Best movies like July Rain
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A woman is forced to examine the emptiness of her life in this stark drama from the Soviet Union. Lena (Yevgenya Uralova) is a woman in her late twenties who loves her boyfriend (Aleksandr Belyavsky) but in time comes to see that their relationship serves no useful function. What's more, she sees that her friends are for the most part empty-headed lackeys, causing her to wonder just what is the point of her life.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: existential, semi documentary, intellectual
Best tv shows and movies like July Rain (1967):
Similar in 78%
Angela's Decision (2006)
Plot Summary:
Living in the middle of Australia's desolate landscape, Angela has been waiting all her life. Waiting for her boyfriend to return from the army and marry her, waiting for her mother to sober up, waiting for her life to begin. On the return of her boyfriend Will, Angela looks around at her bleak surroundings, her friends with their unplanned pregnancies, desperate marriages, and dead-end jobs and realizes that she cannot spend the rest of her life in a small town with no future. As Will prepares to return to the army and her mother prepares to move in with yet another man, Angela makes a decision that will change her life forever.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 69
Genere: Drama
Country: Australia
Duration: 50 min
Plot tags: social
Similar in 79%
Incident Light (2015)
Plot Summary:
In this poignant period drama set in 1960s Argentina, a young woman, struggling to raise her twin daughters alone after the tragic death of her husband, accepts the courtship of a charming but mysterious older suitor.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 379
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina, France, Uruguay
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: black and white, period drama
Similar in 78%
A Driver for Vera (2004)
Plot Summary:
The film is set during 1962 in Sevastopol, Crimea, then a secret Navy Base in the Soviet Union. General Serov hires Viktor, a cadet from the Kremlin Guard to work as his private chauffeur. In a jet-black "ZIM" limo, Viktor is chauffeuring the General's disabled daughter Vera. Viktor is oblivious to the hidden agenda of the KGB agent Saveliev, who manipulates everyone behind the scenes in the old rivalry between the Army and KGB.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia, Ukraine
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, brutal, dramatic
Similar in 81%
Women in the Mirror (2002)
Plot Summary:
Three women who share memories of the Hiroshima disaster try to uncover the hidden family ties that may or may not bind them together.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 246
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan, France
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
One Hundred Days After Childhood (1975)
Plot Summary:
A group of Russian teenagers spend their summer at a summer camp. Mitia falls in love and gets so occupied with his own problems that he forgets about everything else.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 991
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: existential
Similar in 79%
Byelorussia Station (1971)
Plot Summary:
The heroes of the movie last seen each other on the Belarusian railway station in the summer of 1945. A quarter-century, they meet at the funeral of comrade.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, touching, disturbing, smart
Similar in 75%
A Long Goodbye (1971)
Plot Summary:
A single woman has put all her efforts into raising her only son, Sasha. When Sasha grows up to become a teenager, she thinks that she can have some time for herself, so she responds to the courtship of Nikolai Sergeyevich. One summer, Sasha goes to visit his real father in Novosibirsk, on the other side of the country. When he returns, his mother notices that Sasha has changed. She secretly reads a letter sent to Sasha from his father and finds out that Sasha doesn’t want to live with her any longer. She doesn’t have enough wisdom to understand this desire on someone else’s part. Sasha is shown to have a more delicate and understanding nature than his mother, for when he realizes that she is suffering because of his wish to leave, even though he is tired of her nagging, he decides to stay.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 948
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Private Life (1982)
Plot Summary:
Mikhail Ulyanov is the Bergmanesque protagonist of the Russian Private Life. A government-appointed factory executive, Ulyanov is reduced to quivering confusion when he is dismissed. Recovering from this blow, he decides to review and realign his life. In so doing, he discovers that there's plenty left in the world to make life worth living. Private Life was nominated for the "best foreign picture" Academy Award in 1983.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 253
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
Monologue (1973)
Plot Summary:
Professor Sretenski is a scientist and director of a research center in Russia. He is separated from his wife and lives alone. His daughter, who lives with the mother, comes to his home and stays with him for a period, leaving her daughter with him. He raises his granddaughter, feeling a great affection for her.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 387
