Best movies like A Step Into Darkness
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The film tells the tragic story of an Iraqi-Turkish girl, Cennet, who loses her entire family during a US-led operation against insurgents in her village in US-occupied Iraq. She makes a distressing journey through the border between Turkey and Iraq to find her brother who had been sent to Turkey for treatment.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 216
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like A Step Into Darkness (2009):
Similar in 84%
Rickey L Colbert Jr's Where the Truth Lies (2018)
Plot Summary:
A family searches for the truth ,when their lives get turned upside down after some unforeseen circumstances happen.
IMDB Rating:
IMDB Votes:
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration:
Plot tags: sad, happy, feel good
Similar in 77%
Station (1981)
Plot Summary:
A detective goes out of his way to crack the case of a serial killer who specialises in murdering police officers.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 277
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
The Conductor (2012)
Plot Summary:
The famous conductor (Vladas Bagdonas) goes with his orchestra to Jerusalem to perform the oratorio "St. Matthew Passion." The day before he receives a telegram, stating the suicide of his son, who lived in Israel. Conductor at the time denied the artist's son, believing that he is living right. It's suicide, especially suicide note flip soul maestro's son, forced him to reconsider all their attitudes.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 427
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: psychological, touching, contemplative
Similar in 75%
Red Family (2013)
Plot Summary:
A growing friendship with their neighbors softens the resolve of a group of North Korean spies who are posing as an ordinary South Korean family.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 374
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
The Last Best Year (1990)
Plot Summary:
Jane (Bernadette Peters) has a dizzy spell while at home. As her condition does not improve, she consults a doctor who finds that she is very ill and that she has no family to help her through this very trying time. He enlists the help of a therapist (Mary Tyler Moore) who is very hesitant to become involved in this case due to the loss she suffered as a young child. As her condition deteriorates, Jane learns how to come to terms with her past as does her therapist.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 122
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Presences (2022)
Plot Summary:
A man who loses his wife and goes to seclude himself in a cabin in the woods, where strange things happen.
IMDB Rating: 4.3
IMDB Votes: 245
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Railroad Man (1999)
Plot Summary:
A railway stationmaster at a dying end-of-the-line village in Hokkaido is haunted by memories of his dead wife and daughter. When the railroad line is scheduled to be closed, he is offered a job at a hotel, but he is emotionally unable to part with his career as a railroader. His life takes a turn when he meets a young woman with an interest in trains who resembles his daughter.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: art house
Similar in 81%
The Dupes (1972)
Plot Summary:
Set in Iraq (but shot in Syria), this is the story of three men who try to leave their impoverished and hopeless lives to get work in Kuwait. They hire a water-truck driver to transport them illegally across the border in the tank of his truck.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 381
Genere: Drama
Country: Syria
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: road movie
Similar in 81%
The Flowers of Kirkuk (2010)
Plot Summary:
Cruel politics and intensive love. Najla (N) has just finished her medical studies in Rome. Sherko (S) conceals sick and injured partisans. Mokhtar (M) belongs to the dictator's police. S and M love N, N loves S. When she gets a letter from S that she must forget him, she returns to Kirkuk. As a doctor she can help S. Mokhtar follows her trail and S and N are arrested. S is tortured. N is beaten up and then offered the job as a police doctor, a reward for leading the police to S. She accepts because then she can collect and pass on the names of people murdered or tortured. She will attend many mass murders of women and children. Once she can save them by fabricating that a child has cholera, with greater risk of contamination if she is dead. – When M understands that he cannot win N's love, he smuggles both N and S out of the country. Fully aware of the consequences he distracts the border guards and is shot by them. Max Scharnberg, Stockholm, Sweden.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 202
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, Switzerland, Iraq
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: islamic
Similar in 83%
The Government Inspector (2005)
Plot Summary:
The Government Inspector is a 2005 television drama based on the life of Dr. David Kelly and the lead-up to the Iraq War in the United Kingdom.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 202
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
A Line in the Sand (2009)
Plot Summary:
Drama - Set in the present-day Iraq war, this tense and gripping drama unfolds as two US Marines find themselves stranded and alone in the desert after their unit is all but destroyed in a routine mission. One of their team is taken hostage in the attack, their Humvee is stolen, their communications are down and their supplies are limited. - Gary Weeks, Rob Botts, Paul J. Alessi.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 84
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Fighting Back (1982)
Plot Summary:
Fighting Back is a 1982 Australian film about troubled teenagers.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 28
Genere: Drama
Country: Australia
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 83%
Gulag Barashevo (2015)
Plot Summary:
Artists, Poets, Writers, Musicians, and Dissidents, Husbands and Wives, in the Marxist USSR GULAG camps of Barashevo and Vorkuta, suffer in and survive their Gulag death camps. It is a ultimately a spiritual struggle.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 58
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 168 min
Plot tags: spiritual
Similar in 75%
Liten Ida (1981)
Plot Summary:
Little Ida's mother is working for the Germans during WW2, and she is also having a relationship with a German SS-officer. Ida is experiencing the problems of having a mother who is involved with the enemy, without being old enough to understand what is actually going on.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 135
Genere: Drama
Country: Norway, Sweden
Duration: 78 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Gitmek: My Marlon and Brando (2008)
Plot Summary:
Ayça and Hama Ali are together in spirit, but divided by geography. With the outbreak of the Iraq War leaving him stranded, she embarks on an odyssey from Turkey to be reunited with him.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Turkey
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: cinema verite
Similar in 88%
Danny Boy (2021)
Plot Summary:
Soldier Brian Wood, is accused of war crimes in Iraq by the human rights lawyer Phil Shiner. The two men go head to head in a legal and moral conflict that takes us from the battlefield, at so-called Checkpoint Danny Boy, to the courtroom and one of Britain’s biggest ever public inquiries, the Al-Sweady Inquiry.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 466
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, suspense, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 77%
Love Like You (2015)
Plot Summary:
A young girl, with a troubled past, and a young boy fall in love in a small but beautiful town.
IMDB Rating: 3.8
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: romantic, sentimental, emotional, scenic
Similar in 90%
M for Mother (2006)
Plot Summary:
What appears to be a grand love story turns sour when parents-to-be discover that their unborn child will likely be born with serious birth defects, as a result of the mother's exposure to chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war. The father does not want to have a disabled child, but the mother insists on going through with the pregnancy.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: sincere, captivating, sad, islamic, entertaining
Similar in 81%
Bashing (2005)
Plot Summary:
Yuko is a Japanese girl who was taken hostage in Iraq while volunteering there as an aid worker. Finally released and back in her hometown, Yuko finds herself ostracized as a national disgrace by society that sees her helping a country other than Japan, and the embarrassment of getting captured but not killed, as things of which to be brutally ashamed.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 506
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: psychological, realistic, bleak, serious, gloomy
Similar in 84%
The Terrorist (1998)
Plot Summary:
A young female terrorist goes on a suicide assassination mission, but her resolve to complete it is put to the test.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: India
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, bleak, realistic, serious, captivating, suspenseful, atmospheric, sexy, thought provoking
Similar in 84%
As If I Am Not There (2010)
Plot Summary:
A harsh dose of cinematic realism about a harsh time-the Bosnian War of the 1990s-Juanita Wilson's drama is taken from true stories revealed during the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Samira is a modern schoolteacher in Sarajevo who takes a job in a small country village just as the war is beginning to ramp up. When Serbian soldiers overrun the village, shoot the men and keep the women as laborers (the older ones) and sex objects (the younger ones), Samira is subjected to the basest form of treatment imaginable.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Ireland, Sweden
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, disturbing, serious, disgusting
