Best movies like Famine '33
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The film about the Holodomor famine in Ukraine, based on the novel 'The Yellow Prince' by Vasyl Barka. The film is told through the lives of the Katrannyk family of six. It relies more on images than on words shot in black-and-white.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 406
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like Famine '33 (1991):
Similar in 77%
Las Meninas (2008)
Plot Summary:
This film is about what the routine of everyday life can do to the human mind and psyche. It also reflects on the importance of the choices we make and how limited these choices are in the first place. The plot evolves around a family of four. They live in the suburbs, in a strange villa that appears, through a complex game of mirrors, to be more like a piece of installation art than a real house. The main character, who hardly appears on screen, is the son, a man in his thirties. Suffering from asthma and eczema since childhood, he uses his condition to manipulate his parents and his sister. Thus the existence of the terrorized family turns into an endless ritual of attempting to satisfy his whims, and always on the alert for yet another one of his “health crises”. Las Meninas resembles the scattered pieces of a puzzle. It is up to the viewer to assemble them in order to form his very own picture – something that makes the film itself personal and unique.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 107
Genere: Drama
Country: Ukraine
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: surreal, neo noir, non-linear, independent film, psychedelic, art house
Similar in 81%
Felix Austria (2020)
Plot Summary:
The plot revolves around the controversial relationship between maid Stefania Chornenko and blueblood Adelia Anger against the backdrop of the provincial Austro-Hungary in 1900. Both Stefania’s parents and Adelia’s mother died during the fire. Adelia’s father adopted neighbors’ orphan. Girls grew up together to become as close as sisters, though Stefania served as the maid. This attachment develops into love-trap: on one hand full of mutual manipulation and jealousy, but equally based on сare and devotion. The illusion of balance is broken when Adelia marries sculptor Petro. Everything gets even more complicated when Joseph, the old love interest of Stefa, returns to town as the priest and married man. Illusions are destined to evaporate and reality comes into focus.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 719
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, History, Romance
Country: Ukraine
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, psychological, surprise ending, suspenseful
Similar in 78%
Oxygen Starvation (1992)
Plot Summary:
Soviet army was one the worst for human dignity places to be. The task of the army was to turn freethinkers into normal dumb Soviet people. An intelligent Ukrainian guy refuses to obey.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 167
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Ukraine, Canada
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Akseli and Elina (1970)
Plot Summary:
A former Red Rebellion leader returns home after being imprisoned for his participation in the Finnish Civil War, but soon finds out that wartime mindsets still linger in the heads of people.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 508
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Finland
Duration: 137 min
Plot tags: epic, family saga, pre war
Similar in 87%
Trust (1976)
Plot Summary:
Film is based on the facts of history about the declaration of independence of the Republic of Finland from Russia. The Grand Duchy of Finland was an autonomous part of the Russian Empire until 1917, when the Russian revolution caused the fall of the Empire. On December 6, 1917 Finland declared it's independence. The people of Finland sent an omnipotent delegation to meet with Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 231
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Finland, Soviet Union
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
The Unburied Man (2004)
Plot Summary:
One of the doyennes of Hungarian film deals with a dark period of national history: the Soviet regime in Hungary. She portrays it through the fate of the former prime minister and national hero, Imre Nagy. The script is based on the diary written by Imre Nagy, and the memories of his daughter, Erzsébet Nagy, as well as authentic documents and records.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 400
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Hungary, Slovakia, Poland
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Not Reconciled (1965)
Plot Summary:
Not Reconciled, the title of the Straubs’ first feature-length film, is engraved on their work like an inscription. It is a story about the continuity and collapse of history, the power of suppression, and the terror of reconciliation; loyalty, treason and revenge. In a brave cinematic game, Heinrich Böll’s story Billiards at Half-Past Nine is split up into cracks, blocks, breaks and sudden turns, as the life story of a German family, covering numerous generations, is propelled forward. Terms such as “interwar period” and “post-war period” are blown up with a single cut, word or click of a billiard ball. Not Reconciled remains one of the most important German film of the past fifty years.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 798
Genere: Drama, History
Country: West Germany
Duration: 55 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Private Life (1982)
Plot Summary:
Mikhail Ulyanov is the Bergmanesque protagonist of the Russian Private Life. A government-appointed factory executive, Ulyanov is reduced to quivering confusion when he is dismissed. Recovering from this blow, he decides to review and realign his life. In so doing, he discovers that there's plenty left in the world to make life worth living. Private Life was nominated for the "best foreign picture" Academy Award in 1983.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 253
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Monologue (1973)
Plot Summary:
Professor Sretenski is a scientist and director of a research center in Russia. He is separated from his wife and lives alone. His daughter, who lives with the mother, comes to his home and stays with him for a period, leaving her daughter with him. He raises his granddaughter, feeling a great affection for her.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 387
