Best movies like Balibo
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
As Indonesia prepares to invade the tiny nation of East Timor, five Australian based journalists go missing. Four weeks later, veteran foreign correspondent Roger East is lured to East Timor by the young and charismatic José Ramos-Horta to tell the story of his country and investigate the fate of the missing men. As East's determination to uncover the truth grows, the threat of invasion intensifie.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Australia
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: serious, rough, thought provoking, bleak, realistic, suspenseful, political, tense, controversial, contemplative
Best tv shows and movies like Balibo (2009):
Similar in 87%
Slap the Monster on Page One (1972)
Plot Summary:
1972, Milano. We are just a few days before the general elections. The daughter of a well-known professor is found dead. Mr Bizanti editor in chief of newspaper "Il Giornale", in agreement with its owner Mr. Montelli, decides to charge of following the story the junior Roveda and the senior Lauri. At one point, some elements indicates senator Boni as a possible murderer. All the "old guard" within "Il Giornale" drives articles in order to underline responsibilities of senator Boni. But young Roveda doesn't surrender and continues to search for the truth. (IMDb).
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: political, cult classic, thought provoking, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, controversial, poliziottesco
Similar in 86%
Fog and Night (2007)
Plot Summary:
Fog and the Night is the search of an investigator who has lost his confidence in his organization and whose happy"family father" order has been disrupted by his young lover.And introverted man due to his profession , not a big talker or well in expressing his feelings,Sedat is being consumed , going through the hardest time of his life , not able to silence his guilty conscience because he was unsuccessful in solving the murder of his partner , whom he saw a brother .His faith in his organization is shaken as he witness the schemes in machination inside the organization and between the organization and the state.Meanwhile , while trying to find his lover who has disappeared after falling for a former militant , he does not refrain from making use of the filthiest methods of his profession.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Turkey
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, realistic, suspenseful, bleak
Similar in 76%
Annika Bengtzon: Crime Reporter - Studio Sex (2012)
Plot Summary:
A stripper at the club Studio Six is murdered. A political scandal takes off when the Minister of Commerce appears to have been at the club. He resigns - but only to hide an even bigger secret.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Sweden
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, suspense, erotic, controversial, crime drama
Similar in 85%
Baltic Storm (2003)
Plot Summary:
A journalist from Berlin, Germany, and a Swedish lawyer discover the truth behind the sinking of the "MS Estonia" in 1994, where more than 850 people drowned.
IMDB Rating: 4.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: Germany, UK
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, interesting
Similar in 90%
Nobel's Last Will (2012)
Plot Summary:
While covering the annual Nobel Banquet for tabloid Kvällspressen, crime reporter Annika Bengtzon witnesses a spectacular murder right in front of her. Two people are shot, one of them the controversial Laureate in Medicine, Aaron Wiesel. Annika is the key witness and is bound by the police not to disclose anything she has seen. A terrorist group with connections to the Middle East quickly admits responsibility for the murder. International press is all over the story, as are the police.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Sweden
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, suspenseful, tense, captivating, suspense, neo noir
Similar in 88%
Resurrection Man (1998)
Plot Summary:
Belfast, in 1970s. Victor Kelly is a young protestant man who hates the Catholics so much that one night he begins to brutally murder them. A reporter soon tries to uncover the murder and obtained prestige for himself, while Victor sinks deeper into madness.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 826
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: disturbing, bleak, serious, suspenseful, independent film, tense, rough, realistic, parody, sexy
Similar in 75%
Manhunt (2008)
Plot Summary:
Based on the true story of the Klarsfelds, a Franco-German couple who devoted themselves to bringing Nazi war criminals to justice. Their pursuit of Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon," takes them to South America, where he has found refuge. After 12 years of investigations, undercover work and battles with authorities, they succeed in having him captured and brought to justice.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 357
Genere: Biography, Drama, Mystery
Country: Germany, France
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: serious, suspense, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 88%
A Show of Force (1990)
Plot Summary:
In this thriller, television reporter Kate Ryan de Meléndez investigates the death of two radical Puerto Rican activists, whom she begins to believe may have been framed and murdered by undercover American agents.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 842
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 87%
The Inner Circle (1991)
Plot Summary:
The true story of Ivan Sanchin, the KGB officer who was Stalin's private film projectionist from 1939 until the dictator's death. Told from Sanchin's view, the sympathetic but tragically flawed hero maintains unwavering faith in his "Master" despite the arrest of his neighbors and his involvement with their daughter, his wife's affair with the chilling State Security chief Lavrentii Beria and her tragic decline, and the deadly political machinations within the Kremlin he witnesses firsthand. Written by Martin H. Booda.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Crime, Drama, History, Mystery
Country: Italy, Soviet Union, USA
Duration: 137 min
Plot tags: realistic, disturbing, thought provoking, serious, political, bleak, contemplative
Similar in 78%
Salvador (2006)
Plot Summary:
The story of Salvador Puig Antich, one of the last political prisoners to be executed under Franco's Fascist State in 1974.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Spain, UK
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: rough, suspenseful, disturbing, thought provoking, serious, realistic, political, political thriller, bleak
Similar in 82%
Press (2010)
Plot Summary:
The story of a Kurdish newspaper whose journalists are under the constant threat of being abducted and killed by the state security forces.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 711
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Turkey
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: captivating, realistic, thought provoking, serious, political thriller
Similar in 81%
The 9/11 Commission Report (2006)
Plot Summary:
Independent writer-director Leigh Slawner helms this chilling dramatization of the findings laid out in the best-selling 9/11 Commission Report, a document that sought to analyze the circumstances surrounding coordinated terrorist attacks against American civilians on Sept 11 2001.