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
Night Over Chile (1977)
Plot Summary:
A Soviet docudrama chronicling the events surrounding the military coup which toppled the leftists Chilean government of Salvador Allende. This film confines its efforts to the main events themselves and is based on interviews with eyewitnesses, including many who resisted the takeover.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 81
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Wings (1966)
Plot Summary:
Maya Bulgakova gives a marvelous performance as a once heroic Russian fighter pilot now living a quiet, disappointingly ordinary life as a school principal.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: spiritual, art house, heartfelt, psychological, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 75%
Uncle Vanya (1970)
Plot Summary:
Andrei Konchalovsky’s Uncle Vanya surely has the greatest claim as the best screen adaptation of a Chekhov play. Featuring brooding and articulate performances, especially from Sergei Bondarchuk as Doctor Astrov and gorgeous cinematography that shifts from sepia to autumnal colours, the film has an elegaic and bittersweet atmosphere. The setting is a crumbling country estate which supports the chic urban lifestyle of the elderly Professor Serebryakov who visits with his young and glamorous new wife, Elena.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 799
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: spiritual, art house, tension, suspense
Similar in 86%
Infinity (1992)
Plot Summary:
To dispel his obsession with death, Prokhorov decides to travel, with no luggage and no destination. He finds himself in the little town where he grew up, but finds no solace there because he has to face death.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 154
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 206 min
Plot tags: existential
Similar in 84%
Whispering Pages (1994)
Plot Summary:
The pages that whisper through this brooding, beautiful tone poem are from nineteenth-century Russian literature, primarily Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. An anonymous man wanders through decomposing, fog-enshrouded catacombs and encounters a series of “the degraded and the humiliated,” including a holy prostitute and a Kafkaesque bureaucrat. Shot partly in Sokurov’s dreamlike black and white with a dense sound track of eerie, echoing voices and bursts of mournful Mahler.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 630
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia, Germany
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags: spiritual, contemplative, existential, poetic, avant garde
Similar in 83%
The First Teacher (1965)
Plot Summary:
Dyuishen is assigned to the mountainous Kirghiz region of Central Asia by the Young Communist League after he is discharged from the Red Army. It is 1923 and the Civil war has ended. The former soldier becomes a teacher, bringing the Leninist doctrine to the remote Moslem area where elders did not allow children to go to school. He falls in love with one of his students, but the young woman is sold by her father to a wealthy chieftain. When the school is burned down, the majestic poplar trees that are a source of local pride are cut down to rebuild the new structure.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 601
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: political
Similar in 89%
King Lear (1970)
Plot Summary:
King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: spiritual, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 86%
Hamlet (1964)
Plot Summary:
Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.
IMDB Rating: 8.2
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, fairy tale, philosophical, spiritual, visually appealing, black and white, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 86%
Flights in Dreams and in Reality (1983)
Plot Summary:
On the eve of his fortieth anniversary Sergei Makarov looks back at his life and learns that he has achieved nothing. He was not able to be happy and to bring happiness to the closest people in his life, neither to his long-suffering wife nor young mistress nor friends nor work... It is about the men who never grew up and could not find themselves in the time of stagnation – gifted, charming, but infantile and lost, they never were able to realize themselves.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
You and Me (1971)
Plot Summary:
A neurosurgeon returns back to the USSR from Sweden and has to deal with rejection - both at work and at home.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 431
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
Wild Pigeon (1986)
Plot Summary:
In a poor provincial town, the ragamuffin boys are frenziedly drilled for combat, and at nights the local elite, gathered in a pool room, boasts of fictitious biographies, while bands of boys amuse themselves with bloody fights on trashy vacant plots… One of the most vivid staples of the postwar childhood were pigeons. They could be bought, sold or stolen. One day a beautiful white dove appeared over the town. Risking his life, Ivan caught the White. And immediately became the target of the “pigeon” mafia….
