Best movies like Free Zone
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Rebecca, an American who has been living in Jerusalem for a few months now, has just broken off her engagement. She gets into a cab driven by Hanna, an Israeli. But Hanna is on her way to Jordan, to the Free Zone, to pick up a large of sum of money.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Israel, Belgium, France, Spain
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: road movie, serious, thought provoking, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, crying
Best tv shows and movies like Free Zone (2005):
Similar in 76%
Rock the Casbah (2013)
Plot Summary:
The whole family is reunited when Sofia comes back for his father's funeral. Quickly, inner problems are revealed.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France, Morocco
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, islamic, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Noodle (2007)
Plot Summary:
At thirty-seven, Miri is a twice-widowed, El Al flight attendant. Her well-regulated existence is suddenly turned upside down by an abandoned Chinese boy whose migrant-worker mother has been summarily deported from Israel. The film is a touching comic-drama in which two human beings -- as different from each other as Tel Aviv is from Beijing -- accompany each other on a remarkable journey, one that takes them both back to a meaningful life.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 925
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Israel
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: realistic, captivating, humorous, sweet, sentimental, touching, serious, uplifting
Similar in 87%
The Syrian Bride (2004)
Plot Summary:
In Majdal Shams, the largest Druze village in Golan Heights on the Israeli-Syrian border, the Druze bride Mona is engaged to get married with Tallel, a television comedian that works in the Revolution Studios in Damascus, Syria. They have never met each other because of the occupation of the area by Israel since 1967; when Mona moves to Syria, she will lose her undefined nationality and will never be allowed to return home. Mona's father Hammed is a political activist pro-Syria that is on probation by the Israeli government. His older son Hatten married a Russian woman eight years ago and was banished from Majdal Shams by the religious leaders and his father. His brother Marwan is a wolf trader that lives in Italy. His sister Amal has two teenager daughters and has the intention to join the university, but her marriage with Amin is in crisis. When the family gathers for Mona's wedding, an insane bureaucracy jeopardizes the ceremony.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France, Germany, Israel
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: touching, sentimental, sincere, emotional, islamic, uplifting, thought provoking, clever, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 87%
Tel Aviv On Fire (2018)
Plot Summary:
Salam, an inexperienced young Palestinian man, becomes a writer on a popular soap opera after a chance meeting with an Israeli soldier. His creative career is on the rise - until the soldier and the show's financial backers disagree about how the show should end, and Salam is caught in the middle.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Luxembourg, Israel, France, Belgium
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: realistic, inspirational, thought provoking, intense, comedy drama
Similar in 90%
Sallah (1964)
Plot Summary:
Sallah Shabati, the patriarch of the big family recently arrived to Israel from Yemen, tries to make money and get better housing, in a country that can barely provide for its own and is in the midst of absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Israel
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: black comedy, black and white, humorous, realistic, semi serious, biting, intercultural, suspense, inter cultural
Similar in 81%
The Source (2011)
Plot Summary:
A comedy/drama set in a village and centered on a battle of the sexes, where women threaten to withhold sexual favours as long as the men refuse to install a water pipe.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France, Belgium, Italy
Duration: 135 min
Plot tags: sentimental, realistic, stylized, feel good, political, social, profound, humorous, semi serious, interesting
Similar in 84%
Campfire (2004)
Plot Summary:
The story of one woman's personal battle for acceptance, but also a portrait of a political movement that has forever affected millions of lives in the Middle East.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 684
Genere: Drama
Country: Israel
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, crying
Similar in 85%
Sacred (1999)
Plot Summary:
The year 2000 approaches in Jerusalem's Orthodox Mea Shearim quarter, where the women work, keep house, and have children so the men can study the Torah and the Talmud. Rivka is happily and passionately married to Meir, but they remain childless. The yeshiva's rabbi, who is Meir's father, wants Meir to divorce Rivka: "a barren woman is no woman." Rivka's sister, Malka, is in love with Yakov, a Jew shunned by the yeshiva as too secular. The rabbi arranges Malka's marriage to Yossef, whose agitation when fulfilling religious duties approaches the grotesque. Can the sisters sort out their hearts' desires within this patriarchal world? If not, have they any other options?.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Israel, France
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: philosophical, thinking, sincere, clever, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, controversial, gloomy
Similar in 80%
Alila (2003)
Plot Summary:
Life in a flimsy Tel Aviv apartment complex is a sour urban mosaic whose seedy characters, try as they might, can't get out of one another's faces. The character's lives overlap and collide. Gabi, a bobbed haired sexpot, and her lover Hezi—who's older, balding and married—rent a room to have an affair, while Ezra, a pot bellied divorcee, supervises an illegal construction site next door. All this racket drives Schwartz, a Holocaust survivor, to a mental breakdown. Other characters include illegal immigrants, a teenage boy who's afraid to serve in the army, and a corrupt police officer. In each scene the camera moves through walls, over desks, and around rooms in order to keep focused on the character it's following, in moments of drama as well as in moments of mudane daily activity.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 634