IMDB Rating: 2.9
IMDB Votes: 497
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, bleak, mockbuster, independent film
Similar in 86%
The Infiltrator (1995)
Plot Summary:
The Infiltrator is an American film about an Israeli freelance journalist who travels to Germany circa the early 1990's and uncovers a story about a dangerously pervasive underground Neo-Nazi faction, who are intent to bring Nazism back to the forefront in Germany. It originally aired on HBO in 1995. Among its cast include: Oliver Platt, Arliss Howard, and Tony Haygarth. It is based on the book In Hitler's Shadow : An Israeli's Journey Inside Germany's Neo-Nazi Movement by Yaron Svoray.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 731
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: rough, thought provoking, serious, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 87%
Route Irish (2010)
Plot Summary:
A private security contractor in Iraq rejects the official explanation of his friend's death and decides to investigate.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Action, Drama, Thriller, War
Country: UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, tense, bleak, realistic, political, contemplative, gloomy, tragic
Similar in 76%
Fort Apache Napoli (2009)
Plot Summary:
The story of Giancarlo Siani, a journalist killed by the Neapolitan Mafia in 1985.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Crime, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, tense, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Zuzu Angel (2006)
Plot Summary:
"Zuzu Angel" covers the last years of the famous Brazilian fashion designer in her doomed quest for justice in the case of her activist son Stuart's arrest, torture, murder and subsequent corpse disposal by the military forces in early 1970s Rio de Janeiro, during the darkest era of Brazilian military regime and media censorship. Not even the fact that she was a widely known public figure saved her from being killed in a car crash in 1976, in one of the regime's favorite elimination techniques (many other similar "car crashes" still have to be re-investigated).
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Brazil
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: disturbing, psychological, serious, suspenseful, thought provoking, captivating, realistic
Similar in 80%
Rosewater (2014)
Plot Summary:
In 2009, Iranian Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari was covering Iran's volatile elections for Newsweek. One of the few reporters living in the country with access to US media, he made an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in a taped interview with comedian Jason Jones. The interview was intended as satire, but if the Tehran authorities got the joke they didn't like it - and it would quickly came back to haunt Bahari when he was rousted from his family home and thrown into prison. Making his directorial debut, Jon Stewart tells the tale of Bahari's months-long imprisonment and interrogation in this powerful and affecting docudrama featuring a potent and performance by Gael García Bernal recounting Bahari's efforts to maintain his hope and his sanity in the face of isolation and persecution-through memories of his family, recollections of the music he loves, and thoughts of his wife and unborn child.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: brutal, suspense, suspenseful, surreal, tense, captivating, political, social, novela, powerful
Similar in 89%
Kill the Messenger (2014)
Plot Summary:
A reporter becomes the target of a vicious smear campaign that drives him to the point of suicide after he exposes the CIA's role in arming Contra rebels in Nicaragua and importing cocaine into California. Based on the true story of journalist Gary Webb.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 48000
Genere: Biography, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: political, tense, suspenseful, thought provoking, clever, captivating, disturbing, spiritual, neo noir, emotional
Similar in 90%
Getulio (2014)
Plot Summary:
The movie depicts the political crisis that led to the suicide of president Getúlio Vargas, in the 19 days that preceded August 24, 1954. The crisis began with the attempted assassination of journalist and politician Carlos Lacerda in August 5, 1954, at rua Toneleros, Rio de Janeiro, in which Major Vaz was assassinated instead. Investigations pointed to Gregório Fortunato, chief of Vargas' personal guard, as the orderer of the frustrated assassination. This incident was one of the most importants in the history of Brazil.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Thriller
Country: Brazil, Portugal
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, stylized, bleak
Similar in 88%
Deadline (2012)
Plot Summary:
Deadline is the story of the murder of an African American youth in rural Alabama that has gone uninvestigated, unsolved, and unpunished for almost twenty years. That changes when Nashville Times reporter Matt Harper (Steve Talley) meets an idealistic young blueblood bent on discovering the truth. Harper undertakes the investigation despite the opposition of his publisher, violent threats from mysterious forces, a break-up with his fiancée, and his father's cancer diagnosis.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 454
