Best movies like Arctic
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Simon and Jota are two young scoundrels who hit the street every day to eke out a living. Each one wants what he lacks. Simon cannot stand being surrounded by his large family all the time. Jota wants to stop leading a lonely life and will do his best to have his own family.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 121
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 78 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic, touching, hood, road movie, bleak, stylized, gloomy
Best tv shows and movies like Arctic (2014):
Similar in 81%
Once Upon a Time Veronica (2012)
Plot Summary:
A finely tuned, emotionally raw portrait of a woman’s conflicted entry into adulthood, Once Upon a Time Veronica is a thoroughly modern anti–fairy tale. Director Marcelo Gomes shows a rare ability to get under the skin — and cut close to the bone — of his emotionally vulnerable but resilient main character. Anchored by a tour de force performance from the fearless Hermila Guedes, this sensual, psychologically complex character study charts the personal and professional growth of one young woman in Recife.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 712
Genere: Drama
Country: Brazil, France
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, touching, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 77%
Something in the Way (2013)
Plot Summary:
Ahmad, a porn obsessed taxi driver from Jakarta, falls for the beautiful young prostitute Kinar and struggles with sexual frustration and misguided piety.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 712
Genere: Drama
Country: Indonesia
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, touching, serious, bleak, sincere, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 86%
Henri (2013)
Plot Summary:
The meeting of two lonely, marginal souls. There is Henri, a man in his 50s, limp, resigned, somewhat alcoholic. And Rosette, a (slightly) retarded woman who dreams of love, sexuality, normality.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 274
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 82%
Everyone's Going to Die (2013)
Plot Summary:
Melanie's life in a seaside town is going nowhere until she meets Ray, back in town with a shady job to do. A moment's escape becomes a chance to save themselves, and each other.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 325
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, realistic, atmospheric, contemplative, emotional, humorous, talky, semi serious
Similar in 83%
Freddy Hotel (2014)
Plot Summary:
Freddy Angi, separate and homeless, stumbles into strange love affairs, including one with his wife Anna. The two meet now and then as lovers in a hotel room.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 17
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Italy, Romania
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, touching, serious, realistic, bleak
Similar in 84%
Lotus Eaters (2011)
Plot Summary:
Story follows a group of young Londoners as they struggle to find meaning in their lives while masking their discontent with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 310
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 78 min
Plot tags: serious, atmospheric, realistic, stylized
Similar in 81%
The High Pressures (2014)
Plot Summary:
Miguel travels to Pontevedra, his hometown, with the request of serching for some locations for a movie. His trip takes him back to the place where he grew up, meeting up with some old friends, but also leads him to the possibility of a new relationship: Alicia, a young nurse who will get to calm him down. Miguel will try to finish his work even though he mostly prefers to film the natives he meets, the movements and faces of his friends, the trains coming or the sea. A journey around the uprooting (the cinema) and love.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 91
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 81%
Breaking Horizons (2012)
Plot Summary:
“Congratulations, you’re pregnant!” Lara can hardly believe what the doctor has just told her. The 25-year-old spends her nights hanging around Berlin with best friend Nora, having lost interest in her architectural studies long ago. She has no idea what to do with her life – she does a lot, but nothing properly. She now finds herself pregnant after a night of passion with a charming barman she met at a party. Nora is thrilled by the news though, proclaiming: “we’re having a baby!” After some initial doubts, Lara too begins to see her pregnancy as a chance. Together with Nora, she sets about painting the nursery and goes in search of the baby’s father. Then the gynaecologist gives Lara some bad news….
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 711
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, emotional, sexy, realistic
Similar in 80%
Nagima (2013)
Plot Summary:
Ugly, illiterate and an uncommunicative “graduate” of the city orphanage, Nagima is a young woman whose life offers little potential for success or even happiness. Nagima rents a tiny room on the outskirts of the city of Almaty with her fellow orphanage “graduate” the pregnant, and equally isolated, Anya. In the midst of giving birth to her child, tragedy strikes and Anya dies. Never knowing her mother, the newborn girl must be submitted to the orphanage and so Nagima sees the vicious cycle of life in repetitious action and becomes severely depressed at the cruelty of life.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 40
Genere: Drama
Country: Kazakhstan
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, touching, suspenseful, rough, bleak
Similar in 78%
Amador (2010)
Plot Summary:
A drama centered on a young woman who takes a summer job caring for a bed-ridden older man, and the intimate secrets they begin to share with one another.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: realistic, touching, sincere, serious
Similar in 81%
Blue Lips (2014)
Plot Summary:
Six people's lives come together.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 82
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain, Brazil, Italy, Argentina, USA
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, realistic
Similar in 80%
X/Y (2014)
Plot Summary:
As Mark, Jen, Sylvia, and Jake navigate through their emotionally-arrested states, X/Y reveals the honest and wanton desire we all have to connect with someone and what is at stake when that connection fades.
