Best movies like A Story Written with Water
Last updated March 2024
Looking for movies like A Story Written with Water? Share your insights to guide others to movies and tv series you've viewed previously that might likewise captivate them. Assist in enlarging the network of people mentioning videos to each other. We value your involvement!
Plot Summary:
Struggling with his true emotions, dreams, memories of the past and the reality Shizuo is about to marry, but is torn between his wife-to-be and the love to his mother.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 408
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like A Story Written with Water (1965):
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 90%
Eros + Massacre (1969)
Plot Summary:
Two interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s students researching Osugi's theories.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 216 min
Plot tags: erotic, erotic drama, avant garde, political, weird
Similar in 82%
Farewell to the Summer Light (1968)
Plot Summary:
The setup here is a couple. They are both Japanese. She is married to a European, is haunted by the Nagasaki bomb which killed her father. The two are in love.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 258
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: road movie, light
Similar in 82%
The Affair (1967)
Plot Summary:
Oriko’s and her mother had a difficult relationship. She knew of her mother’s relationships with men, and insisted she stop, interfering in the affair. Now that her mother has passed away, Oriko attempts to find out more about her from her lovers. Oriko herself is in an unhappy marriage; one without love. She wishes to divorce him, but her husband refuses. Through this dilemma she begins to understand her mother more and more, and that they are more alike than she thinks.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 432
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
She and He (1963)
Plot Summary:
As her husband Eiichi becomes more entangled in his life as businessman, Naoko looks for ways to expand her own life even as her husband's life shrinks in scope and intimacy. She finds new interests, new love, and a greater sense of her place in the world.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 223
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
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%
Affair in the Snow (1968)
Plot Summary:
In an isolated mountain resort, a woman gets involved in a love triangle between herself, her volatile lover and her ex-boyfriend, for whom she had platonic feelings.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 316
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
The Man Who Left His Will on Film (1970)
Plot Summary:
A metaphysical mystery involving a university student's camera getting stolen, and the thief then committing suicide. Looking back upon the event, the situation comes to be questioned if it happened at all.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 776
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: psychological, touching, weird
Similar in 81%
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
Similar in 84%
Naked Pursuit (1969)
Plot Summary:
Caught up in the swirling tide of student protests and riots, a young man becomes the unintentional murderer of a policeman. Handcuffed and enroute to jail, he escapes from the authorities and comes across a young woman on the beach, who is intent on committing suicide. The two embark on a passionate and violent affair.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 72
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 73 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Too Far to Go (1979)
Plot Summary:
Love and passion, anger and heartbreak, laughter and happiness, all complex textures woven into the fabric so many have come to know as marriage. For behind the seemingly comfortable well-trimmed hedges of suburban Americana, live and often love, Richard and Joan Maple. Adapted from a series of stories appearing in the New Yorker Magazine over a period of twenty three years by Pulitzer Prize winning author John Updike ("The Witches of Eastwick", "Rabbit Run"), "Too Far To Go" garnered overwhelming critical praise in its theatrical debut. With its exceptional cast, this film envelops us in a poignant, sometimes funny, sometimes exasperating journey through this most important relationship.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 91
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Akitsu Springs (1962)
Plot Summary:
Yoshida’s first big-budget production and colour film is a haunting tale of unrequited love and postwar disillusion. The story of the fatal attraction between a spineless intellectual and a strong woman is conventional, but its enactment is radically new.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: avant garde
Similar in 80%
Our Lady of the Turks (1968)
Plot Summary:
A man (Carmelo Bene) can not bear to be part of society. He considers himself a "jerk" and so invents its own philosophy, which involves the destruction of his land of Puglia where all citizens are devoted to the Catholic religion. However, the man can not destroy the belief of the pilgrims of Salento, because a woman would prevent that. It is an unknown "Santa Margherita", which tries to divert man from his weird and impossible philosophy. Successive scenes of the film show various situations unreal and dream in which the two protagonists try to obtain the best one on the other. After a blasphemous dialogue between monks, the man includes his whole philosophy in a Moorish building. In fact, this seems to have been the scene of the massacre of the famous 800 Martyrs of Otranto, which are considered by the scetic man the absolute death of Christianity.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 353
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: experimental, aesthetic, avant garde
Similar in 77%
The River with No Bridge (1992)
Plot Summary:
THE RIVER WITH NO BRIDGE begins in 1908 and tells the story of a widow, Fude HATANAKA and her two sons, Seitaro and Koji, who live in the small town of Komori, where Buraku people are forced to reside. The two boys are continuously harassed by their teachers and classmates through their childhood as a result of their Buraku heritage. In the midst of the 1918 Great Rice Riots in Osaka, Seitaro meets with Asako, the daughter of a rice shop owner, and falls in love with her. She too is of Buraku descent. At the same period, Hideaki, an old friend of the brothers returns to Komori, and he along with Koji and the townspeople create "Zenkoku Suiheisha", the National Levelers Association, an organization pledged to build a bridge over the river of discrimination, making all people equal in every way.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 32
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 142 min
Plot tags: saga
Similar in 79%
Woman of the Lake (1966)
Plot Summary:
A married woman lets her lover take naked pictures of her. The photos end up in possession of a man who starts blackmailing the couple.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 716
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
The Geisha (1983)
Plot Summary:
Yokiro was the most successful Geisha house in Western Japan during the first half of the 20th century and remains open to this day. At its peak, it was home to over 200 geisha, however behind the fabulous facade, there were many battles - between family members, men and women, and with the Yakuza. Momokawa was sold to Yokiro at age 12, and despite being the top geisha, her many complicated relationships provide unending challenges throughout her glamorous but turbulent life.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 346
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 144 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Yumechiyo's Diary (1985)
Plot Summary:
Yumechiyo, a geisha house madam recently diagnosed with a terminal illness, yearns to do something constructive with the little time she has left. Through her responsibility lies in taking care of her girls, she finds purpose in providing a man innocent of a false murder charge and in the process discovers love for the first time in his arms.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 29
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
Irezumi (1966)
Plot Summary:
In this elegant proto-feminist shocker from Yasuzo Masumuro, a woman forced into prostitution wreaks her spidery revenge. A mysterious tattoo artist puts his masterpiece, a human-faced spider, on a kidnapped woman's back. She and her lover are then forced into a conspiracy-born nightmare, where they face the danger of becoming the very evil they seek to escape. With each new bloody incident, the spider's face seems to redden with ever-growing hunger….
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, masterpiece
Similar in 76%
Intentions of Murder (1964)
Plot Summary:
Sadako, cursed by generations before her and neglected by her common-law husband, falls prey to a brutal home intruder. But rather than become a victim, she forges a path to her own awakening.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: rough, suspense, tense, bleak, disturbing, erotic, freeze frame, avant garde
Similar in 75%
The Last Fine Day (2011)
Plot Summary:
The phone call from Sybille was usual. Her family didn't even know that this call just started their last fine day.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 251
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Heroic Purgatory (1970)
Plot Summary:
Rikiya Shoda is an engineer working for the Atomic Agency in Japan. One day, his wife Nanako returns home with a lost teenager called Ayu. A man, pretending to be the father, comes to get her back; Ayu keeps telling him that Rikiya and Nanako are her parents. Through this disruption, Rikiya suddenly starts remembering his youth as a revolutionary.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 817
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Japan
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: avant garde, weird
Similar in 81%
Mandara (1971)
Plot Summary:
About two student couples who become members of an obscure sect. The cult seeks a prehistoric utopia with free sex and without society's norms and values. The students are torn between ambient pressure and the sect leader's authority to organ music in the creative camera angles.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 498
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags: independent film, weird
Similar in 76%
The Ceremony (1971)
Plot Summary:
Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: spiritual, avant garde, cult film
Similar in 90%
Human (1962)
Plot Summary:
The ship Kaijin Maru is left adrift after losing all means of navigation in a storm. The four people on the ship are becoming increasingly desperate as food and water run out.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 216
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: tension, suspense
Similar in 89%
Confessions Among Actresses (1971)
Plot Summary:
In this intricately layered Japanese film, the nature of actresses and what they gain from acting is explored. The lives of three actresses are laid bare, and scenes from their lives are woven in and out of interviews with each of them. Each of them has experienced a traumatic event which contributes to their particular enjoyment of becoming someone else in dramatic roles.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 260
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
This Transient Life (1970)
Plot Summary:
Near a remote Buddhist monastery, a young man falls in love with his sister and gets her pregnant. After a monk finds out, the young man becomes an assistant to a master sculptor, only to proceed to complicate matters with his affairs.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 143 min
Plot tags: spiritual, erotic
Similar in 83%
Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1971)
Plot Summary:
In a Japanese colony, children overthrow their parental guardians and attempt to form a new society. Their plan spirals out of control and they are soon lost in a web of sexual deviation and violence.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 761
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: experimental, disturbing, controversial, avant garde
Similar in 90%
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)
Plot Summary:
A feverish collision of avant-garde aesthetics and grind-house shocks, Funeral Parade of Roses takes us on an electrifying journey into the nether-regions of the late-’60s Tokyo underworld. In Toshio Matsumoto’s controversial debut feature, seemingly nothing is taboo: neither the incorporation of visual flourishes straight from the worlds of contemporary graphic-design, painting, comic-books, and animation; nor the unflinching depiction of nudity, sex, drug-use, and public-toilets. But of all the “transgressions” here on display, perhaps one in particular stands out the most: the film’s groundbreaking and unapologetic portrayal of Japanese gay subculture.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: avant garde, disturbing, mind bending, surreal, psychedelic, social, sad, experimental, controversial, art house
Similar in 87%
Boy (1969)
Plot Summary:
A family of four lives off of scams in which they pretend to be injured by automobiles. After suffering an injury during the war, the father believes he is an invalid. He and his wife have a 10-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl. The adults pretend to be injured by autos in crowded traffic, blackmailing the fearful motorists with threats to call in the police.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: experimental, atmospheric, thought provoking, touching, serious, realistic, gloomy, cult film
Similar in 81%
Double Suicide (1969)
Plot Summary:
Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 142 min
Plot tags: surreal, romantic, mind bending, psychedelic, spiritual, serious, emotional, realistic, stylized, jidai geki