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, realistic, suspenseful, independent film
Similar in 77%
Nothing But the Truth (2008)
Plot Summary:
When reporter Rachel Armstrong writes a story that reveals the identity of a covert CIA operative, the government demands that Rachel reveal her source. She defies the special prosecutor and is thrown in jail. Meanwhile, her attorney, Albert Burnside argues her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 40000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: suspense, psychological, serious, tense, suspenseful, political, tricky, twisted, emotional, thought provoking
Similar in 75%
The Last Mitterrand (2005)
Plot Summary:
A young journalist (Lespert) helps the French President compile his memoirs.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, sincere, thought provoking, realistic, talky, political, contemplative, factual
Similar in 83%
Winnie Mandela (2011)
Plot Summary:
A drama that chronicles the life of Winnie Mandela from her childhood through her marriage and her husband's incarceration.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 880
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: South Africa, Canada
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, captivating, realistic, political
Similar in 87%
The Bang Bang Club (2010)
Plot Summary:
In the early to mid '90s, when the South African system of apartheid was in its death throes, four photographers - Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and João Silva - bonded by their friendship and a sense of purpose, worked together to chronicle the violence and upheaval leading up to the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as president. Their work is risky and dangerous, potentially fatally so, as they thrust themselves into the middle of chaotic clashes between forces backed by the government (including Inkatha Zulu warriors) and those in support of Mandela's African National Congress.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Canada, South Africa
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, rough, thought provoking, independent film
Similar in 80%
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 89%
Cry Freedom (1987)
Plot Summary:
A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: UK, Zimbabwe, USA
Duration: 157 min
Plot tags: inspirational, political, cult classic, political thriller, edutainment, tense, thought provoking, bleak, serious, captivating
Similar in 88%
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%
The Last Sentence (2012)
Plot Summary:
Renowned journalist Torgny Segerstedt declares war against Hitler as he criticizes Swedish politicians who tried to look away from the tyranny of the Nazis with the good excuse of “neutralism”. His only weapon is his pen and his life is full of gossip such as an affair with his boss’ wife, a love scandal with a secretary younger than his daughter, and the suicide of his wife. However, he continues to fight a one man battle against Hitler and the Nazi regime until his death, throwing the question “Can one person really change history?” to the audience.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 839
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Sweden, Norway
Duration: 126 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, touching, serious, uplifting, bleak, realistic, gloomy, period drama
Similar in 76%
Missing (1982)
Plot Summary:
Based on the real-life experiences of Ed Horman. A conservative American businessman travels to a South American country to investigate the sudden disappearance of his son after a right-wing military takeover. Accompanied by his son's wife he uncovers a trail of cover-ups that implicate the US State department which supports the right-wing dictatorship.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA, Mexico
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: political, political thriller, emotional, talky, tense, thought provoking, suspenseful, disturbing, serious, poignant
Similar in 89%
All the President's Men (1976)
Plot Summary:
In the run-up to the 1972 elections, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward covers what seems to be a minor break-in at the Democratic Party National headquarters. He is surprised to find top lawyers already on the defense case, and the discovery of names and addresses of Republican fund organizers on the accused further arouses his suspicions. The editor of the Post is prepared to run with the story and assigns Woodward and Carl Bernstein to it. They find the trail leading higher and higher in the Republican Party, and eventually into the White House itself.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 124000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: political thriller, political, cerebral, realistic, serious, suspense, factual, tense, captivating, neo noir