IMDB Rating: 4.2
IMDB Votes: 693
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, atmospheric, captivating, sexy, sincere, touching, serious, independent film, erotic
Similar in 83%
Araf/Somewhere in Between (2012)
Plot Summary:
Araf is the story of Zehra and Olgun whose lives are caught in a vacuum. The world in which they live and work is a place of throwaway culture and constant change. They too are waiting for a chance to change and escape from their empty, monotonous lives.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, France, Germany
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, emotional, realistic, art house, bleak, stylized, gloomy
Similar in 77%
Exit: A personal history (2010)
Plot Summary:
A young man travels to Holland for an assisted suicide. The young man was convinced that this was his only way of ending an existence that he considered to lack any dignity.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 22
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: experimental, atmospheric, contemplative, psychological, sincere, serious, emotional, realistic, surreal, gloomy
Similar in 90%
Manila (2009)
Plot Summary:
A tribute to filmmakers and National Artists Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal. In the "Day" segment, Piolo Pacual portrays the role of William, a drug addict who tries to rebuild his sense of self and reconnect with the people around him. For the "Night" segment, Pascual portrays the role of Philip, who works as a bodyguard for a mayor's son. The bodyguard believes that his boss considers him as part of the family but after a shooting incident, he realizes his real worth to his boss. As he struggles to hide, he is slowly consumed by the claws of darkness lurking the city.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 133
Genere: Drama
Country: Philippines
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: tense, atmospheric, touching, serious, neo noir, bleak, captivating, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 80%
Lost Persons Area (2009)
Plot Summary:
A man trying to keep himself afloat and marry the woman he loves sees all that's dear to him threatened in this drama. Marcus (Sam Louwyck) works as a maintenance man for a Belgian power company, keeping lines and electrical towers in repair along a thinly populated area with a few low-income neighborhoods scattered across the plains. Marcus has been living with his pretty girlfriend Bettina (Lisbeth Gruwez) for quite some time; she runs a diner, and they have a nine-year-old daughter Tessa (Kimke Desart) who seems to live in a world of her own. Marcus's boss is Hungarian émigré Szabolcs (Zoltan Miklos Hajdu), and when Marcus is seriously injured on the job, Szabolcs steps in to do his work. However, after meeting Bettina, Szabolcs decides to move into Marcus's personal life as well as his professional life.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 194
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium, Netherlands, Hungary, Germany, France
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, touching, captivating, bleak, serious, gloomy, independent film
Similar in 81%
Five Star (2014)
Plot Summary:
After John’s absent father is struck by a stray bullet, Primo takes it upon himself to verse the young boy in the code of the streets—one founded on respect and upheld by fear. A member of the Bloods since the age of twelve—both in the film and in reality—the streets of Brooklyn are all Primo has ever known. While John questions whether or not to enter into this life, Primo must decide whether to leave it all behind as he vows to become a better husband and father. Set during those New York summer weeks where the stifling heat seems to encase everything, Five Star plunges into gang culture with searing intensity. Director Keith Miller observes the lives of these two men with a quiet yet pointed distance, carefully eschewing worn clichés through its unflinching focus. Distinctions between fiction and real life remain intentionally ambiguous, allowing the story of these two men to resonate beyond the streets, as they face the question of what it means to be a man.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 569
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, psychological, captivating, sexy, hood, tense, sincere, rough, bleak
Similar in 76%
Angel's Fall (2004)
Plot Summary:
Zeynep, Tülin Özen works in a hotel as a housekeeper. But she suffers hell on earth because of her father's behavior. She only talks to Mustafa, 'Engin Dogan' who works in the same hotel and he is interested in Zeynep. She is not interested in Mustafa who is younger than Zeynep, but she is not indifferent to him. While Zeynep is trying to make a bonfire of bad situation, Selçuk, Budak Akalin who lives on the other side of city is a voice technician. He feels guilty after his wife's death. The suitcase which has his wife's dresses changes the Zeynep's destiny.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece, Turkey
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, atmospheric, touching, tense, bleak, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 86%
Plans for Tomorrow (2010)
Plot Summary:
Three stories intertwined which occur in a single day. The day Ines discovers she is pregnant, Antonia decides to abandon her family and Marian realizes she is going to die.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 349
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 81%
Brother (2014)
Plot Summary:
Giorgi is 16 years old when he discovers another world through American films forbidden in all Soviet Union until then. Since the post-revolutionary chaos in his home town, Tbilisi, Giorgi has wanted to have succeeded by following the path of his idols: Tony Montana and Vito Corleone. He has almost reached his goal when he is confronted with a dilemma; how can he stop his little brother who is 12 years old to follow his path when he could become a famous pianist? All this in a world that only knows chaos.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 265
