Best movies like Death of a President
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
After Poland won freedom from of its long overlordship by Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, it took a further four years for its National Assembly to elect Gabriel Narutowicz as its first president. Narutowicz was a professor who until his election had been living in Switzerland. Those were chaotic times, and shortly after his election, he was assassinated by right-wing fanatics. This epic Polish film chronicles the circumstances of Narutowicz's election and assassination.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 272
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 144 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like Death of a President (1977):
Similar in 83%
Two Moons (1993)
Plot Summary:
Panoramic view of a resort town in the summer of 1930. In seventeen episodes we get a glimpse at the microcosm of its colourful inhabitants and visitors, Poles and Jews, the high society and the desperately poor.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 79
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 133 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
How to Be Loved (1963)
Plot Summary:
An actress travels from Warsaw to Paris and during the trip reflects on the last few years of her life. It goes back to the German occupation and her hiding of a fellow actor who has supposedly killed a collaborator. He is weak and a bit cowardly, but suffers most from not having any audience for his vanity, ego and supposed bravery. After the war he leaves her but finds out that he has been accused of cowardice. He finally commits suicide and she clears herself of a collaboration charge and eventually becomes a popular actress.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 720
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: road movie
Similar in 88%
The Structure of Crystal (1969)
Plot Summary:
Physicist John worked as a meteorologist. He lives in a small village with his wife, a teacher. Meanwhile, his friend from university, Mark, is doing a research career. Trying to get John to return to academic work in the capital. Mark is not convinced by the arguments of John. Clash of two attitudes, characters, ideas about the meaning of life.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 74 min
Plot tags: poetic, intellectual, masterpiece
Similar in 90%
The Weather Forecast (1983)
Plot Summary:
The setting is an old age home run by an aging director with an authoritarian hand. In the evening many of the residents huddle in a living room, penetrated by the October cold, to listen to the news. The announcement is giving the number of expected deaths due too the coming harsh winter. In the middle of the night a truckload of coffins arrives to be stored. Dicovering the coffins the elderly assume they are marked for liquidation and they flee en masse. The next day their exodus is dicovered and the director calls the authorities. It turned out that the coffins were the overproduction from a coffin factory and were brought only for temporary storage. The panic search for the pensioners begins, including helicopters. In the meantime the group gets transported to another part of the country by a truck. They take over by a near-empty restaurant, where after mistreatment by a waiter, they tie him up and move on. A lone fisherman invites them into his house where, after initial.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 123
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
Behind The Wall (1971)
Plot Summary:
Jan is a young assistant professor in chemistry and a workaholic, Anna is an unsuccessful science writer who turns to Jan for advice and human compassion, but Jan, absorbed with his career, remains immune to Anna's clumsy efforts to pierce his defenses.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 150
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 56 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
30 Door Key (1991)
Plot Summary:
A young writer in 1939 Warsaw faces the conflict of acting his age or relapsing into childhood during the brink of World War II. Based on the famous novel Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 396
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland, UK, France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: mindfuck
Similar in 83%
Hospital of the Transfiguration (1979)
Plot Summary:
The film is set in 1943 in a mental asylum in the country. But this is an unusual hospital: there are several incurable schizophrenic cases, staff is bit strange and a writer has voluntarily entered the clinic because he is "peculiar" and a drug addict. Then the German Gestapo arrives. The commandant asks for the list of patients, sorts out the "Aryan" doctors from the others on a return trip, and herds everyone into trucks for evacuation to the extermination camps. A young doctor momentarily escapes by covering himself under a pile of laundry in the basement, and then escapes to the woods just as the Nazi soldiers appear.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 426
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Gra (1969)
Plot Summary:
About an existentialist alienation drama between a bourgeois couple caught in a stationary environment. Between a man and a woman lost in themselves.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 67
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Short Working Day (1995)
Plot Summary:
Kieślowski’s study of a political strike, controversially told from the viewpoint of a Communist functionary trying to keep order.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 402
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 73 min
Plot tags: political drama
Similar in 84%
The Constant Factor (1980)
Plot Summary:
The main character in this effective, convincing drama is Witold (Tadeusz Bradecki) who is high in what later would be termed the "emotional quotient" or the ability to bounce back from adverse, tragic circumstances. Witold has been nursing both his sick mother and a deeply rooted desire to climb the Himalayas. His father had died climbing in those mountains, and they have an allure for Witold as well. But his dreams begin to crumble when his mother succumbs to her illness and trouble brews at work. The situation becomes bad enough to scramble Witold's life with no indication of future improvement.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: intellectual
