Best movies like Personnel
Last updated March 2024
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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:
Best tv shows and movies like Personnel (1975):
Similar in 89%
What the Sun Has Seen (2006)
Plot Summary:
Three strangers living in Silesia - a 12-year-old half-orphan, a musically talented girl and a middle-aged unemployed ex-miner - are all desperate to get money to make their small dreams come true.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 70
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 90%
How to Be Loved (1963)
Plot Summary:
An actress travels from Warsaw to Paris and during the trip reflects on the last few years of her life. It goes back to the German occupation and her hiding of a fellow actor who has supposedly killed a collaborator. He is weak and a bit cowardly, but suffers most from not having any audience for his vanity, ego and supposed bravery. After the war he leaves her but finds out that he has been accused of cowardice. He finally commits suicide and she clears herself of a collaboration charge and eventually becomes a popular actress.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 720
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: road movie
Similar in 87%
Blue Jeans (1977)
Plot Summary:
First love and the fickleness of adolescence is the theme in this charming drama. The story follows a pretty blonde French youth who is sent with his classmates to an English seaside resort for the summer to study English. It is there that he first meets and "falls in love" with a girl, but when the girl spurns him for an older teenager, his attentions and affections are soon shifted to him. A touching and sensitive tale.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 118
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Portugal
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: sex comedy, queer cinema
Similar in 76%
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
Similar in 82%
The Axiliad (1986)
Plot Summary:
A young, idealistic poet, turns his back on civilization and goes to small, backwood village, rents a bed in the house of an old woman, and decides to make his living as a lumberjack. Soon he realizes that the world around him is far from perfect.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 508
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
Inner Life (1987)
Plot Summary:
The life of a grumpy 40-year-old man living with his wife in a high-rise block. Every day is like the other - quarrel over dinner, garbage, neighbours, elevators, lost socks. He hates everybody, especially his wife. Not even sexual fantasies are an escape from the hell, he imposes on himself.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 250
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
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:
Similar in 83%
The Sun Rises Once a Day (1972)
Plot Summary:
Directed by Henryk Kluba.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 84
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: folk tale
Similar in 90%
Short Working Day (1995)
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
Similar in 88%
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:
Similar in 88%
The Law and the Fist (1964)
Plot Summary:
At the end of World War Two, Polish people move to the western lands vacated by Germans. But some ruthless profiteers pose as government representatives and intend to make off with loot from a deserted town they took over. One honest man stands up against them because he believes these goods belong to the people.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 412
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
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:
Similar in 80%
The Boy Who Had Everything (1985)
Plot Summary:
In '60's-era Australia, a college freshman must navigate freshman hazing, a distant mother, and a shaky relationship with his girlfriend.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 84
Genere: Drama
Country: Australia
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: crying, independent film
Similar in 84%
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
Similar in 85%
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
Similar in 88%
Marcowe migdaly (1990)
Plot Summary:
Drama directed by Radoslaw Piwowarski.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 118
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
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 76%
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:
Similar in 78%
Nightmares (1979)
Plot Summary:
Set before the first Wold War in part of Poland under Austrain occupation, the story of a young boy in primary school who later grows up to become a rebellious, poetic-minded teen in the same school when the national movement toward liberation is under way. The story of a country where church amd state work together to suppress the human spirit.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 288
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: intellectual, political
Similar in 84%
Where the Sun Beats (1989)
Plot Summary:
Pinto’s sophomore feature patiently investigates the everyday life and psychosexual vacillations of Laura (Laura Morante), a woman caught in a web of verboten romance and incestuous desire. Pinto elliptically and delicately portrays the small farming community that serves as the backdrop for the impossible relationships pursued by Laura and her brother, Nuno. The alluring cast also features Inês de Medeiros (of Jacques Rivette’s The Gang of Four and several films by Pedro Costa) as Graça, a key player in the film’s game of libidinal cat-and-mouse. A strongly atmospheric work in which torrid intrigues emerge through allusion and insinuation, Where the Sun Beats finds Pinto exploring the self-thwarting ways of desire and the expressive potential of the unspoken. - FilmLinc.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 77
Genere: Drama
Country: Portugal
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: gay cinema
Similar in 88%
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 75%
Raging Rose (2015)
Plot Summary:
Jozef travels from Poland to France to work and to find his son Roman, who he abandoned 15 years earlier. Jozef works for a Polish immigrant family that has successfully settled in France. Rose, the family’s teenaged daughter, volunteers to help him find his son. Roman happens to go to the same school as Rose, and she finds him attractive. After an unexpectedly wonderful experience with Roman, she falls desperately in love with him.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 143
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Poland
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, disturbing
Similar in 90%
She Deserved It (2010)
Plot Summary:
Linda is a teenage girl whose own insecurities and frustrations lead her to viciously act out against others. By inviting Linda‘s boyfriend to her birthday party, Susanne unknowingly sets off a chain of horrific events. Is Linda a product of environment and circumstance or was she simply (in her own mother’s words) “born evil”?.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 156
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Little Men (2016)
Plot Summary:
Jake is a quiet, sensitive middle schooler with dreams of being an artist. He meets the affably brash Tony at his grandfather's funeral, and the unlikely pair soon hit it off. The budding friendship is put at risk, however, when a rent dispute between Jake's father, Brian, and Tony's mother, Leonor, threatens to become contentious.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Greece, Brazil
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: social, sentimental, sincere, atmospheric, touching, captivating, melancholic, compassionate, dorama, powerful
Similar in 88%
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
Similar in 78%
Blind Chance (1987)
Plot Summary:
Witek runs after a train. Three variations follow on how such a seemingly banal incident could influence the rest of Witek's life.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Poland
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: cerebral, philosophical, political, surreal, atmospheric, anthology, mind bending, psychedelic, postmodern, psychological
Similar in 83%
Elephant Heart (2002)
Plot Summary:
Marko Stemper, 19 years old, comes from a disadvantaged background and works as a window cleaner. His father, an alcoholic, tyrannizes the whole family, so Marko's only joy in life is boxing. As he is the most promising talent in his club, Gerd Hermsbach, a local demimonde boss, offers him the opportunity to become a professional. Marko accepts, but has to pay a high price.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 322
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, suspense, captivating, gloomy
Similar in 81%
Breathing (2011)
Plot Summary:
A 19-year-old is coming out of prison and trying to build a new life but he can't deal with his guilt.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Austria
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 79%
Fremde Tochter (2017)
Plot Summary:
Seventeen-year-old Lena meets 19-year-old Farid, a young Muslim. She has a clear-cut attitude towards his culture and religion: utter rejection. Despite their differences – or perhaps because of them – they fall in love.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 178
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: psychological, thought provoking, unusual plot structure, captivating, suspense, contemplative
Similar in 81%
Tetro (2009)
Plot Summary:
Bennie travels to Buenos Aires to find his long-missing older brother, a once-promising writer who is now a remnant of his former self. Bennie's discovery of his brother's near-finished play might hold the answer to understanding their shared past and renewing their bond.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Argentina, Spain, Italy
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: psychological, black and white, clever, enigmatic, talky, intense, serious, surreal, atmospheric, light