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Vassa (1983)
Plot Summary:
A screen adaptation of the second version of A. M. Gorky’s play “Vassa Zheleznova”. In this family children were taught from the early years to put accent on the word “my”: my ship, my house, my factory… Here they counted the money earned by other people’s labour and could lose a fortune overnight playing cards; here they indulged in utter debauchery and were sneaking on each other; they prayed and engaged in shady dealings in the name of God… Vassa had it all: money, power, clout, brains and grip. And only one thing she did not have – the future, for the year 1917 was drawing nearer and the age of the Zheleznovs and the Khrapovs was coming to an end.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 301
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
The Colors of Fire (2022)
Plot Summary:
February 1927. The funeral of Marcel Péricourt, the most powerful banker in Paris. His daughter Madeleine must take the helm of the financial empire of which she is the heiress. But she has a son, Paul, who with an unexpected and tragic gesture will place her on the path to ruin.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 881
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 135 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Bitter Harvest (2017)
Plot Summary:
Set between the two World Wars and based on true historical events, Bitter Harvest conveys the untold story of the Holodomor, the genocidal famine engineered by the tyrant Joseph Stalin. The film displays a powerful tale of love, honour, rebellion and survival at a time when Ukraine was forced to adjust to the horrifying territorial ambitions of the burgeoning Soviet Union.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History, Romance, War
Country: Canada, UK
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, sincere, captivating, suspense, disturbing, art house, period piece, costume drama, iconic
Similar in 75%
Nahapet (1977)
Plot Summary:
Story of a strong-willed man, Nahapet, who lost his family during the 1915 Genocide is an eternal story of resurrection.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 430
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka (1967)
Plot Summary:
The disturbing story of a physician who conducted the first operation with general anaesthetic, and the women in his life who are both so determined to win his love that they volunteer as subjects for his experiments.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 213
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Japan
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: jidai geki
Similar in 81%
The Flight (1971)
Plot Summary:
The film is about a group of people who in other times wouldn't have anything in common, some of them innocent bystanders, some moral criminals. But nothing is straightforward and simple. From Russia "the run" continues to Constantinople, to Paris, back to Russia. Some of them have understood that they can't live outside Russia and go back maybe to be happy, maybe not, some go back to face sure death for their crimes, some don't go back and know that are going to miss homeland forever, some are comfortably well off (are they?) in exile. Sentimental without syrup, tragic and comical at the same time.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 196 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
The White Bird Marked with Black (1971)
Plot Summary:
Colourful 'optimistic tragedy' of a poor family in Ukraine, living in the Carpathian mountains near the Romanian border, during the Second World War. This epic, which won the grand prize at the Moscow Film Festival in 1971, chronicles a family's struggle for survival in an area that was claimed as part of Rumania, Poland and the Ukraine, all within a short span of time. The family is very poor, and has a great many children. When World War II comes, various family members choose different masters; some even choose to work for the Soviets. War, struggle, marriages, births, deaths--all these events punctuate the story of this large family. Belaya Ptitsa s Chernoi Otmetinoi, or Bily Ptakh Z Chornoyu Oznakoyu was filmed in the Ukrainian language and was directed by the famed Ukrainian cinematographer, Yuri Ilyenko. It is notable for the way its rich, poetic imagery splashes across the screen, and is considered to be an important part of Ukrainian film heritage.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 572
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: psychedelic
Similar in 79%
The Eternal Road (2017)
Plot Summary:
Based on true events an epic story of one man's struggle for survival. Jussi Ketola, returns to Finland from the great depression struck America only to face growing political unrest. One summer night of 1930, nationalist thugs violently abduct Ketola from his home. Beaten and forced to walk the Eternal Road towards a foreign Soviet Russia, where cruelty seems to know no end, his only dream is to return to his family cost it what it may. Hope dies last.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Finland, Estonia, Sweden
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: psychological, suspense, tense, rough, thought provoking, suspenseful, touching
Similar in 77%
Mother (1990)
Plot Summary:
The social ferment in late 19th century Russia which led to the 1917 Russian Revolution is movingly portrayed in this lengthy historical drama, which is very faithful to the 1907 novel The Mother by the celebrated Marxist writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). In the story, "the mother" (Inna Tchourikova) has no other recourse than to watch her decent, kindly husband turn into an animalistic, drunken brute as a result of working in the inhuman conditions of a steel mill in the town of Sormovo. When he begins to express his suppressed rage by beating her, she is defended by her teenaged son Pavel (depicted Viktor Rakov as an adult, Sacha Chichonok as a boy). After his father's death, Pavel is forced to go to work in the same factory. However, Pavel and his friends begin investigating Marxism and socialist thought, and work to organize their fellow workers.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 186
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Soviet Union, Italy
Duration: 200 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Memories of My Father (2020)
Plot Summary:
Portrays the life of Héctor Abad Gómez, a prominent doctor and human rights activist in the polarized, violent Medellin of the 70s. A family man worried not only for his own children but those of the underprivileged classes as well, his home was imbued with vitality and creativity, the result of an education based on tolerance and love. Nothing could foretell that a terrible cancer would take the life of one of his beloved daughters. Driven by sadness and rage, Héctor devoted himself to the social and political causes of the time. But Medellin's intolerant society would harass him until he was finally silenced.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Colombia
Duration: 136 min
Plot tags: captivating, thought provoking, independent film
Similar in 81%
The Chronicles of Melanie (2016)
Plot Summary:
The 14th of June 1941, Soviet-occupied Latvia: Without warning, the authorities break into the house of Melanie and her husband Aleksandr and force them to leave everything behind. Together with more than 15 000 Latvians, Melanie and her son get deported to Siberia. In her fight against cold, famine and cruelty, she only gains new strength through the letters she writes to Aleksandr, full of hope for a free Latvia and a better tomorrow.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 912
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Latvia, Czech Republic, Finland
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, suspense, disturbing, black and white, period piece
Similar in 87%
War and Peace: Part III (1967)
Plot Summary:
In 1812, Napoleon's Army invades Russia. Kutuzov asks Bolkonsky to join him as a staff officer, yet the prince requests a command in the field. Pierre sets out to watch the upcoming confrontation between the armies. During the Battle of Borodino, he volunteers to assist in an artillery battery. Bolkonsky's unit waits in the reserve, but he is hit by a shell. Both Anatol and Bolkosnky suffer severe wounds. The French Army is victorious and advances on Moscow.
IMDB Rating: 8.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags: historical drama, period drama
Similar in 83%
Betrayal (1993)
Plot Summary:
After the war, in Bucharest, a young Romanian poet arrested for having written an article denouncing Stalinist crimes, will save his life by accepting to become a hostage of the regime.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 123
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, Switzerland, Spain, Romania
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision (2013)
Plot Summary:
Follow-up to the TV trilogy "Heimat", this time for cinemas, set again in the fictional village Schabbach in the Hunsrück region of Rhineland-Palatinate.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Germany, France
Duration: 231 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, epic, serious, contemplative, stylized, family saga, saga, sentimental, bleak
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The Feasts of Valtasar, or The Night with Stalin (1989)
Plot Summary:
A dance troupe from the autonomous region of Abkhazia in western Georgia perform for Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria, Abkhaz leader Nestor Lakoba, and other high-ranking party officials in the Black Sea coastal town of Gagra.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 212
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
Save and Protect (1989)
Plot Summary:
Inspired by Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Sokurov’s Save and Protect recalls the most crucial events of Emma’s decline and fall: affairs with the aristocratic Rodolphe and the student Leon, the humiliation that follows her husband’s botching of the operation on the stable boy’s clubfoot. The universality of the theme of eternal struggle between the soul and the flesh is conveyed through the absence of specific reference to time or place: although the film seems to begin in 1840, its surreal mode effortlessly accommodates an automobile and the strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In” on an off-screen radio. Focusing on passion from a woman’s perspective and downplaying plot, Sokurov explores his subject in exquisite detail, capturing not only the heat of passion but also the quiet moments before and after and the innocent sensuousness of the body.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 311
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Soviet Union, West Germany
Duration: 167 min
Plot tags: avant garde
Similar in 86%
The Rising Hawk (2019)
Plot Summary:
The Mongol Empire had grown to the largest the world had ever known. It's armies now laid siege to much of Eastern Europe. A small village fights for freedom in the frontier landscape of the Carpathian Mountains.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Action, Drama, History
Country: Ukraine, USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: stylized, epic, serious, captivating, realistic, uplifting, brutal
Similar in 75%
Taming of the Fire (1972)
Plot Summary:
About Russian space program and missile industry, and it's founder Sergei P. Korolev, from the 1920s to the first man in space in 1961.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 394
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 166 min
Plot tags: epic
Similar in 88%
In the Crosswind (2014)
Plot Summary:
June 14, 1941, 3 a.m. Over 40000 people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are deported by Soviets to Siberia. Among them is a philosophy student Erna, a happily married mother of a little girl. Separated from her husband Erna and her daughter are dispatched together with other women and children to remote Siberian territories. Despite hunger, fear and brutal humiliation Erna never in next fifteen years loses her sense of freedom and hope of returning to homeland. The story is inspired by real events.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Estonia
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, serious, bleak, black and white, emotional, stylized
Similar in 75%
Everlasting Moments (2008)
Plot Summary:
In a time of social change and unrest, war and poverty, a young working class woman, Maria, wins a camera in a lottery. The decision to keep it alters her whole life.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: sincere, atmospheric, uplifting, touching, serious, captivating, realistic, political, gloomy
Similar in 75%
Collapse (1990)
Plot Summary:
1986, Chernobyl disaster. Couples, friends, and a risk-taking journalist are woven into the larger framework of the disaster. Panic follows.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 253
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Soviet Union
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: