Best movies like Close to Eden
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Veteran Russian writer-director Nikita Mikhalkov's film about the impact of modern civilization on an idyllic part of Mongolia won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Film. A farmer (Bayyartu) and his wife, who live in a rural part of Inner Mongolia, have three children. Chinese population control policies prevent them from having any more. The farmer sets out for the nearest town to obtain birth control. He comes upon a Russian truck driver (Vladimir Gostyukhin) who has ended up in a lake. The farmer takes the man back to his farm, and after initially being appalled at the lack of civilization, the Russian becomes enchanted with the peaceful life of the backwards countryside and decides to stay. But his presence presages big changes for the peasants.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Romance
Country: France, Soviet Union
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, sincere, touching, serious, realistic
Best tv shows and movies like Close to Eden (1991):
Similar in 86%
The Colour of Water (2006)
Plot Summary:
Set in the frozen steppes of Mongolia, a young nomad confronted with his destiny after animals fall victim to a plague which threatens to eradicate nomadism.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 960
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Belgium, Germany, Netherlands
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, thought provoking, serious, contemplative, inspirational, realistic
Similar in 89%
White Sun of the Desert (1970)
Plot Summary:
The setting is the east shore of the Caspian Sea (today's Turkmenistan) where the Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov has been fighting the Civil War in Russian Asia for a number of years. After being hospitalised and then demobbed, he sets off home to join his wife, only to be caught up in a desert fight between a Red Army cavalry unit and Basmachi guerrillas. The cavalry unit commander, Rahimov, "convinces" Sukhov to help, temporarily, with the protection of abandoned women of the Basmachi guerrilla leader Abdullah's harem. Leaving a young Red Army soldier, Petrukha, to assist Sukhov with the task, Rahimov and his cavalry unit set out to pursue fleeing Abdullah.Sukhov and women from Abdullah's harem return to a nearby shore town. Soon, looking for a seaway across the border, Abdullah and his gang come to the same town.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Romance, War, Western
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: serious, exciting, sincere, entertaining, smart, extraordinary
Similar in 79%
Queen of the Gypsies (1976)
Plot Summary:
This colourful, music-filled and sensual melodrama based on early stories by Maxim Gorky tells the fatal love story between the beautiful and rebellious girl Rada and the handsome horse thief Zobar. The story is set in early 20th century Bessarabia, now part of Moldova, then belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Musical, Romance
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Intergirl (1989)
Plot Summary:
A hospital nurse becomes an "international girl", a prostitute who caters to foreigners with hard currency.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Soviet Union, Sweden
Duration: 151 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, cynical, touching, art house, biting, tragic ending, suspense
Similar in 80%
Oblomov (1980)
Plot Summary:
St. Petersburg, mid 19th century: the indolent, middle-aged Oblomov lives in a flat with his older servant, Zakhar. He sleeps much of the day, dreaming of his childhood on his parents' estate. His boyhood companion, Stoltz, now an energetic and successful businessman, adds Oblomov to his circle whenever he's in the city, and Oblomov's life changes when Stoltz introduces him to Olga, lovely and cultured. When Stoltz leaves for several months, Oblomov takes a country house near Olga's, and she determines to change him: to turn him into a man of society, action, and culture. Soon, Olga and Oblomov are in love; but where, in the triangle, does that leave Stoltz?.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, History, Romance
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, romantic, spiritual, sincere, serious, realistic, contemplative, talky, crying
Similar in 78%
Nomadic Childhoods (2014)
Plot Summary:
3 stories, 3 countries. Tibet, Mongolia, Siberia. Nomad children fill a hostile world with their wishes and their dreams. At major cross-roads in their lives, they are confronted by love, danger and death.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 17
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Family
Country: France, Russia, Mongolia, India
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: sincere, atmospheric, serious, realistic
Similar in 77%
When the Light Comes (1998)
Plot Summary:
A young woman spends an adventurous winter with a trapper on Spitsbergen.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 466
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Romance
Country: Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: independent film, touching, offbeat, humorous, serious, realistic, semi serious
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Wings of Glass (2000)
Plot Summary:
Vingar av glas är en svensk film från 2000 regisserad av Reza Bagher, det var hans debutfilm. I huvudrollerna ses Alexander Skarsgård som en "vanlig svensk kille" och Sara Sommerfeld som en invandrartjej. Det blir problem mellan dem.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Sweden
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, touching, realistic, teen
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Last Resort (2000)
Plot Summary:
When a young Russian woman and her son leave Moscow to meet her fiancé, who fails to show up, she declares political asylum.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: UK
Duration: 73 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, realistic, serious, independent film
Similar in 87%
Dark Eyes (1987)
Plot Summary:
Aboard a ship early in the 20th-century, a middle-aged Italian tells his story of love to a Russian. In a series of flashbacks filmed almost entirely in creams, whites, and ochers, the clownish and superfluous Romano Patroni leaves his wife's opulent home to visit a spa where he falls in love with a Russian woman whose marriage is a horror. He pursues her into the Russian heartland and returns to Italy resolved to leave his wife and marry his love. His amazed and appreciative Russian listener then narrates a shorter story.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Romance, Drama
Country: Italy, Soviet Union
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: romantic, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, surprise ending
Similar in 85%
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965)
Plot Summary:
In a Carpathian village, Ivan falls in love with Marichka, the daughter of his father's killer. When tragedy befalls her, his grief lasts months; finally he rejoins the colorful life around him, marrying Palagna. She wants children but his mind stays on his lost love. To recapture his attention, Palagna tries sorcery, and in the process comes under the spell of the sorcerer, publicly humiliating Ivan, who then fights the sorcerer. The lively rhythms of village life, the work and the holidays, the pageant and revelry of weddings and funerals, the change of seasons, and nature's beauty give proportion to Ivan's tragedy.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, emotional, realistic, stylized, psychedelic, contemplative, surreal, scenic, art house, poetic
Similar in 85%
Tuya's Marriage (2006)
Plot Summary:
Set in Inner Mongolia, a physical setback causes a young woman to choose a suitor who can take care of her, as well as her disabled husband.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: China
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, touching, melancholic, sincere, suspense, suspenseful, romantic, road movie
Similar in 87%
Yellow Asphalt (2000)
Plot Summary:
Three stories set among the Bedouin of Jahalin in the hills of the Judean desert. On an almost deserted highway, two Israeli truckers strike a Bedouin lad accidentally. Before they can flee, the boy's people appear and circle the truckers. Retribution? In a tent, elders judge a woman seeking divorce; she wants to leave with her young daughters. They deny the suit. That night she gathers her girls and runs. Her husband pursues her. The Bedouin maid of a married Israeli hot-house farmer is discovered in adultery; with her life in danger, she seeks protection from her lover. He turns her away and involves a Bedouin farmhand in disposing of her. What tribal justice awaits?.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 157
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Israel
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, serious, realistic, bleak, gloomy, crying, intercultural, inter cultural
Similar in 78%
Little Vera (1988)
Plot Summary:
A story about a young woman, Vera, who is somebody, living the life of a troubled teenager in the time right before the end of the Soviet Union. She lives in a very small Russian apartment with her mother and father, however being this close to each other makes the living get rough. Their daily life is plagued with massive amounts of alcohol (mainly vodka) and when she tries to escape her home life, she meets up with a boyfriend, Sergei who then moves into her already small apartment after sleeping with her. Every day little Vera has to go through hell just to get by, which even involves her going against her own morals after her father has done something extremely wrong.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: serious, rough, suspense, disturbing, cynical, realistic, independent film
Similar in 84%
We'll Live Till Monday (1968)
Plot Summary:
Ilya Semenovich Melnikov is a history teacher in an ordinary Soviet high school. He is a very good teacher and his students and colleagues treat him with a great deal of respect. However, Melnikov faces a lot of difficulties in his work. In particular, everybody at school is spreading rumors about Natalya Sergeyevna, an Enlish language teacher and a former student of Melnikov, being in love with him. Exhausted by his mental suffering, Melnikov asks the principal to allow him to quit his job. At the end of the week that is to become the last week of Melnikov's teaching career the students of his class write an in-class essay on how they understand happiness. Svetlana Mikhailovna, their Russian teacher, is shocked by what one of the students wrote in her essay, nevertheless, she allows her to read it in front of the class. The other students express support of their classmate. Melnikov gets involved in the conflict, after which he reconsiders his decision to quit.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, captivating, intellectual
Similar in 87%
A Common Thread (2004)
Plot Summary:
French drama, the debut film from writer-director Eléonore Faucher. Teenager Claire (Lola Naymark) discovers she is pregnant and decides to keep it a secret. Abandoning her dead-end supermarket job, she is taken on as an apprentice by couturiere Madame Mélikian (Ariane Ascaride), who is grieving over the death of her own child. As the two women work together, they soon develop a supportive and fam.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: touching, psychological, sincere, serious, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 75%
Serenades (2001)
Plot Summary:
A girl is born to an Aboriginal mother and an Afgan father.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 105
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Australia
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: serious, touching, sincere, captivating, tense, realistic, independent film
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Love and Pigeons (1985)
Plot Summary:
Shown a life in the remote siberian village. Vasia, who never leave his family, village, comes to pass summer holiday on the Black Sea. New world, new people - so, hi's temted by a half-crazy woman (Raisa Zaharovna). And after short time Vasia returns to his wife and children.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: light, humorous, realistic, feel good, talky, sentimental, sincere, semi serious, touching
Similar in 84%
Exit Marrakech (2013)
Plot Summary:
When 17-year-old Ben visits his father Heinrich in Marrakech, it is the start of an adventurous journey through a foreign country with a picturesque charm and a rough beauty where everything appears possible — including the chance that father and son will lose each other for good, or find one another again.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 860
Genere: Adventure, Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: sincere, atmospheric, touching, serious, captivating, realistic, emotional
Similar in 84%
Roads to Koktebel (2003)
Plot Summary:
A widowed aeronautics engineer, who has lost his job, travels with his son hopping freight trains from Moscow to Koktebel, a town by the Black Sea, to start a new life with the father's sister.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Romance
Country: Russia
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: psychological, sentimental, atmospheric, touching, road movie, mysterious, serious, realistic, crying
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Solomon & Gaenor (1999)
Plot Summary:
A young Jew in 1911 Wales tries to make his living by selling fabrics door to door, but to do so he must hide his nationality. On one of his sales he meets and falls in love with a demure young woman with a strong-willed father and a Jew-hating brother. The two fall in love and she becomes pregnant, but only then does she learn of his ethnic background. When anti-Jewish riots break out, the two are forced to flee and become separated.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: sad, independent film, historical drama, sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, period drama
Similar in 90%
Double Happiness (1994)
Plot Summary:
Jade Li is a feisty, 20-something Chinese Canadian, trying to achieve that happy medium between giving in to her parent's wishes and fulfilling her own needs and desires - double happiness. Naturally, something's got to give and when love beckons in the shape of Mark, a white university student, the facade of the perfect Chinese daughter begins to slip.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Canada
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: touching, independent film, humorous, realistic, semi serious, light, enigmatic, bleak, unusual plot structure, emotional
Similar in 87%
Smile (2005)
Plot Summary:
Introduced to a volunteer opportunity with the Doctor's Gift Program, Katie (Mika Boorem) signs up for a trip to China, where she meets Lin (Yi Ding), a girl with whom she shares a birthday. Lin has a facial deformity that discourages her from ever showing her face, but her friendship with Katie helps her start to see life in a new way.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Adventure, Drama
Country: USA, China
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: sincere, sentimental, uplifting, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, intercultural, inter cultural
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Feast of All Saints (2001)
Plot Summary:
Set in nineteenth-century New Orleans, the story depicts the gens de couleur libre, or the Free People of Colour, a dazzling yet damned class caught between the world of white privilege and black oppression.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 820
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 213 min
Plot tags: sincere, atmospheric, touching, emotional, serious, realistic
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Grayeagle (1977)
Plot Summary:
A young Cheyenne warrior, who goes by the name Grayeagle, kidnaps the daughter of a grizzled frontier man John Colter who goes on an epic search for his daughter Beth, aided by a friendly native.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 688
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Romance, Western
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: grindhouse, independent film, sincere, atmospheric, serious, emotional, realistic
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Samsara (2001)
Plot Summary:
A love story situated in the Himalayas. A Buddhist monk can't choose between life and the way of the Buddha.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Romance
Country: India, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland
Duration: 145 min
Plot tags: philosophical, atmospheric, thought provoking, serious, captivating, spiritual, sentimental, sexy, sincere, realistic
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Chinese Box (1997)
Plot Summary:
The story of Hong Kong, from New Year's Day to June 30th, 1997, when the British left their colony and turned it over to the People's Republic of China.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Japan, USA
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, independent film, sentimental, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, philosophical, sexy, thought provoking
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Burnt by the Sun (1994)
Plot Summary:
Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other assorted family and friends. Things change dramatically with the unheralded arrival of Cousin Dmitri from Moscow, who charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. But Kotov isn't fooled: this is the time of Stalin's repression, with telephone calls in the middle of the night spelling doom - and he knows that Dmitri isn't paying a social call.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 16000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia, France
Duration: 135 min
Plot tags: touching, captivating, stylized, political, sad, emotional, mind bending, psychedelic, intellectual, surreal
Similar in 75%
Sudie and Simpson (1990)
Plot Summary:
A television movie about the friendship that develops between a young white girl and an older black man in a racist, rural Georgia town during the 1940s.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 169
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 76%
My Son the Fanatic (1997)
Plot Summary:
Pakistani taxi-driver Parvez and prostitute Bettina find themselves trapped in the middle when Islamic fundamentalists decide to clean up their local town.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: UK, France
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: talky, multicultural, independent film, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious, light, thought provoking, enigmatic