Similar in 89%
Spiral (1978)
Plot Summary:
In what appears to be an inexplicable incident, a man drives up to a resort hotel in midwinter, throws away his car keys, enters, and proceeds to agitate everyone he meets with his urgency -- a message he is somehow unable to communicate. Then he leaves, disappearing in the snow. Later, the people he appeared to have upset have gathered to search for him and find him frostbitten, but alive. Visiting him at the sanatorium to which he has been taken, they gradually discover what was really happening.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 515
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: intellectual
Similar in 79%
A Lonely Woman (1987)
Plot Summary:
The first motion picture film by Agnieszka Holland about loneliness, longing for affection, and misfortune. Irena, a postal delivery worker, is struggling with a inadequate housing, a drunk neighbor who wants to take her place, and a heartless boss, knowing that the whole day at work, she is leaving her young son. But the worst is the loneliness, exacerbated by her single mother status. She meets a crippled pensioner Jacek, who appears to be the key to her happiness, but tragedy continues to strike.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 501
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
The Wedding (1973)
Plot Summary:
Set at the turn of the century, the story concerns a Polish poet living in Cracow who has decided to marry a peasant girl. The wedding is attended by a heterogenous group of people from all strata of Polish society, who dance, get drunk and lament Poland's 100-year-long division under Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The bridegroom, a painter friend, and a journalist each in turn is confronted with spectres of Polish past. In the end a call to arms is called but turns out to be a hoax.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: clever, offbeat, humorous, realistic, witty, stylized, semi serious, sexual, intellectual, sexy
Similar in 75%
The Illumination (1973)
Plot Summary:
Krzysztof Zanussi's groundbreaking film chronicles a decade in the life of a young physics student whose absolute faith in the primacy of rationality and science is shaken by tragedy and affairs of the heart.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: philosophical, existential, poetic
Similar in 78%
Everything for Sale (1969)
Plot Summary:
Wajda's homage to Zbigniew Cybulski, the "Polish James Dean" who starred in the director's ASHES AND DIAMONDS and died young. The movie follows the tribulations of a director attempting to make a movie with a Cybulski-like star who never shows up.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 846
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: semi autobiographical
Similar in 87%
Hands Up! (1981)
Plot Summary:
Beginning with a sci-fi prologue before finding itself with several doctors attending a medical school reunion in a sealed-up railway carriage. Between drinks, the disenchanted medicos ruminate over the effect that communism (particularly the Stalinist brand) has had on their profession. Originally banned in 1967 and finally released in 1981 after Skolimowski shot new sequences, the 76 minute 1981 version was the only one ever officially released.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 409
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: philosophical, experimental, avant garde, dark comedy, political
Similar in 76%
Wielki bieg (1981)
Plot Summary:
Set in 1952, the story follows events around the "Peace Run", a propaganda 3-day marathon for peace. The winner is to be presented with a new motorcycle by the country's president. Chief organizer is a ruthless manipulator who will stop at nothing to make sure that the right man wins. There are two runners, Budny and Stolar, who are participating in the race for different reasons.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 95
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Fever (1981)
Plot Summary:
The film is set in 1905, in a time of feverish revolutionary underground activity in Poland partitioned between three neighbours. All the characters are committed anarchists. The bomb maker puts an invention together to place it at the disposal of young inexperienced terrorists fighting against Tsarist oppression. The story follows the passing of this bomb from anarchist to anarchist as several attempts are made on the life of Tsarist governor general, until, at the end, it is effectively and harmlessly defused by a bomb expert. The presence of the bomb has a destroying effect on all of the Polish revolutionaries, they either die or breakdown.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 279
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
The Mother of Kings (1987)
Plot Summary:
Made in 1982, shelved for five years. Story opens with Lucja Krol's husband under the tram. She gives birth to her fourth son on the floor of their new apartment. Neighbor Wiktor, a communist intellectual, befriends the poverty-stricken family but is soon arrested and sent to jail. During the war Lucja narrowly escapes a Nazi roundup at the black market. Her sons hold ardent Communist meetings in their apartment, with her blessing. Lucja works hard, but without complaint. After the war, Klemens is inexplicably arrested, accused by the new regime of being a collaborator. Wiktor, now a high-ranking party member, trying to defend him, himself falls into disgrace. Klemens is tortured to "confess" and dies in jail, a Communist to the end. Lucja is never told about his fate.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 303
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Poland
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: intellectual, pre war
Similar in 85%
Sunday Pranks (1983)
Plot Summary:
Made in 1983, shelved for four years. A chilling tale about kids playing in a bombed-out Warsaw courtyard on the day of Stalin's death, while their parents are away at the church or a memorial procession.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 92
