Best movies like The Year of Living Dangerously
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Australian journalist Guy Hamilton travels to Indonesia to cover civil strife in 1965. There, on the eve of an attempted coup, he befriends a Chinese Australian photographer with a deep connection to and vast knowledge of the Indonesian people and also falls in love with a British national.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Australia, USA
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: political, atmospheric, thought provoking, sad, art house, sensual, historically accurate, tense, clever, serious
Best tv shows and movies like The Year of Living Dangerously (1982):
Similar in 82%
Latino (1985)
Plot Summary:
The fighting between the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and the Contra rebels backed by U.S. money and expertise is the focus of this pro-Sandinista film by Haskell Wexler. On a secret mission to help the U.S. Special Forces train Contra rebels in the jungles of Nicaragua, American soldier Eddie Guerrero begins to question the morality of the task at hand and consider how his actions may influence the fate of a nation.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 208
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: political, independent film, sincere, thought provoking, serious, realistic, disturbing, biting, suspense
Similar in 82%
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
Similar in 82%
Carla's Song (1996)
Plot Summary:
A Glasgow man (Robert Carlyle) visits war-torn Nicaragua with a refugee (Oyanka Cabezas) tormented by her memories.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: UK, Spain, Germany
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: political, independent film, tense, sincere, rough, thought provoking, serious, realistic, suspense, crying
Similar in 77%
Welcome to Sarajevo (1997)
Plot Summary:
Follow a group of international journalists into the heart of the once cosmopolitan city of Sarajevo—now a danger zone of sniper and mortar attacks where residents still live. While reporting on an American aid worker who’s trying to get children out of the country, a British correspondent decides to take an orphaned girl home to London.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: disturbing, realistic, harsh, brutal, heartbreaking, political, emotional, thought provoking, touching, serious
Similar in 89%
Tears of April (2008)
Plot Summary:
There is civil war in Finland. Between whites vs reds. A woman soldier of reds is captured by the whites. She is ordered to be executed.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Finland, Germany, Greece
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: epic, realistic, disturbing, bleak, serious, captivating
Similar in 77%
Un Dimanche à Kigali (2006)
Plot Summary:
In April 1994, the middle-aged Canadian journalist Bernard Valcourt is making a documentary in Kigali about AIDS. He secretly falls in love for the Tutsi waitress of his hotel Gentille, who is younger than him, in a period of violent racial conflicts. When the genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus in Rwanda begins, Bernard does not succeed in escaping with Gentille to Canada. When the genocide finishes in July 1994, Bernard returns to the chaotic Kigali seeking out Gentille in the middle of destruction and dead bodies. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 706
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Canada
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, emotional, political, bleak, captivating, realistic, contemplative, touching
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Similar in 81%
Eleni (1985)
Plot Summary:
Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: political, independent film, psychological, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, suspenseful, contemplative
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Similar in 89%
Tim (1979)
Plot Summary:
Handsome but backward gardener Tim Melville has a new woman in his life. She is Mary, his widowed employer, a woman who had given up on love until she had found Tim. At first they are friends. But soon they become lovers, as Mary, drawn to Tim's innocence and magnetism, begins to teach him all about life - and love.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Australia
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: romantic, sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, independent film
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Similar in 81%
The Year That Trembled (2002)
Plot Summary:
The Year That Trembled is a 1970 coming-of-age story set in the shadow of Kent State that focuses on a group of young characters facing the Vietnam Draft Lottery.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 222
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, emotional, serious, realistic, contemplative, independent film
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Similar in 86%
Under Fire (1983)
Plot Summary:
Three U.S. journalists (Nick Nolte, Joanna Cassidy, Gene Hackman) get too close to one another and their work in 1979 Nicaragua.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA, Mexico
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: tense, realistic, political, atmospheric, serious, emotional, suspenseful, political thriller, cult classic, independent film
Similar in 82%
Circle of Deceit (1981)
Plot Summary:
Georg Laschen leaves his family in West Germany to go work as a war correspondent in Beirut during the fights between Christians and Palestinians.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 948
Genere: Drama, War
Country: West Germany, France
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: political, sincere, rough, thought provoking, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing
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Similar in 84%
The Good German (2006)
Plot Summary:
An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 26000
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, War
