarity: a female serial killer. From childhood abuse to death-row revelations, this documentary revisits her life and crimes.

Serving life in prison for murdering their parents, Lyle and Erik Menendez speak out in this documentary explaining the shocking crime and ensuing trials.

As São Paulo erupts in an unprecedented wave of violence, a lawyer with underworld ties must strike a deal with the police to rescue her kidnapped niece.

A teen slams her car into a building, killing her boyfriend and his friend. What seems like a tragic accident becomes a murder case.

After a bloody invasion of the BOPE in the High-Security Penitentiary Bangu 1 in Rio de Janeiro to control a rebellion of interns, the Lieutenant-Colonel Roberto Nascimento and the second in command Captain André Matias are accused by the Human Right Aids member Diogo Fraga of execution of prisoners. Matias is transferred to the corrupted Military Police and Nascimento is exonerated from the BOPE by the Governor.

Police pull over a woman who claims she just gave birth. But the baby — and the blood — aren't hers. Twisted lies unravel in this true-crime documentary.

An elderly retired couple teams up with young partners to plan a daring bank robbery, while trying to outwit a detective determined to stop them.

One night seven years ago, Rafael came home after work and discovered that people he did not know had come looking for him. He immediately fled, without looking back. From that moment on, his life changed, as if that night had never ended. One evening, around an improvised fire near a factory, he decides to confide his journey to a stranger. Rafael’s intimate account meets the collective testimony of an entire nation oppressed by poverty, police repression and institutional corruption.

Cássia Eller Rejane. Cássia Eller. Cássia. A powerful restless force on stage, shined herself out of it. One of the greats of Brazilian music, Cássia Eller marked the 1990s and shocked the country with her early death in 2001. A film about the singer, the mother, the woman who exposed her personal life and broke barriers, leaving a beautiful social and artistic legacy.

A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.