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Israel, France
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, gloomy, avant garde
Similar in 78%
The Human Resources Manager (2010)
Plot Summary:
A tragic comedy centered on the HR manager of Israel's largest industrial bakery, who sets out to save the reputation of his business and prevent the publication of a defamatory article.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Israel, Germany, France, Romania
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: tragicomedy, sincere, road movie, humorous, captivating, touching, serious, realistic, grotesque
Similar in 79%
In This World (2002)
Plot Summary:
Torn straight from the headlines, Michael Winterbottom's compelling and prescient 'In This World' follows young Afghan Jamal and his older cousin Enayat as they embark on a hazardous overland trip from their refugee camp at Peshawar, north-west Pakistan. Entering Turkey on foot through a snowy, Kurdish-controlled pass, the pair again take their lives into their hands and face suffocation when they are locked in a freight container on a ship bound for Italy. From there they plan to travel on to Paris, the Sangatte refuge centre and ultimately asylum in London.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: bleak, road movie, inspirational, disturbing, sincere, suspenseful, political, realistic, tense, thought provoking
Similar in 85%
Lemon Tree (2008)
Plot Summary:
Salma Zidane, a widow, lives simply from her grove of lemon trees in the West Bank's occupied territory. The Israeli defense minister and his wife move next door; the Secret Service orders the trees removed for security. The stoic Salma seeks assistance from the Palestinian Authority (useless), Israeli army (dismissive), and a young attorney, Ziad Daud, who takes the case; this older client attracts him. While the courts deliberate, the Israelis fence her trees and prohibit her from entering the grove. As the trees wither, the defense minister's wife and, separately, an Israeli journalist, look on Salma with sympathy. In this allegory, does David stand a chance against Goliath?.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Israel, Germany, France
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: sincere, uplifting, sentimental, touching, contemplative, emotional, edutainment, informative, thought provoking, serious
Similar in 87%
Eldorado (2008)
Plot Summary:
Yvan finds a burglar in his house. After some consideration, Yvan decides not to call the police and to drop the lad near the nearby city but he ends up giving him a lift home to his parents. Together, they travel through Belgium and meet some extraordinary people and find themselves in ditto situations.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Belgium, France
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: road movie, humorous, captivating, entertaining, offbeat, realistic, semi serious, independent film
Similar in 79%
Aaltra (2004)
Plot Summary:
In this pitch black comedy the rivalry between two neighbors escalates into an all out war. Through a maintenance error on a tractor they both end up, paralyzed, in a wheelchair. It seems they are doomed to stay together. They no longer focus their rage on each other but on the manufacturer of the tractor, in Helsinki. So get ready for a hilarious wheelchair road movie.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Belgium, France
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: road movie, dark comedy, humorous, semi serious, black and white, black comedy, dark, offbeat, tragic
Similar in 84%
The Tunnel (2016)
Plot Summary:
The thirteen survivors of a catastrophe by a tunnel's collapse tries to balance their experience trapped along 15 days inside it with their day-by-day outside it.
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 719
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: psychological, unusual plot structure, humorous, captivating, suspense, contemplative, social, road movie
Similar in 81%
Leaving Normal (1992)
Plot Summary:
A female buddy story in which Meg Tilly plays a child-like 20-something who has just walked out on her abusive husband. Darly (Christine Lahti) is fleeing a life as a waitress and stripper and is on her way to Alaska to claim a home and family she abandoned eighteen years earlier after giving birth. The two run into each other on the road and Darly welcomes the company as they head north from Wyoming.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: road movie, sentimental, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious, crying
Similar in 83%
James' Journey to Jerusalem (2003)
Plot Summary:
During his journey to Jerusalem young James learns the meaning of being Israeli.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 593
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Israel
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, humorous, realistic, semi serious, clever, contemplative, biting, suspense
Similar in 78%
Disengagement (2007)
Plot Summary:
A political drama centered around Israel's pullout from the occupied Gaza strip, in which a French woman of Israeli origin comes to the Gaza Strip to find her long ago abandoned daughter.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 819
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, Italy, Israel, France
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, contemplative, psychological, captivating, serious
Similar in 87%
Divine Intervention (2002)
Plot Summary:
Santa Claus tries to outrun a gang of knife-wielding youth. It's one of several vignettes of Palestinian life in Israel - in a neighborhood in Nazareth and at Al-Ram checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Most of the stories are droll, some absurd, one is mythic and fanciful; few words are spoken. A man who goes through his mail methodically each morning has a heart attack. His son visits him in hospital. The son regularly meets a woman at Al-Ram; they sit in a car, hands caressing. Once, she defies Israeli guards at the checkpoint; later, Ninja-like, she takes on soldiers at a target range. A red balloon floats free overhead. Neighbors toss garbage over walls. Life goes on until it doesn't.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War, Comedy
Country: France, Morocco, Germany
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: surreal, meditative, stylized, thought provoking, touching, semi serious, clever, humorous, offbeat, realistic
