Best movies like A Touch of Sin
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Four independent stories set in modern China about random acts of violence.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: China, Japan, France
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: bleak, melancholic, meditative, art house, lyrical, serious, anthology, realistic, neo noir, controversial
Best tv shows and movies like A Touch of Sin (2013):
Similar in 88%
Satanás - Profile of a Killer (2007)
Plot Summary:
Based on the Mario Mendoza's book and inspired by true events, tells three interconnected stories happening in the eve of the infamous Pozzetto Massacre.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Colombia, Mexico
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, exciting, tense, captivating, suspense, erotic, sincere, disturbing, anthology
Similar in 76%
Ash Is Purest White (2018)
Plot Summary:
Set in China's underworld, this tale of love and betrayal follows a dancer who fired a gun to protect her mobster boyfriend during a fight. On release from prison 5 years later, she sets out to find him.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: China, France, Japan
Duration: 136 min
Plot tags: touching, captivating, psychological, exciting, suspenseful, social, art film, detective, tragic
Similar in 88%
An Elephant Sitting Still (2018)
Plot Summary:
In the northern Chinese city of Manzhouli, they say there is an elephant that simply sits and ignores the world. Manzhouli becomes an obsession for the protagonists of this film, a longed-for escape from the downward spiral in which they find themselves.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: China
Duration: 230 min
Plot tags: depressing, melancholic, rough, serious, emotional, realistic, captivating, sad, art house, art film
Similar in 83%
Still Life (2006)
Plot Summary:
A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Hong Kong, China
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: touching, sentimental, sincere, emotional, contemplative, slow cinema, captivating, social, independent film, poetic
Similar in 85%
Blind Shaft (2003)
Plot Summary:
Two Chinese miners, who make money by killing fellow miners and then extorting money from the mine owner to keep quiet about the "accident", happen upon their latest victim. But one of them begins to have second thoughts.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: China, Hong Kong
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: psychological, realistic, suspenseful, tense, serious, neo noir, contemplative, crying, independent film
Similar in 88%
Unknown Pleasures (2002)
Plot Summary:
Three disaffected youths live in Datong in 2001, part of the new "Birth Control" generation. Fed on a steady diet of popular culture, both Western and Chinese, the characters of Unknown Pleasures represent a new breed in the People's Republic of China, one detached from reality through the screen of media and the internet.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: China, Japan, South Korea, France
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, sincere, serious, realistic, contemplative, neo noir, gloomy
Similar in 79%
Chronically Unfeasible (2000)
Plot Summary:
Filmed over a five-year period, Chronically Unfeasible dissects Brazilian problems, using six people who meet in a restaurant in São Paulo as models to illustrate political, sociological and economic disparities between Brazil's upper and lower classes.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 672
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Brazil
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: disturbing, rough, thought provoking, serious, realistic, biting, suspense
Similar in 90%
The Fool (2014)
Plot Summary:
The Fool is a movie about a simple plumber. An honest man, he is up against an entire system of corrupted bureaucrats. At stake are the lives of 800 inhabitants of an old dorm that is at risk of collapsing within the span of the night.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 16000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Russia
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, tense, realistic, suspense, bleak, serious, harsh, political, brutal, thought provoking
Similar in 77%
The Bastards (2008)
Plot Summary:
A 24 hour period in the lives of Fausto and Jesus, two undocumented Mexican day-laborers in L.A. Each day another task, each day the same pressure to find money. They go about their daily routine, standing on the corner at the Home Improvement Store waiting for work to come. Today, the job they are given is well paid compared to their poor usual wages.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Mexico, France, USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: tense, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, bleak, contemplative, hispanic, crime drama, slow cinema
Similar in 83%
Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie (1997)
Plot Summary:
A compilation of episodes from the lives of several of the amateur actors' (who are 'bad teens' and the homeless of Seoul) own experiences, this film sheds light on the dark side of Korean society. Feeling alienated and persecuted, they wonder about and come into conflict with the 'good people' who persist in trying to reform them. They have their own reason for remaining as they are and resist attempts to reform them: they cannot change simply because they are bad.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 293
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 144 min
Plot tags: anthology, exciting, sincere, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, experimental, disturbing, controversial
Similar in 88%
Metro Manila (2013)
Plot Summary:
Seeking a brighter future in megacity Manila, Oscar Ramirez and his family flee their impoverished life in the rice fields of the northern Philippines. But the sweltering capital's bustling intensity quickly overwhelms them, and they fall prey to the rampant manipulations of its hardened locals. Oscar catches a lucky break when he's offered steady work for an armored truck company and gregarious senior officer Ong takes him under his wing. Soon, though, the reality of his work's mortality rate and the murky motives of his new partner force Oscar to confront the perils he faces in his new job and life.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK, Philippines
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: tense, realistic, serious, captivating, noir, neo noir, dramatic, sincere, rough, bleak
Similar in 87%
The Bull (2019)
Plot Summary:
The 1990s. Empty shelves in the shops, an economic abyss and criminal dramas that unfold literally at every corner. The young leader of a criminal gang Anton Bykov, with the nickname “Bull”, must make money in whatever way to provide for his family. After a local shootout, Anton ends up in the police station, from where he is released at the intervention of Moscow’s crime lords. In exchange, the latter asks Anton for a small, but dangerous service.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 896
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: realistic, tense, bleak, serious, harsh, suspenseful, captivating, disturbing
Similar in 89%
The World (2004)
Plot Summary:
“The World” is a theme park on the outskirts of Beijing, sixteen kilometers from the Chinese capital, designed around scaled representations of the world’s famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.The site is seen here not from the visitors’ point of view but through the eyes of a few of its staff, lonely people, communicating poorly, a bit disillusioned with life, glittering for the tourists but dull and restricted as far as they are concerned.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: China, Japan, France
Duration: 143 min
Plot tags: touching, psychological, sentimental, sincere, inspirational, contemplative, intercultural, slow cinema, aesthetic, serious
Similar in 86%
Common (2014)
Plot Summary:
Multi-award-winning writer Jimmy McGovern's brand new film based on the UK's controversial joint enterprise law. Jimmy McGovern's gritty drama stars Nico Mirallegro as guileless 17 year old Johnjo O'Shea, who goes from innocent bystander to accessory to premeditated murder after giving a few friends a lift.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: tense, thought provoking, serious, realistic, crime drama, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 79%
Vengeance is Mine (1979)
Plot Summary:
A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is on the run from the police. Director Shohei Imamura turns this fact-based story—about the seventy-eight-day killing spree of a remorseless man from a devoutly Catholic family—into a cold, perverse, and at times diabolically funny examination of the primitive coexisting with the modern. More than just a true-crime tale, Vengeance Is Mine bares humanity’s snarling id.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: disturbing, tense, realistic, serious, suspenseful, neo noir, psychological thriller, philosophical, slasher, controversial
Similar in 82%
Scared Silent (2002)
Plot Summary:
When the newlywed wife of a Minnesota police chief accuses a new officer on his force of raping her several years earlier, it sets the stage for a tense confrontation in this riveting story. Penelope Ann Miller and Reed Diamond star as Kathy and Doug Clifson, a hard-working couple whose lives are torn apart when a new officer, John McCrane, joins the force. Kathy recognizes him as the man who raped her when she was a teenager, and while other women soon come forward saying that McCrane also raped them, the police force closes ranks to protect one of their own.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 263
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, realistic
Similar in 77%
Blind Mountain (2007)
Plot Summary:
Blind Mountain follows a young woman, Bai Xuemei, in the early 1990s who recently graduated from college and attempts to find work to help pay for her brother's education. In the process, she is drugged, kidnapped and sold as a bride to a villager in the Qinling Mountains of China's Shaanxi province. Trapped in the fiercely traditional town, the young woman finds that her avenues of escape are all blocked. As she searches for allies, including a young boy, a school teacher and a mailman, she suffers from being raped by her "husband" and continued beatings at the hands of the villagers, her husband, and her husbands' parents.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: China
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: disturbing, thought provoking, serious, touching, controversial, bleak, realistic, sexual, surprise ending, sexy
Similar in 82%
All or Nothing (2002)
Plot Summary:
Penny's love for her partner, taxi-driver Phil, has run dry. He is a gentle, philosophical guy, and she works on the checkout at a supermarket.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, France
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: depressing, emotional, bleak, serious, realistic, meditative, sentimental, sincere, talky, offbeat
Similar in 89%
Hardcore (1979)
Plot Summary:
A conservative Midwest businessman ventures into the sordid underworld of pornography in California to look for his runaway teenage daughter who is making porno films in the porno pits of Los Angeles.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: neo noir, disturbing, erotic, psychological, art house, retro, depressing, slasher, social, controversial
Similar in 81%
Leviathan (2014)
Plot Summary:
In a Russian coastal town, Kolya is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits a lawyer friend to help, but the man's arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 56000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: bleak, depressing, atmospheric, thought provoking, meditative, emotional, melancholic, independent film, sincere, contemplative
Similar in 85%
Bullhead (2011)
Plot Summary:
Young Limburg cattle farmer, Jacky Vanmarsenille, is approached by an unscrupulous veterinarian to make a shady deal with a notorious West-Flemish beef trader. But the assassination of a federal policeman, and an unexpected confrontation with a mysterious secret from his past, set in motion a chain of events with far-reaching consequences.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 24000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Belgium, Netherlands
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags: disturbing, bleak, emotional, surreal, tense, suspenseful, dark, cerebral, depressing, neo noir
Similar in 76%
Lilya 4-Ever (2002)
Plot Summary:
Lilya lives in poverty and dreams of a better life. Her mother moves to the United States and abandons her to her aunt, who neglects her. Lilya hangs out with her friends, Natasha and Volodya, who is suicidal. Desperate for money, she starts working as a prostitute, and later meets Andrei. He offers her a good job in Sweden, but when Lilya arrives her life quickly enters a downward spiral.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 49000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Sweden, Denmark
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: bleak, depressing, sad, harsh, brutal, serious, sincere, dramatic, disturbing, touching
Similar in 89%
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Plot Summary:
Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 22000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: disturbing, bleak, contemplative, social, psychological, psychological thriller, philosophical, offbeat, neo noir, sad
Similar in 84%
Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story (2004)
Plot Summary:
Redemption tells the story of Stan "Tookie" Williams, founder of the Crips L.A. street gang. Story follows his fall into gang-banging, his prison term, and his work writing children's novels encouraging peace and anti-violence resolutions which earned him multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominations. After exhausting all forms of appeal, Tookie was executed by lethal injection.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Crime
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: uplifting, serious, emotional, realistic, bleak, political, hood, crime drama, sincere, touching
Similar in 84%
Hate (1995)
Plot Summary:
Aimlessly whiling away their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz, Hubert, and Said -- a Jew, African, and an Arab -- give human faces to France's immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their social marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. La Haine means Hate.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 191000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: bleak, black and white, art house, disturbing, hood, political, rough, captivating, neo noir, brutal
Similar in 82%
Gomorrah (2008)
Plot Summary:
An inside look at Italy's modern-day crime families, the Camorra in Naples and Caserta. Based on a book by Roberto Saviano. Power, money and blood: these are the "values" that the residents of the Province of Naples and Caserta have to face every day. They hardly ever have a choice and are forced to obey the rules of the Camorra. Only a lucky few can even think of leading a normal life.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 51000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 137 min
Plot tags: disturbing, tense, harsh, realistic, serious, brutal, depressing, bleak, anthology, thought provoking
Similar in 85%
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Plot Summary:
An African-American Mafia hit man who models himself after the samurai of old finds himself targeted for death by the mob.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 96000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: France, Germany, USA, Japan
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: art house, stylized, atmospheric, cult classic, hood, thought provoking, captivating, neo noir, tense, philosophical
Similar in 80%
Blue Ruin (2013)
Plot Summary:
The quiet life of a beach bum is upended by dreadful news. He sets off for his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance but proves an inept assassin and finds himself in a brutal fight to protect his estranged family.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 78000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA, France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: neo noir, independent film, atmospheric, tense, bleak, suspenseful, suspense, psychological, brutal, melancholic
Similar in 78%
City of God (2002)
Plot Summary:
Cidade de Deus is a shantytown that started during the 1960s and became one of Rio de Janeiro’s most dangerous places in the beginning of the 1980s. To tell the story of this place, the movie describes the life of various characters, all seen by the point of view of the narrator, Buscapé. Buscapé was raised in a very violent environment. Despite the feeling that all odds were against him, he finds out that life can be seen with other eyes.
IMDB Rating: 8.6
IMDB Votes: 788000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Brazil, France, Germany
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: disturbing, rough, bleak, hood, stylized, visual, cult classic, visually stunning, captivating, emotional
Similar in 86%
Taxi Driver (1976)
Plot Summary:
A mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge for violent action, attempting to save a preadolescent prostitute in the process.
IMDB Rating: 8.2
IMDB Votes: 898000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: psychological, neo noir, bleak, cult classic, disturbing, controversial, psychological thriller, depressing, rough, atmospheric