Best movies like Short Working Day
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Kieślowski’s study of a political strike, controversially told from the viewpoint of a Communist functionary trying to keep order.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 402
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 73 min
Plot tags: political drama
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Best tv shows and movies like Short Working Day (1995):
Similar in 83%
Two Moons (1993)
Plot Summary:
Panoramic view of a resort town in the summer of 1930. In seventeen episodes we get a glimpse at the microcosm of its colourful inhabitants and visitors, Poles and Jews, the high society and the desperately poor.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 79
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 133 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 78%
Fucha (1984)
Plot Summary:
International Critics’ Week - Cannes Festival 1985.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 78
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 63 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 87%
The Pad (1980)
Plot Summary:
Two former classmates (one an honest working man with a wife and children, the other a conman) meet at a train station. The conman comes to stay with his old friend and slowly begins to assume the role of master of the house, taking the place of the father and husband. Made for television with a screenplay by Marek Nowakowski. The film sat on a shelf for 9 years, and was shown only on the wave of solidarity in 1980. Awards: 1981 - 8 Polish Film Festival, Gdańsk, special jury prize.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 29
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 65 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 79%
Personnel (1975)
Plot Summary:
Romek, an idealistc 19-year-old boy, takes a job as a tailor in the costume department of a Warsaw theater company where his new colleague, Sowa, is pressured to make a costume for an overbearing soloist.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 556
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 67 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 80%
The Structure of Crystal (1969)
Plot Summary:
Physicist John worked as a meteorologist. He lives in a small village with his wife, a teacher. Meanwhile, his friend from university, Mark, is doing a research career. Trying to get John to return to academic work in the capital. Mark is not convinced by the arguments of John. Clash of two attitudes, characters, ideas about the meaning of life.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 74 min
Plot tags: poetic, intellectual, masterpiece
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Similar in 87%
The Weather Forecast (1983)
Plot Summary:
The setting is an old age home run by an aging director with an authoritarian hand. In the evening many of the residents huddle in a living room, penetrated by the October cold, to listen to the news. The announcement is giving the number of expected deaths due too the coming harsh winter. In the middle of the night a truckload of coffins arrives to be stored. Dicovering the coffins the elderly assume they are marked for liquidation and they flee en masse. The next day their exodus is dicovered and the director calls the authorities. It turned out that the coffins were the overproduction from a coffin factory and were brought only for temporary storage. The panic search for the pensioners begins, including helicopters. In the meantime the group gets transported to another part of the country by a truck. They take over by a near-empty restaurant, where after mistreatment by a waiter, they tie him up and move on. A lone fisherman invites them into his house where, after initial.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 123
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 89%
Behind The Wall (1971)
Plot Summary:
Jan is a young assistant professor in chemistry and a workaholic, Anna is an unsuccessful science writer who turns to Jan for advice and human compassion, but Jan, absorbed with his career, remains immune to Anna's clumsy efforts to pierce his defenses.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 150
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 56 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 76%
30 Door Key (1991)
Plot Summary:
A young writer in 1939 Warsaw faces the conflict of acting his age or relapsing into childhood during the brink of World War II. Based on the famous novel Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 396
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland, UK, France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: mindfuck
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Similar in 81%
Hospital of the Transfiguration (1979)
Plot Summary:
The film is set in 1943 in a mental asylum in the country. But this is an unusual hospital: there are several incurable schizophrenic cases, staff is bit strange and a writer has voluntarily entered the clinic because he is "peculiar" and a drug addict. Then the German Gestapo arrives. The commandant asks for the list of patients, sorts out the "Aryan" doctors from the others on a return trip, and herds everyone into trucks for evacuation to the extermination camps. A young doctor momentarily escapes by covering himself under a pile of laundry in the basement, and then escapes to the woods just as the Nazi soldiers appear.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 426
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 76%
Gra (1969)
Plot Summary:
About an existentialist alienation drama between a bourgeois couple caught in a stationary environment. Between a man and a woman lost in themselves.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 67
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 81%
The Constant Factor (1980)
Plot Summary:
The main character in this effective, convincing drama is Witold (Tadeusz Bradecki) who is high in what later would be termed the "emotional quotient" or the ability to bounce back from adverse, tragic circumstances. Witold has been nursing both his sick mother and a deeply rooted desire to climb the Himalayas. His father had died climbing in those mountains, and they have an allure for Witold as well. But his dreams begin to crumble when his mother succumbs to her illness and trouble brews at work. The situation becomes bad enough to scramble Witold's life with no indication of future improvement.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: intellectual
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Similar in 90%
Spiral (1978)
Plot Summary:
In what appears to be an inexplicable incident, a man drives up to a resort hotel in midwinter, throws away his car keys, enters, and proceeds to agitate everyone he meets with his urgency -- a message he is somehow unable to communicate. Then he leaves, disappearing in the snow. Later, the people he appeared to have upset have gathered to search for him and find him frostbitten, but alive. Visiting him at the sanatorium to which he has been taken, they gradually discover what was really happening.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 515
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: intellectual
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Similar in 75%
A Lonely Woman (1987)
Plot Summary:
The first motion picture film by Agnieszka Holland about loneliness, longing for affection, and misfortune. Irena, a postal delivery worker, is struggling with a inadequate housing, a drunk neighbor who wants to take her place, and a heartless boss, knowing that the whole day at work, she is leaving her young son. But the worst is the loneliness, exacerbated by her single mother status. She meets a crippled pensioner Jacek, who appears to be the key to her happiness, but tragedy continues to strike.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 501
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 81%
Sauna (1992)
Plot Summary:
A film based on a simple situation: several men talk in the sauna.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 141
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 87%
The Wedding (1973)
Plot Summary:
Set at the turn of the century, the story concerns a Polish poet living in Cracow who has decided to marry a peasant girl. The wedding is attended by a heterogenous group of people from all strata of Polish society, who dance, get drunk and lament Poland's 100-year-long division under Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The bridegroom, a painter friend, and a journalist each in turn is confronted with spectres of Polish past. In the end a call to arms is called but turns out to be a hoax.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: clever, offbeat, humorous, realistic, witty, stylized, semi serious, sexual, intellectual, sexy
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Similar in 81%
The Calm (1980)
Plot Summary:
A young man in his twenties leaves prison after a three-year sentence. He wants to start a new life in a place where he is not known and dreams only of a job, a wife and a family. He succeeds partially in fulfilling these dreams, but then runs into a conflict on a construction job between the corrupt boss and fellow workers secretly planning a strike. He becomes a pawn in one camp while remaining true to his ideals in the other. Filmed in 1976 and shelved for five years.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 669
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 85%
Weekend Stories: A Woman's Business (1996)
Plot Summary:
A woman whose passport was denied under the previous Communist regime by a vindictive party secretary is given a chance to confront the woman and take revenge.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 53
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 56 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 82%
The Illumination (1973)
Plot Summary:
Krzysztof Zanussi's groundbreaking film chronicles a decade in the life of a young physics student whose absolute faith in the primacy of rationality and science is shaken by tragedy and affairs of the heart.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: philosophical, existential, poetic
Similar in 85%
Everything for Sale (1969)
Plot Summary:
Wajda's homage to Zbigniew Cybulski, the "Polish James Dean" who starred in the director's ASHES AND DIAMONDS and died young. The movie follows the tribulations of a director attempting to make a movie with a Cybulski-like star who never shows up.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 846
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: semi autobiographical
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Similar in 81%
Hands Up! (1981)
Plot Summary:
Beginning with a sci-fi prologue before finding itself with several doctors attending a medical school reunion in a sealed-up railway carriage. Between drinks, the disenchanted medicos ruminate over the effect that communism (particularly the Stalinist brand) has had on their profession. Originally banned in 1967 and finally released in 1981 after Skolimowski shot new sequences, the 76 minute 1981 version was the only one ever officially released.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 409
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: philosophical, experimental, avant garde, dark comedy, political
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Similar in 86%
Wielki bieg (1981)
Plot Summary:
Set in 1952, the story follows events around the "Peace Run", a propaganda 3-day marathon for peace. The winner is to be presented with a new motorcycle by the country's president. Chief organizer is a ruthless manipulator who will stop at nothing to make sure that the right man wins. There are two runners, Budny and Stolar, who are participating in the race for different reasons.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 95