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Pharaoh (1966)
Plot Summary:
Young Pharaoh Ramses XIII clashes with Egypt's clergy over influence on the affairs of the state and its coffers.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 180 min
Plot tags: epic
Similar in 80%
Death as a Slice of Bread (1994)
Plot Summary:
The violence and high drama of this film is taken directly from recent Polish history. On December 13, 1981 national security forces swoop down on unsuspecting workers of the Wujek mine and arrest a Solidarity leader. Pushed to the limits, the miners call a massive strike, which is specifically forbidden under the martial law. A battle between the heavily armed police and the outnumbered miners ensues, and nine miners are killed.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 249
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
Countdown to War (1989)
Plot Summary:
Based on a play, the story details the dramatic negotiations between UK, France, Poland, Nazi-Germany and USSR from the day Czechoslovakia fell, until Britain's declaration of war on Germany caused by Hitler's invasion of Poland.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 198
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: UK
Duration: 78 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
The Magnate (1987)
Plot Summary:
This Polish historical drama film traces the fascinating saga of a wealthy, princely Polish dynasty in years 1900-1935.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 155
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 171 min
Plot tags: family saga
Similar in 87%
General Nil (2009)
Plot Summary:
Generał Nil is a Polish historical film, based on the life of general Emil August Fieldorf, pseudonym "Nil". The film was directed by Ryszard Bugajski and was released in 2009.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 869
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: exciting, serious, captivating, suspenseful
Similar in 78%
Shivers (1981)
Plot Summary:
Set in the early 1950's, during the Stalin's Personality Cult. The story opens in a provincial town. Tomek's father, a former member of the Home Army is arrested so the mother is left with the task of raising two kids alone. The neighbor upstairs commits suicide when her husband is also arrested and transported to the prison camp. It's winter so the kids keep their hands warm at school by hand-beating themselves. The teachers at school are mean, narrow minded idealists, When they ask the kids who goes to church on Sundays, the whole class stands up to defeat the purpose of the propaganda lesson. Tomek is sent to the training school in the summer. There he absorbs most of the ideology pumped into his head, and when his father is released from prison he finds another boy he has left.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 509
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: political
Similar in 75%
Never Forget (1991)
Plot Summary:
Mr. Mermelstein (Leonard Nimoy) and Mrs. Mermelstein (Blythe Danner) a true-life California couple, thrown into the spotlight of judicial history in the 1980s. He is a Hungarian-born Jew, sole-survivor of his family's extermination at Auschwitz, and she is a Southern Baptist from Tennessee. Their four children are good kids, typical Americans, with just enough orneriness to irritate each other, but enough love and class to pull together when it counts. When challenged by a hate group to prove that Jews were actually gassed at Auschwitz, Mel Mermelstein rises to the occasion with the support of his wife and children, in spite of the dangers to himself, his business, and his family. William John Cox (Dabney Coleman) provides legal help (pro bono) as a lawyer, originally a Roman Catholic from Texas.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 300
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: political
Similar in 88%
Man of Iron (1981)
Plot Summary:
In Warsaw in 1980, the Communist Party sends Winkel, a weak, alcoholic TV hack, to Gdansk to dig up dirt on the shipyard strikers, particularly on Maciek Tomczyk, an articulate worker whose father was killed in the December 1970 protests. Posing as sympathetic, Winkel interviews the people surrounding Tomczyk, including his detained wife, Agnieszka.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 156 min
Plot tags: political, thought provoking, serious, realistic, contemplative, crying
Similar in 82%
Hanussen (1988)
Plot Summary:
A man's story parallels Hitler's rise. Austrian Klaus Schneider, wounded in World War I, recovers in the care of Dr. Emil Bettleheim. Bettleheim discovers that Schneider possesses powers of empathy and of clairvoyance, such that could aid suicidal patients. After the war, with one friend as his manager and another as his lover, Schneider changes his name to Eric Jan Hanussen and goes to Berlin, as a hypnotist and clairvoyant performing in halls and theaters. He always speaks the truth, which brings him to the attention of powerful Nazis. He predicts their rise (good propaganda for them) and their violence (not so good). He's in pain and at risk. What is Hanussen's future?.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Hungary, West Germany, Austria
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: spiritual, sad, esoteric, intelligent, tense, thought provoking, bleak, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 90%
Reunion (1989)
Plot Summary:
Two young boys from very different backgrounds become friends in 1933 Stuttgart. However, they don't realize how different they are until much later as one is the son of a well-to-do Jewish doctor and the other the son of a German aristocrat. After that summer and the election of Hitler, things change as antisemitism gains fervor. After the core of the film deals with that era, the film flashes to the present and the Jewish man now returns to his boyhood home and seeks his old friend with some surprises.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 557
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, West Germany, UK
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: independent film, thought provoking, serious, realistic, disturbing