Best movies like Even Dwarfs Started Small
Last updated March 2024
Looking for movies like Even Dwarfs Started Small? Offer your knowledge to direct others to tv shows and movies you've already viewed that might appeal to them too. Support expanding the assembly of people recommending videos to one another. We encourage your participation!
Plot Summary:
The inhabitants of an institution in a remote country rebel against their keepers. Their acts of rebellion are by turns humorous, boring and alarming. An allegory on the problematic nature of fully liberating the human spirit, as both commendable and disturbing elements of our nature come forward. The film shows how justifiable revolt may be empowering, but may also turn to chaos and depravity. The allegory is developed in part by the fact that the film is cast entirely with dwarfs.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: West Germany
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: black and white, cult classic, surreal, disturbing, art house, black comedy, atmospheric, experimental, dark comedy, mind bending
Best tv shows and movies like Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970):
Similar in 89%
Stroszek (1977)
Plot Summary:
Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck and they join his neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 15000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: West Germany
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: road movie, surreal, dark, depressing, dark comedy, mind bending, psychedelic, political, sad, artsy
Similar in 85%
Heart of Glass (1976)
Plot Summary:
A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: surreal, art house, disturbing, experimental, allegory, atmospheric, mind bending, psychedelic, psychological, serious
Similar in 79%
What Is It? (2005)
Plot Summary:
What Is It? is the name of a 2005 experimental film written, starring, funded and directed by Crispin Glover. As of 2008, the film has only been shown at independent theaters, typically accompanied by a question and answer session, slideshow and meet-and-greet/autograph signing with Glover.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 945
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: surreal, atmospheric, serious, avant garde, controversial, psychotronic, intelligent, independent film, offbeat, realistic
Similar in 86%
Static (1985)
Plot Summary:
Ernie Blick has just lost his job at a crucifix factory. Luckily, for Ernie, this allows him more time to devote to his invention. Yes, Ernie is an inventor -- and he's come up with something big. So big, in fact, Ernie's convinced it will change the way people look at life and death. With the support of his drummer friend Julia and his ex-Green Beret-evangelist cousin, Ernie unveils it to the world. But even he isn't prepared for the public's reaction.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 724
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: surreal, philosophical, mind bending, psychedelic, depressing, avant garde, esoteric, independent film, atmospheric, humorous
Similar in 85%
Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988)
Plot Summary:
While their mother is dying in the modern Gimli, Manitoba hospital, two young children are told an important tale by their Icelandic grandmother about Ainar the lonely, his friend Gunnar, and the angelic Snjofrieder in a Gimli of old.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Thriller
Country: Canada
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: surreal, black and white, avant garde, mind bending, psychedelic, suspense, dark, experimental, controversial, deep
Similar in 83%
The Northerners (1992)
Plot Summary:
A black comedy set in the 1960s in a small Netherlands community, populated by a cast of eccentrics, all of whom hold a range of sexual obsessions and frustrated desires.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Netherlands
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: dark comedy, slasher, art house, black comedy, cult classic, atmospheric, offbeat, humorous, realistic, surreal
Similar in 86%
Elevator Movie (2004)
Plot Summary:
Jim is a shy, withdrawn loner, pervert, and virgin. Lana is a friendly and outgoing born again Christian who has renounced her promiscuous drug filled past. They have never met until they step into an elevator together one day. The elevator gets stuck between floors, and they start to get to know each other.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 202
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: psychotronic, serious, suspenseful, disturbing, minimal cast, mind bending, psychedelic, surreal, cult classic, dark comedy
Similar in 77%
I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973)
Plot Summary:
Running away from the police, Aden goes to the desert where he meets an uncivilized man who has a special link with Mother-Earth. He ends up by convincing the hermit to come along with him into another desert... the big town!.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 950
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, psychedelic, mind bending, experimental, controversial, avant garde, art house, psychotronic, deep
Similar in 80%
A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)
Plot Summary:
Oliver Deuce, a successful doctor, is shattered when his wife is killed in a freak car accident involving a car being driven by Alba Bewick colliding with a very large rare bird. His twin brother Oswald is researching how carcasses decay at the local zoo. Alba survives the accident although she loses one leg, and her sinister physician eventually removes the other 'because it looked so sad all alone'. Oswald and Oliver become involved in a menage a trois with Alba, and uncover very dubious trafficking in zoo property. But ultimately their only goal is to try and understand their mortal condition.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK, Netherlands
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, dark comedy, mind bending, erotic, black comedy, clever, witty, talky, controversial
Similar in 77%
Careful (1992)
Plot Summary:
