Best movies like Afterimage
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
In 1945, as Stalin sets his hands over Poland, famous painter Wladislaw Strzeminski refuses to compromise on his art with the doctrines of social realism. Persecuted, expelled from his chair at the University, he's eventually erased from the museums' walls. With the help of some of his students, he starts fighting against the Party and becomes the symbol of an artistic resistance against intellectual tyranny.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: avant garde, twist ending, exciting, sentimental, captivating, educational, ambiguous ending
Best tv shows and movies like Afterimage (2016):
Similar in 79%
The Dreamlife of David L (2014)
Plot Summary:
“The Dreamlife of David L.“ is a fictional feature film that takes inspiration from a key point in the life of director David Lynch: the time he spent as a student in a fine arts college. Initially attracted to painting, David Lynch ends up choosing the medium of film to express his talent. Far from being an attempt at biography, this film is an imaginary vision where the action could take place today. Which encounters or events leave their mark on the young David L. during this year as a student? “The Dreamlife of David L.” is a dreamlike journey that leads the viewer through the meanderings of this art school. There’s no need to be familiar with the cinematographic works of Lynch to follow the young David L. step by step, going behind the scenes with him.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 54
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: captivating, avant garde
Similar in 76%
Hokusai (2020)
Plot Summary:
The unknown life of Ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai in the Edo period, who is said to have painted more than 30,000 works throughout his life, such as "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji".
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 296
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Oscar: The Color of Destiny (2008)
Plot Summary:
"Óscar. The Color of Destiny" is a revealing portrayal of a forgotten icon of French Surrealism: Spanish painter Óscar Domínguez, contemporary of Picasso. The film rediscovers the life of a talented artist who was ignored after he committed suicide, fifty years ago, victim of a serious illness which had disfigured his body: the Elephant Man's disease. The film is stirring and touching and compels admiration for the bohemian painter whose fate was self-destruction, after a wild crazy life. Lucas Fernández turns the life of a debauchee, who regarded himself a monster because of his disfiguring disease, into a universal story where art is the product of love and loneliness, of sex and violence before, during and after the Nazi invasion of Paris.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 92
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Monstrum (2017)
Plot Summary:
Movie about a sculptor Otakar Svec who is building a statue of Stalin in Prague.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 32
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Czech Republic
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: retro
Similar in 82%
Egon Schiele: Excess and Punishment (1980)
Plot Summary:
In 1912, in Austria, the painter Egon Schiele is sent to jail accused of pornography with the nymphet Tatjana in his erotic paints. His mate, the model Vally, gets help from a famous lawyer to release him. Then he leaves Vally, marries with another woman and goes to the war.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 455
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: West Germany, France, Austria
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: erotic, sexy, heartbreaking
Similar in 82%
Savage Messiah (1972)
Plot Summary:
The film fictionalizes the real relationship between French sculptor Henri Gaudier and Polish writer Sophie Brzeska, twenty years his senior, who came to Paris, she says, for its “creative atmosphere.”.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: sentimental, period drama
Similar in 80%
The Last Family (2016)
Plot Summary:
Beksiński is a gentle man with arachnophobia, despite his hardcore sexual fantasies and his fondness for painting disturbing dystopian works. Beksiński is a family man who wants only the best for his loving wife Zofia, neurotic son Tomasz and the couple's aging mothers. His daily painting to classical music eventually pays off and he makes a name for himself in contemporary art. Good Catholic woman Zofia tries to hold the family together, but troubled son Tomasz proves to be a handful with his violent outbursts and suicidal threats. Their relief is brief when he starts dating women and becomes a radio presenter and movie translator, and the concerned parents must be on constant watch to prevent their son from hurting himself. But Beksiński never believed that family life would always be sunshine and rainbows. As he tapes everything with his beloved camcorder, the 28-year Beksiński saga unfolds through paintings, near-death experiences, dance music trends and funerals.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, captivating, suspenseful, art house, independent film
Similar in 82%
Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden (2016)
Plot Summary:
At the beginning of the 20th Century Egon Schiele is one of the most provocative artists in Vienna. His life and work are driven by beautiful women and an era that is coming to an end. Two women will have a lasting impact on him - his sister and first muse Gerti, and 17 year old Wally, arguably Schiele's one true love, immortalized in his famous painting 'Death and the Maiden'. Schiele's radical paintings scandalize Viennese society while daring artists like Gustav Klimt and art agents alike are sensing the exceptional. But Egon Schiele is also prepared to go beyond his own pain and to sacrifice Love and Life for his Art. Art that inspires us up to this day.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Austria, Luxembourg
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, realistic, artsy, art house, non-linear
Similar in 81%
A Harlot's Progress (2006)
Plot Summary:
Drama looking at artist William Hogarth and his relationship with the prostitute that inspired his most famous piece.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 336