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Fever (1981)
Plot Summary:
The film is set in 1905, in a time of feverish revolutionary underground activity in Poland partitioned between three neighbours. All the characters are committed anarchists. The bomb maker puts an invention together to place it at the disposal of young inexperienced terrorists fighting against Tsarist oppression. The story follows the passing of this bomb from anarchist to anarchist as several attempts are made on the life of Tsarist governor general, until, at the end, it is effectively and harmlessly defused by a bomb expert. The presence of the bomb has a destroying effect on all of the Polish revolutionaries, they either die or breakdown.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 279
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 82%
Sunday Pranks (1983)
Plot Summary:
Made in 1983, shelved for four years. A chilling tale about kids playing in a bombed-out Warsaw courtyard on the day of Stalin's death, while their parents are away at the church or a memorial procession.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 92
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 80%
The Scar (1976)
Plot Summary:
After discussions and dishonest negotiations, a decision is taken as to where a large new chemical factory is to be built and Bednarz, an honest Party man, is put in charge of the construction. He used to live in the small town where the factory is to be built, his wife used to be a Party activist there, and he has unpleasant memories of it. But he sets to the task in the belief that he will build a place where people will live and work well. His intentions and convictions, however, conflict with those of the townspeople who are primarily concerned with their short-term needs. Disillusioned, Bednarz gives up his post.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, bleak, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 83%
Kontrakt (1980)
Plot Summary:
Bearing traces of the old Anton Chekhov play The Wedding, The Contract is set during an "arranged" ceremony. The bride and groom barely know each other, but this matters not at all to their tradition-bound families. At the last minute, the bride balks. Only slightly nonplused, the groom's father, a status-seeking doctor, decides to go ahead with the expensive reception anyway. Polish director Krzysz Zanussi uses this scenario to stick it to capitalist corruption, and to society's destruction of the individual spirit. Leslie Caron, the one recognizable member of the cast, is outstanding as a wealthy, over-the-hill ballerina who happens to be a kleptomaniac.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 226
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags:
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Similar in 82%
The Birch Wood (1970)
Plot Summary:
Takes place in a prewar Poland. A tubercular young man comes to stay with his brother on a farm. He is in love with life and constantly plays 1930's music on a piano. He gets involved with his brother's problems and also becomes the lover of a simpleminded farm girl. The brother's dead wife may have had an affair with the hired man who is to marry the farm girl. His daughter will not confirm his suspicions. But the brother's death leads to his acceptance of the past, forgiving his wife's memory and making up with his little daughter.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 937
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: psychological, thought provoking, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, sexual, sexy
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Similar in 81%
Man of Marble (1977)
Plot Summary:
Man of Marble is a Polish film about a student making a film about a bricklayer who was once idolized. She interviews people who knew him and finds old footage that lead to an unfolding mystery that causes her producer to cancel the project.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 165 min
Plot tags: emotional, meditative, compassionate, disturbing, talky, realistic, serious, political, sincere, thought provoking
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Moonlighting (1982)
Plot Summary:
A Polish contractor, Nowak, leads a group of workmen to London so they can provide cheap labor for a government official based there. Nowak (Irons) has to manage the project and the men as they encounter the tempations of the West and loneliness and separation from their families. Nowak is the only one of the group who speaks English, and he uses this as a tool over his team. When the unrest in Poland leads to a military takeover, Nowak is faced with a much more difficult situation than he expected.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: political, tense, bleak, realistic, dark comedy, allegory, independent film, sincere, thought provoking, serious
Similar in 83%
No End (1985)
Plot Summary:
Taking place in a 1982 Poland a translator loses her husband and becomes a victim of her own sorrow. She looks to sex, to her son, to law, and to hypnotism when she has nothing else in this time of martial law when Solidarity was banned.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Poland
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: retro, depressing, atmospheric, thought provoking, clever, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, allegory
Similar in 77%
Politics (2019)
Plot Summary:
Portraying the events that have taken place in Polish politics in recent years. A 4 episode TV version of a movie with the same title.
IMDB Rating: 4.1
IMDB Votes: 136
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 45 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, captivating, political
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