Similar in 75%
A Bottle in the Gaza Sea (2010)
Plot Summary:
Tai is 17 years old. Naim is 20. She's Israeli. He's Palestinian. She lives in Jerusalem. He lives in Gaza. They were born in a land of scorched earth, where fathers bury their children. They must endure an explosive situation that is not of their choosing at an age where young people are falling in love and taking their place in adult life. A bottle thrown in the sea and a correspondence by email nurture the slender hope that their relationship might give them the strength to confront this harsh reality to grapple with it, and thereby ever so slightly change it. Only 60 miles separate them but how many bombings, check-points, sleepless nights and bloodstained days stand between them?.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Israel, Canada
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sentimental, thought provoking, touching, serious, realistic, emotional, contemplative
Similar in 76%
Inch'Allah (2012)
Plot Summary:
A Canadian doctor finds her sympathies sorely tested while working in the conflict ravaged Palestinian territories.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, France
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, realistic, serious, emotional, disturbing, psychological, captivating, bleak, gloomy, extraordinary
Similar in 88%
Kedma (2002)
Plot Summary:
In May 1948, shortly before the creation of the State of Israel, hundreds of immigrants from across Europe arrive in Palestine--only to risk arrest by British troops.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 781
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: France, Israel, Italy
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, disturbing, sad, tense, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 77%
The Bubble (2006)
Plot Summary:
The movie follows a group of young friends in the city of Tel Aviv and is as much a love song to the city as it is an exploration of the claim that people in Tel Aviv are isolated from the rest of the country and the turmoil it's going through. The movie looks at young people's lives in Tel Aviv through the POVs of gays and straights, Jews and Arabs, men and women.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Israel
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, emotional, serious, epic, lgbt cinema, controversial, existential, powerful, realistic
Similar in 75%
Night on Earth (1991)
Plot Summary:
An anthology of 5 different cab drivers in 5 American and European cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 65000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK, France, Germany, Japan, USA
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags: intellectual, anthology, independent film, dark comedy, road movie, melancholic, surreal, entirely dialogue, art house, clever
Similar in 87%
Hesher (2010)
Plot Summary:
A young boy has lost his mother and is losing touch with his father and the world around him. Then he meets Hesher who manages to make his life even more chaotic.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 54000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: bleak, realistic, independent film, serious, touching, emotional, dark comedy, thought provoking, visually appealing, melancholic
Similar in 79%
Anywhere But Here (1999)
Plot Summary:
In this adaptation of the Mona Simpson novel, single mother Adele August is bad with money, and even worse when it comes to making decisions. Her straight-laced daughter, Ann, is a successful high school student with Ivy League aspirations. When Adele decides to pack up and move the two of them from the Midwest to Beverly Hills, Calif., to pursue her dreams of Hollywood success, Ann grows frustrated with her mother's irresponsible and impulsive ways.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 19000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: touching, sentimental, clever, feel good, humorous, realistic, contemplative, semi serious, light, road movie
Similar in 83%
Up and Down (2004)
Plot Summary:
Milan and Goran are two criminals who smuggle illegal immigrants. One night after they complete a smuggle, they discover that one of the immigrants has left a baby behind. Milan and Goran decide to sell the baby to Lubos and Eman, who are responsible for running an illegal baby adoption center. Lubos and Eman make attempts to sell the baby to Miluska and Frantisek, a barren couple.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czech Republic
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: psychological, clever, touching, humorous, realistic, contemplative, semi serious, cult classic, crying
Similar in 89%
Intimate Stories (2002)
Plot Summary:
Three people and a baby set off on separate journeys, along the same road; their disparate dreams and stories intertwine amidst the breathtaking deserted Patagonic route.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Argentina, Spain
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: road movie, sentimental, humorous, realistic, sincere, touching, semi serious, anthology
Similar in 78%
Boys on the Side (1995)
Plot Summary:
After breaking up with her girlfriend, a nightclub singer, Jane, answers a personal ad from Robin, a real estate agent with AIDS, seeking a cross-country travel partner. On their journey from New York City to Los Angeles, the two stop by Pittsburgh to pick up Robin's friend Holly, who is trying to escape an abusive relationship. With three distinct personalities, the women must overcome their differences to help one another.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA, France
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: road movie, sentimental, touching, emotional, erotic, thought provoking, lgbt cinema, cult classic, hilarious, humorous
Similar in 77%
New York, I Love You (2008)
Plot Summary:
New York, I Love You delves into the intimate lives of New Yorkers as they grapple with, delight in and search for love. Journey from the Diamond District in the heart of Manhattan, through Chinatown and the Upper East Side, towards the Village, into Tribeca, and Brooklyn as lovers of all ages try to find romance in the Big Apple.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 47000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA, Bahrain
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: melancholic, sexy, sweet, anthology, feel good, talky, romantic comedy, realistic, atmospheric, touching