Similar in 83%
Badland (2007)
Plot Summary:
Jerry (Jamie Draven) was an idealist when he served in the first Gulf War. But when he was later deployed to Iraq, Jerry was an older man, a father of three and embittered by broken promises and unfulfilled desires. When Jerry returns from Iraq he has been transformed by horrors that cannot be forgiven. He lives a life of poverty, his children afraid of him and his wife, Nora (Vinessa Shaw), unsympathetic and unhappy. When Jerry discovers that Nora has betrayed him, his anger and despair drive him to commit an act so heinous and irreversible that nothing he had experienced in combat could have prepared him for.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 517
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Germany
Duration: 165 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic, disturbing, bleak, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 80%
The Baby Doll Night (2008)
Plot Summary:
Hossam returns home to Cairo for New Year's Eve after a year's separation from his wife. At the airport, his plans for a romantic night (and to conceive a child) are thwarted by several events, including a terrorist plot.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 738
Genere: Drama
Country: Egypt
Duration: 180 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, tense, captivating, sad, islamic, humorous, suspenseful, semi serious
Similar in 75%
For a Moment, Freedom (2008)
Plot Summary:
Centers on a group of weary Middle Eastern refugees who have made their way to Turkey to apply for European visas.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 661
Genere: Drama
Country: Austria, France
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, captivating, road movie, clever, fast
Similar in 75%
My Sweet Pepper Land (2013)
Plot Summary:
Baran, a war hero, becomes sheriff of the capital and refuses to bow down to a tribal chief.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Iraq, France, Germany, Iran
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, tense, atmospheric, realistic, captivating, art house, independent film, gloomy
Similar in 79%
Kandahar (2001)
Plot Summary:
After an Afghanistan-born woman who lives in Canada receives a letter from her suicidal sister, she takes a perilous journey through Afghanistan to try to find her.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran, France
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: sincere, surreal, disturbing, bleak, tense, atmospheric, depressing, lyrical, road movie, talky
Similar in 78%
The War Within (2005)
Plot Summary:
A Pakistani involved in a planned attack in New York City experiences a crisis of conscience.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, disturbing, tense, suspenseful, poignant, serious, realistic
Similar in 79%
Jin (2013)
Plot Summary:
A bitter conflict has raged between guerrillas and the army in Turkey's Kurdish regions for over 30 years. Large expanses have now become war zones. Countless young people have lost their lives to the conflict. This dangerous but incredibly beautiful mountainous country is home to 17-year-old Jîn. But she is no longer safe since she secretly stole away from a group of rebels with whom she was fighting. Now she wanders the picturesque landscape alone, caught between two fronts. All of a sudden, the sound of gunfire and explosions rend the air above the untouched natural scenery. Attack is threatened from all sides. Desperate to find peace, Jîn decides to escape to another part of the country – an impossible plan, since the military is omnipresent and there are road blocks everywhere. As a Kurd without identity papers she risks arrest at every turn. In addition, as a woman with no family to shield her, many men will see her as fair game. But her courage is unbroken.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, Germany
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, suspense, disturbing
Similar in 82%
Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (2015)
Plot Summary:
Set in a village right after the Korean War, poor but good-hearted Heo Sam-gwan sets out to win the most beautiful girl in the village, Heo Ok-ran, by selling his blood to earn money. Years later, the two are happily married with three children, but their family undergoes a crisis when Sam-gwan's eldest son doesn't resemble him and rumors spread about the boy's paternity.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 709
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, disturbing
Similar in 88%
The Situation (2006)
Plot Summary:
The first U.S.-made film drama set during the Iraq war, THE SITUATION chronicles the tragic death of an Iraqi teenager at the hands of U.S. soldiers. The incident sets off an "investigation," a cover-up, and complications involving Iraqi mayor Sheikh Tahsin (Saïd Amadis), who has a complex relationship with the Americans.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 885
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: serious, suspenseful, rough, realistic, extraordinary