Best movies like Francofonia
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Master filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) transforms a portrait of the world-renowned museum into a magisterial, centuries-spanning reflection on the relation between art, culture and power.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, Germany, Netherlands
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: exciting, enigmatic, suspense, suspenseful, political, surreal, visual, semi documentary
Best tv shows and movies like Francofonia (2015):
Similar in 80%
Russian Ark (2002)
Plot Summary:
A French marquis wanders through a vast labyrinth of corridors, theaters and ballrooms at a reception for a Persian ambassador.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 22000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, History, Mystery
Country: Russia, Germany, Japan, Canada, Finland, Denmark
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: visual, surreal, art house, non-linear, lyrical, epic, serious, captivating, philosophical, visually appealing
Similar in 78%
The Last Note (2017)
Plot Summary:
The execution of 200 Greek resistance fighters by the German occupiers on May 1st, 1944 in Kaisariani, as reprisal for the Greek Resistance ambush against Nazis.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Greece
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: touching, suspense, psychological, sincere, rough, political, social
Similar in 82%
3rd Reich Mothers, in the Name of the Master Race (2012)
Plot Summary:
Two beautiful and different girls, Alice and Lisette are 17 years old, when forcibly removed from their Alsatian family to cooperate in the war effort in Germany. After spending six months in a indoctrination camp, they are both sent to a munitions factory where they are tasked to perform inhuman works. An explosion erupts, they are suspected of sabotage and threatened with being sent to a boot camp. Alice and Lisette believe they saved when transferred to a maternity where they continue living the hell of war.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 445
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, suspense, disturbing, political
Similar in 76%
The Auschwitz Report (2021)
Plot Summary:
This is the true story of Freddy and Walter – two young Slovak Jews, who were deported to Auschwitz in 1942. On 10 April 1944, after meticulous planning and with the help and the resilience of their inmates, they manage to escape. While the inmates they had left behind courageously stand their ground against the Nazi officers, the two men are driven on by the hope that their evidence could save lives. Emaciated and hurt, they make their way through the mountains back to Slovakia. With the help of chance encounters, they finally manage to cross the border and meet the resistance and The Red Cross. They compile a detailed report about the systematic genocide at the camp. However, with Nazi propaganda and international liaisons still in place, their account seems to be too harrowing to believe.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Germany
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: suspense, tense, disturbing, social
Similar in 82%
Hotel Meina (2007)
Plot Summary:
How will the Germans react to the armistice of the 8th of September 1943, due to which Italy betrays them and sides with the allied forces? This is the distressing questions that a group of 16 Italian - Greek Jews evacuated at The Meina Hotel ask themselves.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 124
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Italy, France, Serbia
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Despair (1978)
Plot Summary:
Germany in the early 1930s. Against the backdrop of the Nazis' rise, Hermann Hermann, a Russian émigré and chocolate magnate, goes slowly mad. It begins with his seating himself in a chair to observe himself making love to his wife, Lydia, a zaftig empty-headed siren who is also sleeping with her cousin. Hermann is soon given to intemperate outbursts at his workers, other businessmen, and strangers. Then, he meets Felix, an itinerant laborer, whom he delusionally believes looks exactly like himself. Armed with a new life insurance policy, he hatches an elaborate plot in the belief it will free him of all his worries.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: West Germany, France
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: mind bending, psychedelic, neo noir, surreal, avant garde, art house, aesthetic, psychological, serious, realistic
Similar in 89%
Is Paris Burning? (1966)
Plot Summary:
The title is Adolf Hitler's question to his chief of staff Alfred Jodl on the eve of the liberation of Paris (August 25): the military governor of Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, had been ordered to destroy Paris rather than let it fall undamaged into the hands of the Allies, but von Choltitz disobeyed.The film follows historical events as U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, head of the Allied invasion, refuses to divert troops to liberate Paris. His hand is forced by the French military leader, Philippe Leclerc, and by a Resistance uprising in the city. Von Choltitz keeps details of the uprising from the German high command in an effort to save the city being destroyed in retaliation. The film follows his turmoil as a soldier and as the man who doesn't wish to be seen by history as the cause of a beautiful city's destruction.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: France, USA
Duration: 175 min
Plot tags: harsh, factual, tense, suspense, serious, emotional, captivating, suspenseful, retro, informative
Similar in 75%
The King's Choice (2016)
Plot Summary:
On 9 April 1940, German soldiers arrive in the city of Oslo. The King of Norway faces a choice that will change his country forever. The King's Choice is a story about the three most dramatic days in Norway's history, the royal family's escape and King Haakon's difficult choice after Nazi Germany's invasion of Norway.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland
Duration: 133 min
Plot tags: exciting, suspenseful, tense, captivating, suspense, melancholic
Similar in 76%
De Gaulle (2020)
Plot Summary:
Paris, June 1940. The de Gaulle couple is confronted with the military and political collapse of France. Charles de Gaulle joins London while Yvonne, his wife, finds herself with her three children on the road of the exodus.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: France
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: captivating, suspense, suspenseful, psychological, exciting, tense, interesting
Similar in 79%
The Round Up (2010)
Plot Summary:
1942. Joseph is eleven. And this June morning, he must go to school, a yellow star sown on his chest. He receives the support of a goods dealer. The mockery of a baker. Between kindness and contempt, Jo, his Jewish friends, their families, learn of life in an occupied Paris, on the Butte Montmartre, where they've taken shelter. At least that's what they think, until that morning on July 16th 1942, when their fragile happiness is toppled over.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: France, Germany, Hungary
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, emotional, disturbing, bleak, serious, realistic, sincere, touching, contemplative
Similar in 89%
The Mill and the Cross (2011)
Plot Summary:
What would it be like to step inside a great work of art, have it come alive around you, and even observe the artist as he sketches the very reality you are experiencing? From Lech Majewski, one of Poland's most acclaimed filmmakers, The Mill and the Cross is a cinematic re-staging of Pieter Bruegel's masterpiece "Procession to Calvary," presented alongside the story of its creation.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland, Sweden
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, bleak, serious, realistic, surreal, christian film, philosophical, spiritual, cerebral, offbeat
Similar in 79%
Afterimage (2016)
Plot Summary:
In 1945, as Stalin sets his hands over Poland, famous painter Wladislaw Strzeminski refuses to compromise on his art with the doctrines of social realism. Persecuted, expelled from his chair at the University, he's eventually erased from the museums' walls. With the help of some of his students, he starts fighting against the Party and becomes the symbol of an artistic resistance against intellectual tyranny.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: avant garde, twist ending, exciting, sentimental, captivating, educational, ambiguous ending
Similar in 87%
The Gustloff (2008)
Plot Summary:
Joseph Vilsmaier Two-part TV movie focuses on the tragic events surrounding the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German passenger ship, at the end of World War II. On 30 January 1945, Captain Hellmuth Kehding was in charge of the ship, evacuating wounded soldiers and civilians trapped by the Red Army. Soon after leaving the harbor of Danzig, it was hit by three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine and sank in less than an hour.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 567
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Germany
Duration: 188 min
Plot tags: exciting, rough, serious, suspenseful, bleak, captivating, realistic
Similar in 86%
In the Fog (2012)
Plot Summary:
Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation. A man is wrongly accused of collaboration. Desperate to save his dignity, he faces an impossible moral choice.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Germany, Netherlands, Belarus, Russia, Latvia
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: realistic, bleak, serious, psychological, captivating, sexy, slow cinema, aesthetic, sincere, contemplative
Similar in 87%
The Conference (2022)
Plot Summary:
On January 20, 1942, the Wannsee Conference takes place in Berlin, a meeting that had only one item on the agenda: The Final Solution, the organization of the systematic mass murder of eleven million European Jews.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Germany
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, disturbing, tense, captivating
Similar in 89%
Winter in Wartime (2008)
Plot Summary:
During World War II in the freezing Netherlands winter of 1944/1945 the western Netherlands are in the grip of a famine. Many people move east to provide for their families. Fourteen year old Michiel can't wait to join the Dutch resistance, to the dismay of his father, who, as mayor, works to prevent escalations in the village.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Netherlands, Belgium
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: tense, exciting, serious, realistic, captivating, sexy, sad, stylized, gloomy, tear jerker
Similar in 83%
Paula (2016)
Plot Summary:
Painting is an unacceptable vocation for a woman in provincial Germany in the year 1900, but budding artist Paula Becker is determined to make her own rules.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 855
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Germany, France
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: exciting, sentimental, humorous, captivating, touching, melancholic, suspenseful, artsy
Similar in 87%
April 9th (2015)
Plot Summary:
In the early morning of April 9th 1940 the Danish army is alerted. The Germans have crossed the border; Denmark is at war against Europe's strongest army. In Southern Jutland Danish bicycle- and motorcycle companies are ordered out, to against all odds, hold back the forces until the Danish reinforcements can be mobilized. In the fatal hours, we follow second lieutenant Sand and his bicycle company - they will as the first Danish soldiers meet the enemy in combat on April 9th 1940.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Denmark
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, tense, suspense, suspenseful
Similar in 79%
Unknown Battle (2019)
Plot Summary:
During WW2, in 1942 and 1943, a series of not-so-well known yet bloody battles occurred near the town of Rzhev. Those battles received the name of ‘Rzhev Meat Grinder’. The film is based on the award-winning novel by Vyacheslav Kondratyev, which tells about one of those battles and the ability to demonstrate courage, friendship, and the power of human spirit in the most horrible situations.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: rough, epic, serious, suspense, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 78%
1944: Forced to Fight (2015)
Plot Summary:
The events of the war in 1944, from the Blue Hills to Sõrve Peninsula. Shown through the eyes of Estonian soldiers who had to pick sides and fight against fellow brothers. Choices have to be made, not only by the soldiers, but also by their loved ones.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Estonia, Finland
