Best movies like Diamonds of the Night
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Diamonds in the night is the tense, brutal story of two Jewish boys who escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. Ultimately, they are hunted down by a group of old, armed home-guardists. The film goes beyond the themes of war and anti-Nazism and concerns itself with man's struggle to preserve human dignity.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 67 min
Plot tags: spiritual, avant garde, black and white, surreal, no music, cinema verite
Best tv shows and movies like Diamonds of the Night (1964):
Similar in 75%
Reach for Glory (1962)
Plot Summary:
During World War II, teenage boys in a small English town are consumed with jingoism and brutal war games, hoping dearly that the war won't end before they can fight in it.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 182
Genere: Drama, War
Country: UK
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 77%
Carriage to Vienna (1966)
Plot Summary:
A WW2 story of a young Austrian soldier running from the Russian army and a woman whom he forces to come along in order to save his wounded mate.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 78 min
Plot tags: road movie, dark
Similar in 77%
My Way Home (1965)
Plot Summary:
In the final days of World War II, a young Hungarian is making his way home, through countryside full of the debris of war, when he is captures and imprisoned by Russians. Left in the custody of a young Russian soldier, the two youths form a friendship in spite of not speaking each other's language.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 770
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Hungary
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: political
Similar in 82%
Passenger (1963)
Plot Summary:
The last film of Andrzej Munk, who died in a crash during the filming. A German woman on a ship coming back to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she has been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life. Her vision is shown and then the actual events.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Poland
Duration: 62 min
Plot tags: experimental, odd
Similar in 83%
...and the Fifth Horseman Is Fear (1965)
Plot Summary:
A Jewish doctor helps a political fugitive during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 632
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: experimental, surreal, neo noir, expressionism, freeze frame
Similar in 88%
Three (1965)
Plot Summary:
In this episodic WW II drama, a Yugoslavian youth attempts to escape from German soldiers. In the first scene, he stands amongst a group of refugees waiting for a train. One man, with no identification papers is accused of a petty crime and the crowd insists that three soldiers arrest him. The youth tries to stop them all, but he fails and the man is executed. Soon afterward, his wife shows up and proves that he was indeed innocent. In the second episode, the youth participates in a resistance raid and ends up pursued into a swamp where he meets another fugitive. This man ends up sacrificing his life so that the youth can escape. The final story begins as the war ends. The youth has become an officer in the Yugoslav army and is being forced to deliver an order to execute all citizens who collaborated with the Germans. One of the traitors is a woman he cares for, but this doesn't stop him from obeying his commands.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 944
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Yugoslavia
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: black and white
Similar in 88%
That Instant, That While (1981)
Plot Summary:
Autumn 1944. A doctor is accused in the collaboration with the Nazis and found guilty.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 26
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: crying
Similar in 78%
Sirius (1975)
Plot Summary:
In SIRIUS, a young boy whose most cherished companion is his loyal German shepherd devises his own form of resistance when the Nazis arrest his father, then order the confiscation of local canines, including his pet, to be retrained as attack dogs against the rebellious populace.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 53
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 50 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
Cuckoo in a Dark Forest (1985)
Plot Summary:
Set in World War 2 as the Germans occupy Czechoslovakia, teenage Emilka's father is murdered by the Nazis, but she is selected for special treatment by virtue of being blonde. She is billeted with the commandant of a concentration camp near the Baltic coast, where his kindness towards her provokes his wife's jealousy, but is compromised when Emilka witnesses his brutality towards the prisoners.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 110
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Poland, Czechoslovakia
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: crying, freeze frame
Similar in 89%
Werewolf (2018)
Plot Summary:
Summer of 1945. A temporary orphanage is established in an abandoned palace surrounded by forests for the eight children liberated from the Gross-Rosen camp. Hanka, also a former inmate, becomes their guardian. After the atrocities of the camp, the protagonists slowly begin to regain what is left of their childhood but the horror returns quickly. Camp Alsatians roam the forests around. Released by the SS earlier on, they have gone feral and are starving. Looking for food they besiege the palace. The children are terrified and their camp survival instinct is triggered.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Horror, War
Country: Poland, Netherlands, Germany
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: scary, psychological, rough, thought provoking, melancholic, suspenseful, disturbing, suspense, perverse, crying
Similar in 90%
A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966)
Plot Summary:
In Jan Němec’s surreal fable, a picnic is rudely transformed into a lesson in political hierarchy when a handful of mysterious authority figures show up. This allegory about oppression and conformity was banned in its home country but became an international success after it premiered at the New York Film Festival.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 71 min
Plot tags: dark comedy, cult classic, mind bending, psychedelic, spiritual, surreal, crying, allegory, weird
Similar in 82%
Ithaca (2015)
Plot Summary:
In a small town in California's San Joaquin Valley, 14-year-old Homer Macauley is determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger anyone has ever seen. His older brother has gone to war, leaving Homer to look after his widowed mother, his older sister and his 4-year-old brother, Ulysses. And so it is that as spring turns to summer, 1942, Homer Macauley delivers messages of love, hope, pain... and death... to the good people of Ithaca. And Homer Macauley will grapple with one message that will change him forever - from a boy into a man. Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Saroyan's 1943 novel, The Human Comedy, ITHACA is the quintessential wartime tale of the Home Front. It is a coming-of-age story about the exuberance of youth, the sweetness of life, the sting of death and the modesty and sheer goodness that lives in each and every one of us.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: captivating, tense, thought provoking, realistic, crying, freeze frame
Similar in 86%
The Notebook (2013)
Plot Summary:
In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Hungary, Germany, Austria, France
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, realistic, serious, sad, cult classic, cult film
Similar in 88%
Lacombe, Lucien (1974)
Plot Summary:
In 1944 Lucien Lacombe, a young peasant in the Lot region is refused permission to join the French Resistance. Instead, the opposing "French Gestapo" obtain from him information about an underground leader and recruit him into their organization.Lucien enjoys his power and inclusion as a member of the German Police (Milice française) but soon falls in love with a Jewish girl. Forcing himself upon her family, Lucien becomes personally involved with the very people some of his collaborators and superiors are, in part, employed to oppress.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: France, Italy, West Germany
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: anthology, art house, postmodern, visual, psychological, sincere, serious, realistic, disturbing, controversial
Similar in 84%
Divided We Fall (2000)
Plot Summary:
In Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia, a childless couple agree to hide a Jewish friend at great personal risk of discovery and execution.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, War
Country: Czech Republic
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: surreal, compassionate, lyrical, uplifting, touching, disturbing, serious, realistic, gloomy, light
Similar in 76%
Persian Lessons (2020)
Plot Summary:
Occupied France, 1942. Gilles is arrested by SS soldiers alongside other Jews and sent to a camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids sudden execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but Gilles gets assigned a life-or-death mission: to teach Farsi to Head of Camp Koch, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Through an ingenious trick, Gilles manages to survive by inventing words of "Farsi" every day and teaching them to Koch.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia, Germany, Belarus
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: captivating, suspense, independent film
Similar in 75%
The Last Butterfly (1991)
Plot Summary:
Stage mime Antoine Moreau is compelled by the Gestapo to put on a performance for the children of Terezin, a "model" concentration camp, to convince the Red Cross observers that the camp is truly what it seems. Reluctant at first, Moreau slowly learns the true nature of the camp, including the meaning of the "transports" on which people leave. With a world-class orchestra (made up of people interned in the camp) and a cast of children, Moreau stages a show to end all shows.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 300
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Czechoslovakia, France, UK
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: fairy tale, crying
Similar in 79%
Run Boy Run (2013)
Plot Summary:
Run Boy Run is the true story of Jurek, an eight-year-old boy, who escapes from the Warsaw ghetto, then manages to survive in the woods and working as a farmhand, disguising himself as a Polish orphan. He encounters people who will betray him for a reward, who will beat him up or try to kill him, and he meets those, who will do and risk almost everything to help him. Jurek’s resilience is put to the ultimate test, when an accident cripples him, making it harder to find work. But he struggles on against all odds. Eventually the Russians reach his area and Jurek even finds a family where he could stay. Yet he is betrayed again, and a young man from a Jewish orphanage forcefully tries to bring Jurek back to his people and his faith.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Action, Biography, Drama, War
Country: Germany, France, Poland
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: touching, captivating, bleak, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 77%
Ivan's Childhood (1962)
Plot Summary:
Poetic journey through the shards and shadows of one boy’s war-ravaged youth.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 39000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: bleak, atmospheric, disturbing, meditative, art house, black and white, psychological, brutal, serious, cerebral
Similar in 88%
All My Loved Ones (1999)
Plot Summary:
Told from the perspective of man reflecting on his childhood in Prauge in the early years of World War 2 and the eventual destruction of his family as the Nazis rise to power. The storyline focuses heavily on Jewish-Czech Silberstein family members. Drama was filmed on the real events as a tribute to Mr. Nicholas Winton, the British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport from German-occupied Czechoslovakia and likely death in the Holocaust.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 570
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, contemplative, crying
Similar in 89%
The Boat Is Full (1981)
Plot Summary:
During World War II, Switzerland severely limited refugees: "Our boat is full." A train from Germany halts briefly in an isolated corner of Switzerland. Six people jump off seeking asylum: four Jews, a French child, and a German soldier. They seek temporary refuge with a couple who run a village inn. They pose as a family: the deserter as husband, Judith as his wife, an old man from Vienna as her father, his granddaughter and the French lad, whom they beg to keep silent, as their children. Judith's teenage brother poses as a soldier. The fabrication unravels through chance and the local constable's exact investigation. Whom will the Swiss allow to stay? Who gets deported?.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 686
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Switzerland, West Germany, Austria
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 83%
The Last Train (2006)
Plot Summary:
A group of people are imprisoned in a rail car bound from Berlin to a concentration camp in 1945.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Germany, Czech Republic
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: disturbing, bleak, serious, realistic, captivating, entertaining
Similar in 76%
Come and See (1985)
Plot Summary:
The invasion of a village in Byelorussia by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.
IMDB Rating: 8.4
IMDB Votes: 92000
Genere: Drama, Thriller, War
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 142 min
Plot tags: bleak, disturbing, thought provoking, rough, political, psychological, atmospheric, depressing, controversial, serious
Similar in 77%
The Island on Bird Street (1997)
Plot Summary:
Alex is an 11-year old boy who, during WWII, hides in the Jewish ghetto from Nazis after all the relatives have been sent to the concentration camp. The movie portrays the ghetto through his eyes.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Denmark, UK, Germany, France
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: tense, bleak, serious, realistic, suspense, independent film, period piece
Similar in 87%
The Tin Drum (1979)
Plot Summary:
Oskar is born in Germany in 1924 with an advanced intellect. Repulsed by the hypocrisy of adults and the irresponsibility of society, he refuses to grow older after his third birthday.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 25000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: West Germany, France, Poland
Duration: 142 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, controversial, art house, harsh, talky, realistic, clever, epic, serious
Similar in 84%
Son of Saul (2015)
Plot Summary:
In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival trying to save from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 51000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Hungary
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: melancholic, compassionate, disturbing, cerebral, grim, sad, philosophical, historical drama, harsh, motivational
Similar in 84%
The Shop on Main Street (1965)
Plot Summary:
In a small town in Nazi-occupied Slovakia during World War II, decent but timid carpenter Tono is named "Aryan comptroller" of a button store owned by an old Jewish widow, Rozalie. Since the post comes with a salary and standing in the town's corrupt hierarchy, Tono wrestles with greed and guilt as he and Rozalie gradually befriend each other. When the authorities order all Jews in town to be rounded up, Tono faces a moral dilemma unlike any he's known before.
IMDB Rating: 8.2
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: sincere, atmospheric, emotional, touching, serious, realistic, depressing, social, black comedy, offbeat
Similar in 76%
Jakob the Liar (1999)
Plot Summary:
In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being caught out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA, France, Germany
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: sad, cult classic, sincere, uplifting, humorous, emotional, realistic, gloomy, semi serious, sentimental
Similar in 88%
The Book Thief (2013)
Plot Summary:
While subjected to the horrors of WWII Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. Under the stairs in her home, a Jewish refuge is being sheltered by her adoptive parents.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 141000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Germany, USA
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, emotional, serious, captivating, sad, stylized, tear jerker, period piece, motivational
Similar in 75%
In Darkness (2011)
Plot Summary:
A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lvov (former Poland).
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Poland, Germany, Canada
Duration: 145 min
Plot tags: harsh, disturbing, sincere, uplifting, social, educational, tense, serious, realistic, suspenseful