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: UK
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, historical drama, sexual, sexy, period drama
Similar in 78%
Painted Fire (2002)
Plot Summary:
The struggles of an artist. Jang Seung-up (1843-1897), also called Owon, focusing on the years 1882 to 1897, when Korea was in political upheaval, caught between China and Japan, the conservative dynasty dying, and peasant revolt at hand. Jang, born poor, has genius; a merchant, Kim, becomes his patron, finding him a teacher. Jang must convince others that a commoner can have talent, then move beyond his ability to copy old masters and find his own style. He's bedeviled by a temper and alcohol, arguments with patrons as he seeks commissions, and relationships with kisaeng, particularly Mae-hyang, that start and stop. It's the life of a restless spirit producing great art.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: South Korea
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, captivating, sentimental, melancholic, sincere, art film, period drama
Similar in 89%
The Mill and the Cross (2011)
Plot Summary:
What would it be like to step inside a great work of art, have it come alive around you, and even observe the artist as he sketches the very reality you are experiencing? From Lech Majewski, one of Poland's most acclaimed filmmakers, The Mill and the Cross is a cinematic re-staging of Pieter Bruegel's masterpiece "Procession to Calvary," presented alongside the story of its creation.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland, Sweden
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, bleak, serious, realistic, surreal, christian film, philosophical, spiritual, cerebral, offbeat
Similar in 76%
Sin (2019)
Plot Summary:
The life of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Russia, Italy
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: uplifting, sentimental, inspirational, intellectual, captivating, breathtaking, masterpiece
Similar in 78%
Modigliani (2004)
Plot Summary:
Set in Paris in 1919, biopic centers on the life of late Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, focusing on his last days as well as his rivalry with Pablo Picasso. Modigliani, a Jew, has fallen in love with Jeanne, a young and beautiful Catholic girl. The couple has an illegitimate child, and Jeanne's bigoted parents send the baby to a faraway convent to be raised by nuns. Modigliani is distraught and.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 12000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: UK, Germany, Romania, France, Italy
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, serious, sad, factual, melancholic, psychological, inspirational, romantic, epic
Similar in 90%
Nightwatching (2007)
Plot Summary:
An extravagant, exotic and moving look at Rembrandt's romantic and professional life, and the controversy he created by the identification of a murderer in the painting The Night Watch.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Mystery
Country: UK, Poland, Canada, Netherlands
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, captivating, disturbing, enigmatic, heartbreaking, art film, metafiction, avant garde, baroque
Similar in 84%
Mrs. Lowry and Son (2019)
Plot Summary:
An intimate portrayal of the relationship between one of greatest artists of the 20th century, L.S. Lowry and his unhappy and controlling mother, Elizabeth, whom he lived with all his life.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: psychological, thought provoking, captivating, disturbing
Similar in 81%
Renoir (2012)
Plot Summary:
The Côte d’Azur. 1915. In his twilight years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir is tormented by the loss of his wife, the pains of arthritic old age and the terrible news that his son Jean has been wounded in action. But when a young girl miraculously enters his world, the old painter is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful, Andrée will become his last model, and the wellspring of a remarkable rejuvenation. Back at the family home to convalesce, Jean too falls under the spell of the new, redheaded star in the Renoir firmament. In their Mediterranean Eden - and in the face of his father's fierce opposition - he falls in love with this wild, untameable spirit... and as he does so, within weak-willed, battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Romance
Country: France
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, scenic, sentimental, costume drama, historical drama, serious, realistic, stylized, period drama
Similar in 75%
Frida, naturaleza viva (1983)
Plot Summary:
This film is a chronicle of painter Frida Kahlo, and her encounter with the personalities of her time. Despite being confied to a wheelchair as a result of polio, operations and amputations, she faces and traces some of the most colorful and controversial aspects of Mexican history, during the dominant time of Mexican muralism.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 531
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Mexico
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: visual
Similar in 90%
Artemisia (1997)
Plot Summary:
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) was one of the first well-known female painters. The movie tells the story of her youth, when she was guided and protected by her father, the painter Orazio Gentileschi. Her professional curiosity about the male anatomy, forbidden for her eyes, led her to the knowledge of sexual pleasure. But she was also well known because in 1612 she had to appear in a courtroom because her teacher, Agostino Tassi, was suspected of raping her. She tried to protect him, but was put in the thumb screws.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Romance
Country: France, Italy, Germany
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: erotic, factual, sexual, spiritual, art film, historical drama, serious, captivating, realistic, stylized
Similar in 76%
Pirosmani (1969)
Plot Summary:
A dedicated artist from Russian Georgia struggles to get recognition.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Soviet Union, Georgia
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: psychedelic, spiritual, heartbreaking
Similar in 78%
El Greco (1966)
Plot Summary:
Greek painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos (Mel Ferrer) woos a beauty (Rosanna Schiaffino) and faces the Inquisition in 16th-century Spain.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 196
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Italy, France, Spain
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
Cezanne and I (2016)
Plot Summary:
They loved each other with the ardor of thirteen-year-old boys. Rebellion and curiosity, hopes and doubts, girls and dreams of glory – they shared it all. Paul was rich, Emile poor. They went skinny-dipping, drank absinthe, starved, only to overeat. Sketched models by day, caressed them by night... Now, Paul is a painter and Emile a writer. Glory has passed Paul by. But Emile has it all: fame, money, the perfect wife, whom Paul once loved. They judge each other, admire each other, confront each other. They lose touch, meet up again, like a couple who cannot stop loving each other.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Belgium, France
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: exciting, atmospheric, captivating, realistic, contemplative, factual, artsy
Similar in 90%
Paula (2016)
Plot Summary:
Painting is an unacceptable vocation for a woman in provincial Germany in the year 1900, but budding artist Paula Becker is determined to make her own rules.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 855
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Germany, France
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: exciting, sentimental, humorous, captivating, touching, melancholic, suspenseful, artsy
Similar in 75%
Goya's Ghosts (2006)
Plot Summary:
Painter Francisco Goya faces a scandal involving his muse, who is labeled a heretic by a monk.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 32000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Spain, USA
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: period piece, intense, factual, thought provoking, realistic, dramatic, costume drama, historical drama, spiritual, sad
Similar in 75%
Klimt (2006)
Plot Summary:
A portrait of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt whose lavish, sexual paintings came to symbolize the art nouveau style of the late 19th and early 20th century.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Austria, France, Germany, UK
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, stylized, cerebral, visual, visually stunning, serious, captivating, realistic, experimental, contemplative
Similar in 88%
My Nikifor (2004)
Plot Summary:
From his birth in 1895 through his death in 1968, the gifted Polish naïve artist Nikifor Krynicki (AKA Epifan Drowniak) lived his life and eked out a career cloaked in obscurity - a casualty of both his extreme speech impediment (his tongue was attached to the roof of his mouth, which prompted others to errantly tag him as mentally incapacitated) and his self-effacing decision to sell the majority of his work for meager amounts. Krzysztof Krauze's biopic My Nikifor travels to the tail end of Krynicki's (Krystyna Feldman) life journey, dramatizing the period that surrounded his interaction with the well-established artist Marian Wlosinski (Roman Gancarczyk).
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 866
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, captivating, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 83%
Seraphine (2008)
Plot Summary:
The tragic story of French naïve painter Séraphine Louis aka Séraphine de Senlis (1864-1942), a humble servant who becomes a gifted self-taught painter. Discovered by prominent critic and collector William Uhde, she came to prominence between the wars grouped with other naïve painters like Henri Rouseau only to descend into madness and obscurity with the onset of Great Depression and World War II.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: touching, sincere, sentimental, surprise ending, heartbreaking, avant garde, independent film, art film, visual, visually stunning
Similar in 81%
At Eternity's Gate (2018)
Plot Summary:
Famed but tormented artist Vincent van Gogh spends his final years in Arles, France, painting masterworks of the natural world that surrounds him.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 39000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Ireland, Switzerland, UK, France, USA
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: independent film, melancholic, psychological, rough, touching, art film, captivating, suspenseful, philosophical, atmospheric
Similar in 83%
The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)
Plot Summary:
Charlton Heston stars as Renaissance artist Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), who begrudgingly paints the Sistine Chapel for imperious Pope Julius II in this epic adaptation of Irvine Stone's novel directed by Carol Reed. While the novel covers Michelangelo's life from birth to death, the film focuses on the battle of wills between the perfectionist artist and the impatient Pope who commissions (and eventually commands) him to paint the famed chapel.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: epic, inspirational, uplifting, serious, biblical, christian film, psychedelic, art film, technicolor, sincere
Similar in 79%
Mr. Turner (2014)
Plot Summary:
Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 27000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: UK, France, Germany, USA, Belgium
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: enigmatic, surreal, meditative, sincere, captivating, costume drama, visual, atmospheric, clever, stylized
Similar in 80%
Pollock (2000)
Plot Summary:
In August of 1949, Life Magazine ran a banner headline that begged the question: "Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" The film is a look back into the life of an extraordinary man, a man who has fittingly been called "an artist dedicated to concealment, a celebrity who nobody knew." As he struggled with self-doubt, engaging in a lonely tug-of-war between needing to express himself and wanting to shut the world out, Pollock began a downward spiral.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 29000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: emotional, intellectual, atmospheric, depressing, breathtaking, art film, sincere, inspirational, dark, neurotic