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: tense, psychological, captivating, suspense
Similar in 77%
Alone in Berlin (2016)
Plot Summary:
Berlin in June of 1940. While Nazi propaganda celebrates the regime’s victory over France, a kitchen-cum-living room in Prenzlauer Berg is filled with grief. Anna and Otto Quangel’s son has been killed at the front. This working class couple had long believed in the ‘Führer’ and followed him willingly, but now they realise that his promises are nothing but lies and deceit. They begin writing postcards as a form of resistance and in a bid to raise awareness: Stop the war machine! Kill Hitler! Putting their lives at risk, they distribute these cards in the entrances of tenement buildings and in stairwells. But the SS and the Gestapo are soon onto them, and even their neighbours pose a threat.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: UK, France, Germany
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: period piece, enigmatic, heartbreaking, suspense, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, factual, retro, independent film
Similar in 84%
Army of Crime (2009)
Plot Summary:
This gripping historical drama recounts the story of Armenian-born Missak Manouchian, a woodworker and political activist who led an immigrant laborer division of the Parisian Resistance on 30 operations against the Nazis in 1943. The Nazis branded the group an Army of Crime, an anti-immigrant propaganda stunt that backfired as the team's members became martyrs for the Resistance.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: France
Duration: 139 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, disturbing, sincere, suspenseful, gloomy
Similar in 84%
A Bag of Marbles (2017)
Plot Summary:
In occupied France, Maurice and Joseph, two young Jewish brothers left to their own devices demonstrate an incredible amount of cleverness, courage, and ingenuity to escape the enemy invasion and to try to reunite their family once again.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: France, Canada, Czech Republic
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, captivating, suspense, suspenseful, disturbing, art film
Similar in 81%
Woman in Gold (2015)
Plot Summary:
Maria Altmann, an octogenarian Jewish refugee, takes on the Austrian government to recover a world famous painting of her aunt plundered by the Nazis during World War II, she believes rightfully belongs to her family. She did so not just to regain what was rightfully hers, but also to obtain some measure of justice for the death, destruction, and massive art theft perpetrated by the Nazis.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 62000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: UK
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: captivating, realistic, touching, dramatic, motivational, cute, sincere, uplifting, intense, social
Similar in 80%
The Sun (2005)
Plot Summary:
The Sun (Russian: Сóлнце, Solntse) is a 2005 Russian biographical film depicting Japanese Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) during the final days of World War II. The film is the third drama in director Aleksandr Sokurov's trilogy, which included Taurus about the Soviet Union's Vladimir Lenin and Moloch about Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Russia, Italy, Switzerland, France
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, disturbing, serious, captivating, slow cinema, visual, aesthetic, realistic
Similar in 89%
The Final Solution: The Wannsee Conference (1984)
Plot Summary:
A real time recreation of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which leading SS and Nazi Party officals gathered to discuss the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Led by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich, the Wannsee Conference was the starting point for the Jewish Holcaust which led to the mass murder of six million people.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Austria, West Germany
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing, contemplative, talky
Similar in 75%
Valkyrie (2008)
Plot Summary:
Wounded in Africa during World War II, Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg returns to his native Germany and joins the Resistance in a daring plan to create a shadow government and assassinate Adolf Hitler. When events unfold so that he becomes a central player, he finds himself tasked with both leading the coup and personally killing the Führer.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 256000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller, War
Country: USA, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Japan, UK
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: factual, bad ending, tense, suspense, suspenseful, captivating, realistic, political, contemplative, dramatic
Similar in 90%
At Eternity's Gate (2018)
Plot Summary:
Famed but tormented artist Vincent van Gogh spends his final years in Arles, France, painting masterworks of the natural world that surrounds him.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 39000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Ireland, Switzerland, UK, France, USA
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: independent film, melancholic, psychological, rough, touching, art film, captivating, suspenseful, philosophical, atmospheric
Similar in 88%
Mr. Turner (2014)
Plot Summary:
Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 27000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: UK, France, Germany, USA, Belgium
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: enigmatic, surreal, meditative, sincere, captivating, costume drama, visual, atmospheric, clever, stylized
Similar in 81%
The Monuments Men (2014)
Plot Summary:
Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on seven over-the-hill, out-of-shape museum directors, artists, architects, curators, and art historians who went to the front lines of WWII to rescue the world’s artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their rightful owners. With the art hidden behind enemy lines, how could these guys hope to succeed?.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 138000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, History, War
Country: Germany, USA
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: exciting, intense, suspense, serious, realistic, suspenseful, entertaining, period piece, uplifting, political