Best movies like Breaking the Waves

Similar in 75%

Manderlay (2005)

Plot Summary:

In 1933, after leaving Dogville, Grace Margaret Mulligan sees a slave being punished at a cotton farm called Manderlay. Officially slavery is illegal and Grace stands up against the owners of the farm. She stays with some gangsters in Manderlay and tries to influence the situation. But when harvest time comes Grace sees the social and economic reality of Manderlay.

Similar in 77%

The Sacrifice (1986)

Plot Summary:

Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.

Similar in 87%

Moonlight Whispers (1999)

Plot Summary:

Satsuki (Tsugumi) and Takuya (Kenji Mizuhashi) are high school students who meet at kendo practice, where they bash one another with wooden swords. They begin an awkward romance, but Takuya soon reveals a masochistic side to his desires. He has been stealing Satsuki's soiled clothing and secretly surveilling her while imagining her subjugation of him. Disgusted, Satsuki rejects him -- but he persists, and she discovers her own pleasure in manipulating and humiliating him.

Similar in 75%

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)

Plot Summary:

Gabita is pregnant, abortion is strictly forbidden in Romania during the communist regime. Despite this it is common practice and Gabita wants an abortion. The movie follows her and her friend Otilia during the day she has made the appointment with Mr. Bebe to have the abortion.

Similar in 75%

Mouchette (1967)

Plot Summary:

Robert Bresson plumbs great reservoirs of feelings with one of the most searing portraits of human desperation ever put on film.

Similar in 75%

The Piano (1993)

Plot Summary:

After a long voyage from Scotland, pianist Ada McGrath and her young daughter, Flora, are left with all their belongings, including a piano, on a New Zealand beach. Ada, who has been mute since childhood, has been sold into marriage to a local man named Alisdair Stewart. Making little attempt to warm up to Alisdair, Ada soon becomes intrigued by his Maori-friendly acquaintance, George Baines, leading to tense, life-altering conflicts.

Similar in 77%

Amour (2012)

Plot Summary:

Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.

Similar in 80%

Cries & Whispers (1972)

Plot Summary:

As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so deeply immersed in their own psychic pains that they can't offer her the support she needs. Maria is wracked with guilt at her husband's suicide, caused by his discovery of her extramarital affair. The self-loathing, suicidal Karin seems to regard her sister with revulsion. Only Anna, the deeply religious maid who lost her young child, seems able to offer Agnes solace and empathy.

Similar in 86%

Dogville (2003)

Plot Summary:

A barren soundstage is stylishly utilized to create a minimalist small-town setting in which a mysterious woman named Grace hides from the criminals who pursue her. The town is two-faced and offers to harbor Grace as long as she can make it worth their effort, so Grace works hard under the employ of various townspeople to win their favor. Tensions flare, however, and Grace's status as a helpless outsider provokes vicious contempt and abuse from the citizens of Dogville.

Similar in 83%

Naked (1993)

Plot Summary:

Johnny flees Manchester for London, to avoid a beating from the family of a girl he has raped. There he finds an old girlfriend, and spends some time homeless, spending much of his time ranting at strangers, and meeting characters in plights very much like his own.

Similar in 76%

The Celebration (1998)

Plot Summary:

A grandiose party to celebrate a sixtieth birthday unleashes a family drama with all the lies that conceal horrendous secrets. The eldest son, Christian, stages a showdown with the popular pater familias; his provocative, moving after-dinner speech dislodges all the masks, which finally fall completely as the father-son conflict intensifies and the bewildered guests look on.

Similar in 82%

The Night Porter (1974)

Plot Summary:

In this unsettling drama from Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani, a concentration camp survivor discovers her former torturer and lover working as a porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them. Operatic and disturbing, The Night Porter deftly examines the lasting social and psychological effects of the Nazi regime.

Similar in 86%

Talk to Her (2002)

Plot Summary:

Two men share an odd friendship while they care for two women who are both in deep comas.

Similar in 81%

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)

Plot Summary:

A sexually repressed woman's husband is having an affair with her sister. The arrival of a visitor with a rather unusual fetish changes everything.

Similar in 83%

Antichrist (2009)

Plot Summary:

A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

Similar in 76%

Melancholia (2011)

Plot Summary:

Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.

Similar in 75%

Shame (2011)

Plot Summary:

Brandon is a New Yorker who shuns intimacy with women but feeds his desires with a compulsive addiction to sex. When his wayward younger sister moves into his apartment stirring memories of their shared painful past, Brandon's insular life spirals out of control.

Similar in 80%

Babel (2006)

Plot Summary:

Tragedy strikes a married couple on vacation in the Moroccan desert, touching off an interlocking story involving four different families.

Similar in 80%

The Brown Bunny (2003)

Plot Summary:

Bud Clay races motorcycles in the 250cc Formula II class of road racing. After a race in New Hampshire, he has five days to get to his next race in California. During his road trip, he is haunted by memories of the last time he saw Daisy, his true love.

Similar in 87%

Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013)

Plot Summary:

A man named Seligman finds a fainted wounded woman in an alley and he brings her home. She tells him that her name is Joe and that she is nymphomaniac. Joe tells her life and sexual experiences with hundreds of men since she was a young teenager while Seligman tells about his hobbies, such as fly fishing, reading about Fibonacci numbers or listening to organ music.

Similar in 86%

The Piano Teacher (2001)

Plot Summary:

Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

Similar in 83%

Head-On (2004)

Plot Summary:

Head On is German director Fatih Akin’s story of the alcoholic Cahit and Turkish Sibel. Akin tells the story of a love that can never be between two people who are too alike to not be together.

Similar in 78%

Blue Valentine (2010)

Plot Summary:

Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.

Similar in 84%

Trainspotting (1996)

Plot Summary:

Renton, deeply immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene, tries to clean up and get out, despite the allure of the drugs and influence of friends.

Similar in 81%

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Plot Summary:

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Similar in 85%

Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Plot Summary:

Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, escaping life's troubles - even if just for a moment - by dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.

Similar in 88%

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Plot Summary:

The hopes and dreams of four ambitious people are shattered when their drug addictions begin spiraling out of control. A look into addiction and how it overcomes the mind and body.

Similar in 75%

Nymphomaniac: Vol. II (2013)

Plot Summary:

The continuation of Joe's sexually dictated life delves into the darker aspects of her adult life and what led to her being in Seligman's care.

Similar in 80%

American Beauty (1999)

Plot Summary:

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.