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: black and white, neo noir, atmospheric, suspenseful, serious, realistic, period piece, clever, stylized, political
Similar in 78%
Indochine (1992)
Plot Summary:
The story starts in the 1930s at one of the largest rubber-tree plantations in Indochine (Vietnam). This plantation is owned by the French colonist Eliane, a proud woman who lives with her father and her native adoptive daughter Camille. She doesn't have a husband or a man in her life (apart from her father), but gets to know the young officer Jean-Baptiste when both want to buy the same painting at an auction. They have a short affair, but then she refuses to see him again. In the meantime it's Camille who has fallen in love with Jean-Baptiste and Eliane knows it. She makes sure he's sent to one of the most desolate outposts on some remote island, making sure that the two will never see each other again. Camille has no choice, but to marry the man she was promised to, but in the meantime she starts a search to find the man she really loves.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: France
Duration: 160 min
Plot tags: visual, sentimental, atmospheric, epic, realistic, stylized, serious, anthology, art house, independent film
Similar in 86%
Before the Rain (1994)
Plot Summary:
The circularity of violence seen in a story that circles on itself. In Macedonia, during war in Bosnia, Christians hunt an ethnic Albanian girl who may have murdered one of their own. A young monk who's taken a vow of silence offers her protection. In London, a photographic editor who's pregnant needs to talk it out with her estranged husband and chooses a toney restaurant.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 16000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: UK, France
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: political, atmospheric, realistic, anthology, erotic, mystical, sentimental, sincere, emotional, disturbing
Similar in 85%
Harrison's Flowers (2000)
Plot Summary:
Harrison Lloyd is a Pulitzer-winning photojournalist. His wife and family are making it hard for him to keep his mind on his work when he's in a war zone, and he wants to change jobs to something less stressful. But he's got one last assignment, in war-torn Yugoslavia, in 1991, at the height of the fighting. Word comes back that he apparently died in a building collapse, but his wife Sarah (also a journalist for Newsweek) refuses to believe that he's dead and goes looking for him. She's helped immensely by the photo-journalists Eric Kyle and Marc Stevenson that she runs into over there; together, they're determined to make it through the chaotic landscape to Vukovar, which is not only the nexus of the war but where she believes Harrison is located. Meanwhile, Harrison's son Cesar is looking after his father's prized greenhouse, keeping hope, and flowers, alive.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: France
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: disturbing, suspense, bleak, realistic, political, art house, brutal, serious, gloomy, crying
Similar in 89%
Gardens of Stone (1987)
Plot Summary:
A sergeant must deal with his desires to save the lives of young soldiers being sent to Vietnam. Continuously denied the chance to teach the soldiers about his experiences, he settles for trying to help the son of an old army buddy.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: realistic, intense, harsh, bleak, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 87%
A Bright Shining Lie (1998)
Plot Summary:
Something in his past keeps career Army man John Paul Vann from advancing past colonel. He views being sent to Vietnam as part of the US military advisory force a stepping stone to promotion. However, he disagrees vocally (and on the record) with the way the war is being run and is forced to leave the military. Returning to Vietnam as a civilian working with the Army, he comes to despise some South Vietnamese officers while he takes charge of some of the U.S. forces and continues his liaisons with Vietnamese women.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, cult film
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Similar in 81%
Live from Baghdad (2002)
Plot Summary:
A group of CNN reporters wrestle with journalistic ethics and the life-and-death perils of reporting during the Gulf War.A Directors Guild Award-winning movie for director Mick Jackson, starring Michael Keaton and Helena Bonham Carter. In 1990, CNN was a 24-hour news network in search of a 24-hour story. They were about to find it in Baghdad. Veteran CNN producer Robert Wiener and his longtime producing partner Ingrid Formanek find themselves in Iraq on the eve of war. Up against the big three networks, Weiner and his team are rebels with a cause, willing to take risks to get the biggest stories and - unlike their rivals - take them live at a moment's notice. As Baghdad becomes an inevitable US target, one by one the networks pull out of the city until only the crew from CNN remains. With a full-scale war soon to be launched all around them, and CNN ready to broadcast whatever happens 24 hours a day, Wiener and Formanek are about to risk their lives for the story of a lifetime.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: serious, disturbing, sincere, emotional, realistic, cult classic, talky
Similar in 84%
Good (2008)
Plot Summary:
The rise of national socialism in Germany should not be regarded as a conspiracy of madmen. Millions of "good" people found themselves in a society spiralling into terrible chaos. A film about then, which illuminates the terrors of now.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: UK, Germany
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, disturbing, captivating, christian film, retro, political, sad, period piece, romantic drama
Similar in 84%
Gallipoli (1981)
Plot Summary:
As World War I rages, brave and youthful Australians Archy and Frank, both agile runners, become friends and enlist in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps together. They later find themselves part of the Dardanelles Campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, a brutal eight-month conflict which pit the British and their allies against the Ottoman Empire and left over 500,000 men dead.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 41000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, History, War
Country: Australia
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, touching, harsh, emotional, intense, serious, captivating, realistic, depressing, sad
Similar in 85%
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)
Plot Summary:
Successful surgeon Tomas leaves Prague for an operation, meets a young photographer named Tereza, and brings her back with him. Tereza is surprised to learn that Tomas is already having an affair with the bohemian Sabina, but when the Soviet invasion occurs, all three flee to Switzerland. Sabina begins an affair, Tom continues womanizing, and Tereza, disgusted, returns to Czechoslovakia. Realizing his mistake, Tomas decides to chase after her.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 38000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 171 min
Plot tags: sexy, sensual, erotic, sexual, romantic, philosophical, art house, crying, existential, independent film
Similar in 79%
Talk of Angels (1998)
Plot Summary:
This is the story of a young Irish woman who comes to Spain to escape from the pressures she feels about her impending marriage to a political activist in Ireland. But in Spain in the 1930's, taking a job of governess in a wealthy family, she finds the same kinds of political unrest. In fact, it isn't long before she finds herself attracted to a married man who is similarly involved in the struggle against fascism and Franco. This awakens her to her nature that brings her to such men and resolves for her what she must do about the life she left in Ireland.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 893
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, sentimental, disturbing, independent film
Similar in 84%
The Sand Pebbles (1966)
Plot Summary:
Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat U.S.S. San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the "rice-bowl" system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 16000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA
Duration: 182 min
Plot tags: epic, tense, realistic, retro, depressing, cult classic, mind blowing, surprise ending, tragic ending, serious
Similar in 88%
Salvador (1986)
Plot Summary:
A second rated journalist from the US tries his luck in El Salvador during the military dictatorship in the 1980s.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller, War
Country: UK, Mexico, USA
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: suspense, political, tense, harsh, factual, rough, thought provoking, bleak, serious, captivating
Similar in 78%
The Killing Fields (1984)
Plot Summary:
The Killing Fields tells the real-life story of a friendship between two journalists, an American and a Cambodian, during the bloody Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia in 1975, which led to the death of 2-3 million Cambodians during the next four years, until Pol Pot's regime was toppled by the intervening Vietnamese in 1979.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 58000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: UK
Duration: 141 min
Plot tags: disturbing, rough, political, heartbreaking, emotional, tense, compassionate, serious, captivating, depressing
Similar in 82%
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Plot Summary:
Doctor Zhivago is the filmed adapation of the Russian novel by Boris Pasternak from director David Lean that was an international success and today deemed a classic. Omar Sharif and Julie Christie play two protagonists who in fact love each other yet because of their current situation cannot find a way be together.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 81000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Italy, UK, USA
Duration: 197 min
Plot tags: epic, atmospheric, emotional, romantic, scenic, costume drama, visual, sentimental, serious, realistic
Similar in 78%
The Quiet American (2002)
Plot Summary:
A stylish political thriller where love and war collide in Southeast Asia. Set in early 1950s Vietnam, a young American becomes entangled in a dangerous love triangle when he falls for the beautiful mistress of a British journalist. As war is waged around them, these three only sink deeper into a world of drugs, passion, and betrayal where nothing is as it seems.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 29000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Thriller, War
Country: UK, Germany, USA, Vietnam, Australia, France, Canada, New Zealand
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: realistic, political, atmospheric, talky, intense, thought provoking, serious, period piece, political thriller, sincere
Similar in 83%
Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012)
Plot Summary:
Writer Ernest Hemingway begins a romance with fellow scribe Martha Gellhorn.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 155 min
Plot tags: serious, stylized, psychological, captivating, intellectual, heartbreaking, political, sex comedy, grindhouse, period piece
Similar in 84%
We Were Soldiers (2002)
Plot Summary:
The story of the first major battle of the American phase of the Vietnam War and the soldiers on both sides that fought it.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 149000
Genere: Action, Drama, History, War
Country: France, Germany, USA
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: serious, factual, realistic, emotional, suspenseful, sentimental, brutal, epic, suspense, intense
Similar in 89%
Reds (1981)
Plot Summary:
A radical American journalist becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 24000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Romance
Country: USA, UK
Duration: 195 min
Plot tags: epic, political, tense, sentimental, serious, captivating, atmospheric, breathtaking, philosophical, road movie