01
Short Term 12
Why this pick
Its lived-in workplace realism, compassionate attention to vulnerable young people, and flawed but deeply committed mentor echo Half Nelson’s emotional honesty.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE2006 1h 47m USA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Half Nelson
Drama
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Half Nelson, try these.
01
02
Medicine for Melancholy
Why this pick
This low-key indie drama shares Half Nelson’s textured urban realism and interest in people trying to articulate ideals, disappointments, and connection in contemporary America.
03
Fish Tank
Why this pick
Andrea Arnold brings the same unsentimental empathy toward a troubled adolescent and her unstable adult world, creating tension without reducing anyone to a lesson.
04
Wendy and Lucy
Why this pick
Its spare, observant storytelling and refusal to sensationalize hardship make it a close tonal companion: modest-scale drama with immense compassion for a person in crisis.
05
Mysterious Skin
Why this pick
For Half Nelson’s bruised emotional candor and focus on young lives affected by damaged adults, this is a more harrowing but similarly intimate character-driven drama.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is a young middle-school history teacher at a Brooklyn school, with a teaching style that rejects the standard curriculum in favor of an approach based upon dialectics (specifically Friedrich Engels' Dialectical materialism#Engels.27 dialectics, though this is never referred to by name).
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Ryan Gosling
Dan Dunne
Shareeka Epps
Drey
Jeff Lima
Roodly
Monique Gabriela Curnen
Isabel
Nathan Corbett
Terrance
Stephanie Bast
Vanessa
Eleanor Hutchins
Simone
Sebastian Sozzi
Javier