In the remote Alpine village of Tolzbad at the turn of the century, people talk quietly and restrain their movements lest avalanches come and kill them. This atmosphere lends itself to repressed emotions - shown through the parallel stories of butler student Johann lusting after his mother (an old flame of the mysterious Count Knotkers) and Klara's attraction to her father (who lusts after his other daughter), leading to duels and suicidal plunges galore. All this is shot in the style of an early German sound film, complete with intertitles, deliberately crackly soundtrack and 'hand-tinted' colour effects.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Horror, Romance
Country: Canada
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: surreal, cult classic, atmospheric, experimental, disturbing, stylized, mindfuck, avant garde, mind bending, psychedelic
Similar in 87%
WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971)
Plot Summary:
A dense film that cuts up footage of a primary plot of two young Yugoslavian girls, one a politico and the other a sexpot, and an affair with a visiting Russian skater. Mixing metaphors of Russia's relationship with Yugoslavia, intercut with footage and interviews with Wilhelm Reich and Al Goldstein of Screw magazine. The film applies Reich's theories of Orgone energy and analogies of Stalinism as a form of Freudian sexual repression. Also known as W.R. The Mysteries of the Organism in English subtitled version. Was banned in Yugoslavia shortly after it was made.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Yugoslavia, West Germany
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: surreal, experimental, avant garde, controversial, disturbing, sexy, sex comedy, mind bending, psychedelic, educational
Similar in 80%
Daisies (1966)
Plot Summary:
Two teenage girls, both named Marie, decide that since the world is spoiled they will be spoiled as well; accordingly they embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world about them. This freewheeling, madcap feminist farce was immediately banned by the government.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 15000
Genere: Comedy
Country: Czechoslovakia
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags: psychedelic, avant garde, surreal, experimental, art house, dark comedy, mind bending, social, disturbing, cult classic
Similar in 86%
Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream That One Calls Human Life (1995)
Plot Summary:
Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school's operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There's a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Japan, Germany
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: black and white, art house, surreal, cult classic, psychological, atmospheric, mindfuck, mind bending, psychedelic, spiritual
Similar in 83%
Bad Boy Bubby (1993)
Plot Summary:
Bad Boy Bubby is just that: a bad boy. So bad, in fact, that his mother has kept him locked in their house for his entire thirty years, convincing him that the air outside is poisonous. After a visit from his estranged father, circumstances force Bubby into the waiting world, a place which is just as unusual to him as he is to the world.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 15000
Genere: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Australia, Italy
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: disturbing, surreal, psychological, dark comedy, black comedy, art house, dark, cerebral, cult classic, mindfuck
Similar in 76%
Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)
Plot Summary:
A portrait of the effects of schizophrenia on family life is the central focus.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: disturbing, art house, experimental, surreal, controversial, psychological, talky, intellectual, depressing, independent film
Similar in 84%
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Plot Summary:
Rootless Hungarian émigré Willie, his pal Eddie, and visiting sixteen-year-old cousin Eva always manage to make the least of any situation, whether aimlessly traversing the drab interiors and environs of New York City, Cleveland, or an anonymous Florida suburb.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 40000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA, West Germany
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: independent film, road movie, black and white, art house, contemplative, atmospheric, stylized, cult classic, indie film, aesthetic
Similar in 88%
Songs from the Second Floor (2000)
Plot Summary:
A film poem inspired by the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. A story about our need for love, our confusion, greatness and smallness and, most of all, our vulnerability. It is a story with many characters, among them a father and his mistress, his youngest son and his girlfriend. It is a film about big lies, abandonment and the eternal longing for companionship and confirmation.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 20000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Germany
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: surreal, atmospheric, black comedy, philosophical, art house, disturbing, talky, depressing, melancholic, meditative
Similar in 90%
The Milky Way (1969)
Plot Summary:
Two drifters go on a pilgrimage from France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Along the way, they hitchhike, beg for food, and face the Christian dogmas and heresies from different Ages.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France, Italy, West Germany
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: surreal, spiritual, road movie, psychedelic, satirical, dark comedy, cult classic, mystical, parody, philosophical
Similar in 83%
Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966)
Plot Summary:
In this excoriating satire of the fashion industry, Polly Maggoo is a 20-year-old Brooklyn-born fashion model in Paris, on the runway at the big shows where magazine editor Ms. Maxwell is the reigning opinion maker. The ridiculous passes for sublime. Polly becomes the subject of an episode of a vapid TV news documentary series called "Qui êtes-vous?" and is pursued by the filmmaker and by the prince of Borodine, a small country in the Soviet bloc.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: surreal, mind bending, psychedelic, offbeat, humorous, realistic, contemplative, semi serious, biting, avant garde
Similar in 90%
I Remember (1973)
Plot Summary:
In an Italian seaside town, young Titta gets into trouble with his friends and watches various local eccentrics as they engage in often absurd behavior. Frequently clashing with his stern father and defended by his doting mother, Titta witnesses the actions of a wide range of characters, from his extended family to Fascist loyalists to sensual women, with certain moments shifting into fantastical scenarios.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 46000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: art house, surreal, sentimental, atmospheric, visual, stylized, meditative, colorful, realistic, philosophical
Similar in 79%
The Big Feast (1973)
Plot Summary:
A group of men hire some prostitutes and go to a villa in the countryside. There, they engage in group sex and resolve to eat themselves to death.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: erotic, disturbing, art house, surreal, humorous, controversial, atmospheric, black comedy, dark comedy, sexual
Similar in 84%
Weekend (1967)
Plot Summary:
A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 16000
Genere: Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: black comedy, road movie, surreal, disturbing, experimental, art house, avant garde, political, absurd, controversial
Similar in 83%
Gummo (1997)
Plot Summary:
Solomon and Tummler are two teenagers killing time in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that has never recovered from the tornado that ravaged the community in the 1970s.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 38000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: disturbing, surreal, dark comedy, experimental, independent film, art house, bleak, psychedelic, offbeat, erotic
Similar in 76%
The Acid House (1998)
Plot Summary:
THE ACID HOUSE is a surreal triptych adapted by "Trainspotting" author Irvine Welsh from his acclaimed collection of short stories. Combining a vicious sense of humor with hard-talking drama, the film reaches into the hearts and minds of the chemical generation, casting a dark and unholy light into the hidden corners of the human psyche. Directed by Paul McGuigan, the film dramatises three stories from the book: 1- The Granton Star Cause, 2- A Soft Touch & 3- The Acid House.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychedelic, mind bending, dark comedy, disturbing, humorous, absurd, independent film, clever, controversial
Similar in 80%
Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)
Plot Summary:
Six outwardly average individuals have elaborate fetishes they indulge with surreptitious care. A mousy letter carrier makes dough balls she grotesquely ingests before bed. A shop clerk fixates on a TV news reader while he builds a machine to massage and masturbate him. One of his customers makes an elaborate chicken costume for a voodoo-like scene with a doll resembling his plump neighbor. She, in turn, has a doll that resembles him, which she whips and dominates in an abandoned church. The TV news reader has her own fantasy involving carp. Her husband, who is indifferent to her, steals materials to fashion elaborate artifacts that he rubs, scrapes and rolls across his body.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czech Republic, Switzerland, UK
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: surreal, experimental, sexy, dark comedy, psychedelic, psychotronic, sex comedy, erotic, mind bending, gothic
Similar in 83%
The Idiots (1998)
Plot Summary:
With his first Dogma-95 film director Lars von Trier opens up a completely new film platform. With a mix of home-video and documentary styles the film tells the story of a group of young people who have decided to get to know their “inner-idiots” and thus not only facing and breaking their outer appearance but also their inner.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 34000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Denmark, France, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Italy
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: art house, surreal, disturbing, controversial, experimental, sexy, erotic, satirical, dark comedy, psychological
Similar in 83%
Rubin and Ed (1991)
Plot Summary:
Reclusive Rubin Farr teams up with vocal but unsuccessful multi-level salesman Ed Tuttle on a quest to bury Rubin's dead cat in the "perfect spot." Their trip takes them across Utah's desert where they have run-ins with Ed'd ex-wife Rula and an elusive Andy Warhol critic.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: road movie, dark comedy, cult classic, surreal, psychotronic, indie film, buddy comedy, offbeat, feel good, humorous
Similar in 87%
Taxidermia (2006)
Plot Summary:
Three generations of men, including a pervert that constantly seeks for new kinds of satisfaction, an obese speed eater and a passionate embalmer.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Horror
Country: Hungary, Austria, France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: disturbing, dark comedy, surreal, controversial, cult classic, offbeat, art house, humorous, semi serious, erotic
Similar in 88%
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014)
Plot Summary:
An absurdist, surrealistic and shocking pitch-black comedy, which moves freely from nightmare to fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as it muses on man’s perpetual inhumanity to man.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 19000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Sweden, Germany, Norway, France, Denmark
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: surreal, realistic, talky, lyrical, dark comedy, humorous, philosophical, semi serious, absurd, art house
Similar in 76%
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Plot Summary:
Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo drive a red convertible across the Mojave desert to Las Vegas with a suitcase full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. As their consumption of drugs increases at an alarming rate, the stoned duo trash their hotel room and fear legal repercussions. Duke begins to drive back to L.A., but after an odd run-in with a cop, he returns to Sin City and continues his wild drug binge.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 298000
Genere: Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychedelic, atmospheric, road movie, mind bending, cult classic, dark comedy, disturbing, mindfuck, cerebral