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 183
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
War and Peace: Part II (1965)
Plot Summary:
In the end of 1809, Natasha attends her first ball. Andrei falls in love with her and intends to marry her, but her father demands they wait. The prince travels abroad, and Natasha desperately longs for him. But she then meets Anatol Kuragin and forgets of Andrei. At the last minute, she regrets and abandons her plans to elope with Anatol. Bolkonsky hears of this and declares their betrothal is over. Pierre, trying to calm her down, suddenly announces he loves her.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: historical drama, period drama
Similar in 82%
My Friend Ivan Lapshin (1985)
Plot Summary:
Russian provincial town in the middle of the 1930s Stalin's Great Purge. Ivan Lapshin, the head of the local police, does what he has to do. And he does it well.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: slow cinema, spiritual, aesthetic
Similar in 79%
The Second Circle (1990)
Plot Summary:
A man tries to come to terms with his father's death and to deal with the mundane details of his burial in a society cut off from spirituality.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 767
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: spiritual, avant garde
Similar in 87%
The Asthenic Syndrome (1989)
Plot Summary:
In the old days it was called hypochrondria, or black melancholia. Now, apparently, it's termed the Asthenic Syndrome. Whatever it is, Nikolai, a teacher of epicly indifferent pupils, has got it, and it's not much fun.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 153 min
Plot tags: spiritual
Similar in 86%
The Wishing Tree (1976)
Plot Summary:
This poetic parable is part of Tenghiz Abuladze’s cinematic triptych: “The Supplication” – “The Wishing Tree” – “Repentance”. The place is Georgia at the beginning of the 20th century. That’s how director Tenghiz Abuladze described his film: “’The Wishing Tree’ is a film about the people lit up by a dream. Every character has its own ideal. One is worshipping the skies, another the earth, some idolize the body, others elevate the spirit. Some destroy the body, others the soul…” Marita, the film’s heroine, arrived here to live with her aunt. She meets a poor young lad, Gedia, and falls in love with him. But her relatives are determined to marry the girl off to a local rich man….
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
War and Peace: Part IV (1967)
Plot Summary:
As Moscow is set ablaze by the retreating Russians, the Rostovs flee their estate, taking wounded soldiers with them, and unbeknownst to them, also Andrei. Pierre, dressed as a peasant, tries to assassinate Napoleon but is taken prisoner. As the French are forced to retreat, he is marched for months with the Grande Armée, until being freed by a raiding party. The French are defeated by Kutuzov in the Battle of Krasnoi. Andrei is recognized and is brought to his estate. He forgives Natasha on his deathbed. She reunites with Pierre and they marry as Moscow is being rebuilt.
IMDB Rating: 8.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: period drama
Similar in 82%
The Criminal Shall Not Escape (1965)
Plot Summary:
Mukhtar comes to live and work at the police kennels through rather unusual circumstances. Together with his handler, Glazychev, Mukhtar helps to solve large and small crimes.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 622
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Nine Days of One Year (1962)
Plot Summary:
Two young scientists are exploring new fields of nuclear physics. Dmitry Gusev and Ilya Kulikov are good friends, but rivals in love. Dmitry marries Lyolya and they live happily together. Luck has it that he makes an important discovery. Unfortunately he exposes himself to radioactivity during the experiments. As a result he falls seriously ill. However Dmitry has a strong spirit. His will to live, the deep passion for his work and his strong love for mankind makes it possible for him to recover.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: spiritual
Similar in 85%
An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano (1977)
Plot Summary:
At the dilapidated country estate of Anna Petrovna Voinitseva, a group of feckless Russian aristocrats whiles away a summer afternoon. Unbeknownst to their respective spouses, local schoolteacher Platonov and the wife of Anna's stepson, Sophia, are former lovers whose meeting revives both passion and regret. Thrilled to see each other, they are nevertheless haunted by the loss of their youthful ideals.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, spiritual, psychological, thought provoking, serious, realistic, contemplative, talky
Similar in 78%
Nostalgia (1983)
Plot Summary:
The Russian poet Andrei Gorchakov, accompanied by guide and translator Eugenia, is traveling through Italy researching the life of an 18th-century Russian composer. In an ancient spa town, he meets the lunatic Domenico, who years earlier had imprisoned his own family in his house for seven years to save them from the evils of the world. Seeing some deep truth in Domenico's act, Andrei becomes drawn to him. In a series of dreams, the poet's nostalgia for his homeland and his longing for his wife, his ambivalent feelings for Eugenia and Italy, and his sense of kinship with Domenico become intertwined.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 29000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, Soviet Union
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, philosophical, art house, cerebral, contemplative, poetic, black and white, visual, mind twisting, emotional