Genere: Drama
Country: Georgia, France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, touching, serious, captivating, stylized, gloomy, entertaining
Similar in 78%
Women or Children First (2002)
Plot Summary:
Tom, a Spaniard, is married to Sylvie and lives a quiet but a bit boring life in the Britanny countryside (west of France). Trouble comes when Tom ex girlfriend reappears, asking for help, announcing him that she had a girl from him 9 years ago.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 264
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Spain
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: touching, emotional, sentimental, captivating, sincere, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 80%
Not Waving But Drowning (2012)
Plot Summary:
Not Waving But Drowning is a chronological look at growing up, formed from two different stories. The two sets of friends represent the American dilemma between what you have known and what you hope to know; the tear between longing for the past and the desire to explore.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 431
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, atmospheric, touching, captivating, sincere, serious, gloomy, independent film
Similar in 83%
Buddha Mountain (2010)
Plot Summary:
Ding Bo (Chen Po Lin) and his friends Nan Feng (Fan Bingbing) and Fei Zao aka Fatso (Fei Long) are a trio of 20-something outsiders who have no intention of sitting exams and getting into universities. When they need a new home, they answer an ad placed by lonely, retired Chinese opera singer Chang Yue Qin (Sylvia Chang), who is mourning the death of her son, and move into her sprawling Chengdu apartment. Right off the bat, the four clash over lifestyle and values, with the bratty trio seeing fit to steal from her and invade her privacy. However, slowly but surely a bond among them develops and everyone eventually learns something from the next.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 921
Genere: Drama
Country: China
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, sexy, gloomy
Similar in 75%
Speak Like a Child (1998)
Plot Summary:
Speak Like a Child, the feature film debut of documentary director John Akomfrah, explores the intense friendship that evolves between three troubled teenagers growing up in an isolated children's home on the Northumbrian coast. The desolate beauty of the coastline is captured in stunning panoramas, while strong performances by the young cast help to create a lyrical and poignant drama.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 87
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags: independent film, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 89%
3 Backyards (2010)
Plot Summary:
An executive, a housewife and a youngster spend a day in their Long Island suburban town during the course of one curious autumn day afternoon.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 753
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, atmospheric, serious, tense, sincere, gloomy, independent film, psychological thriller, psycho film
Similar in 89%
3 Nights in the Desert (2014)
Plot Summary:
Three former band mates enter a cave after hearing it has the power to give them what they need. As unsettling desires rise to the surface, they all wonder if the cave has real power.
IMDB Rating: 4.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, talky, serious, realistic, minimal cast, independent film
Similar in 80%
Hard Times (2005)
Plot Summary:
When the troubled son of an NGO worker refuses to take a test and announces that he is not leaving his room, his concerned mother asks one of her clients, a Cuban exile, for help in setting the boy straight. Gonzalo has decided to drop out of school, and his mother Ana isn't sure how to convince the boy that he's making a crucial mistake. Ana's client Carlos is a Cuban exile who makes his living selling cigars and artwork on the black market. When Carlos learns of Ana's dilemma, he calls on recently released convict Mikel to teach the boy how to play chess. Perhaps is young Gonzalo can master the game, he can learn to start living again. As the lessons get underway, each of these characters learns that in order to truly move on with their lives they much first break free of the bonds that prevent them from being who they really are.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 333
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic, touching, sentimental
Similar in 81%
A Trip (2011)
Plot Summary:
Three friends embark on a road trip like in high school, but things have changed - Gregor is going to war mission, Ziva is going to study abroad, while Andrej is still the same. There are secrets left unsaid. Can their friendship survive?.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 905
Genere: Drama
Country: Slovenia
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, road movie, captivating, psychological, atmospheric, touching, serious
Similar in 84%
Frailer (2014)
Plot Summary:
A woman diagnosed with terminal lung cancer gathers her three dearest friends together to make the most of the time she has left.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 104
Genere: Drama
Country: Netherlands, Norway
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, serious, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 86%
House with a Turret (2012)
Plot Summary:
During the final winter of WWII, as displaced persons return to their former homes in the Soviet Union, an 8-year-old boy is left alone when his mother dies en route.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 166
Genere: Drama
Country: Ukraine
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic, stylized, road movie, bleak, gloomy