Best movies like From What Is Before
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The Philippines, 1972. Mysterious things are happening in a remote barrio. Wails are heard from the forest, cows are hacked to death, a man is found bleeding to death at the crossroad and houses are burned. Ferdinand E. Marcos announces Proclamation No. 1081 putting the entire country under Martial Law.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 820
Genere: Drama
Country: Philippines
Duration: 338 min
Plot tags: bleak, atmospheric, serious, realistic, stylized, captivating, intense, independent film, black and white, visual
Best tv shows and movies like From What Is Before (2014):
Similar in 80%
Found Memories (2011)
Plot Summary:
Each citizen of Jotuomba plays an integral role in village life. Madalena is responsible for baking bread; each morning she stacks her rolls as Antonio prepares the coffee. The two share a morning ritual of arguments and insults, followed by an amicable cup of coffee on the bench outside Antonio's shop. At midday the church bells ring, summoning the villagers to mass. In the early evening, they all share a meal together. And so life proceeds in Jotuomba, the days languidly drifting into one another; the only variations seem to be in the weather. But, one day Rita arrives looking for a place to stay.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 939
Genere: Drama
Country: Brazil, Argentina, France
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, touching, serious, realistic, stylized, contemplative
Similar in 78%
Paradise Lost (1978)
Plot Summary:
The Mayor of a small Flemish town is determined at all costs to save a unique bird sanctuary from a ruthless businessman who advocates a housing development on the site. The main story, though, centres on a childhood trauma that unites the two men and a dark femme fatale whom one desires and the other attempts to manipulate.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 129
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, captivating, realistic
Similar in 77%
Norte, the End of History (2013)
Plot Summary:
A man is wrongly jailed for murder while the real killer roams free. The murderer is an intellectual frustrated with his country’s never-ending cycle of betrayal and apathy. The convict is a simple man who finds life in prison more tolerable, when something mysterious and strange starts happening to him.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Philippines
Duration: 250 min
Plot tags: philosophical, realistic, stylized, atmospheric, serious, slow cinema, contemplative, art house, black and white, cerebral
Similar in 85%
Ballast (2008)
Plot Summary:
A single mother and her embattled son struggle to subsist in a small Mississippi Delta township. An act of violence thrusts them into the world of an emotionally devastated highway store owner, awakening the fury of a bitter and longstanding conflict.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, psychological, emotional, captivating, suspense, southern gothic, sentimental, sincere, bleak
Similar in 78%
Desert Dream (2007)
Plot Summary:
This film takes place in a remote area, a desert region situated somewhere between the Mongolia and Chinese border. The town has become nearly void of all inhabitants except for Hangai, who works obsessively to plant trees in the desert area. Hangai’s own wife has recently left him, as their daughter became increasingly ill. While Hangai wallows in solitude, a North Korean refugee arrives at his doorstep with her son. They ask for shelter and Hanghai obliges. Although the trio can’t even speak a common language, they are able to communicate nonethless and work together to plant trees. It seems Hanghai is attracted to Soon Hee, but she doesn’t feel quite the same way. Then a Mongolian soldier stationed at a nearby camp, befriends the trio and the dynamics of their relationship start to change.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 243
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea, France, Mongolia
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: realistic, captivating, psychological, atmospheric, touching, serious
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A Long and Happy Life (2013)
Plot Summary:
Sascha lives in a village on the Kola Peninsular in northern Russia and dedicatedly manages what is left of an old collective farm. He gets on well with his farm workers who respect him and also tolerate his more or less clandestine love-affair with Anya, a secretary at the local government office. But then Sascha is suddenly faced with a dilemma: the district’s self-seeking administrators, none of whom could be termed squeamish, offer him a lucrative deal for the farm. In legal terms, Sascha doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on since his lease on the farm was only agreed with a handshake. The pressure mounts, and even more so when his employees convince him to stand firm. Against the backdrop of a landscape exposed to the elements, this unflinching man’s destiny takes its course.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 495
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags: bleak, realistic, tense, serious, stylized, sad, depressing, captivating, suspense, contemplative
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Three-Step Dance (2003)
Plot Summary:
Four separate-but-interconnected stories - one for each season - about life in Sardinia.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 267
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, atmospheric, touching, serious, realistic
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Spiral (2008)
Plot Summary:
Their men went to the North in search of their destiny, while they stayed.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 117
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, student film
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United Red Army (2007)
Plot Summary:
The film is told in three acts, beginning with a historical background of Japan's student movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, mostly using archive footage and a narrator. The second act follows the formation of the group to their mountain training camps in the southern Japanese Alps. It emphasizes the dogmatic (and eventually hypocritical) bullying of the group by Mori and Nagata, with 12 members being killed for infractions as small as improperly cleaning a gun, wearing make-up, and kissing. The third act shows the splitting up of the group after two members run off. It follows one group of five members to Karuizawa and a hostage-taking and police standoff known as the Asama-Sansō incident.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 868
Genere: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 190 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, rough, serious, bleak, political, anime, realistic, avant garde
Similar in 87%
Anchoress (1993)
Plot Summary:
Enter the medieval world of Christine Carpenter, a visionary girl who is to become an Anchoress (walled-in recluse) so that she can "live in the Virgin's house forever." Based on actual letters that were written about such an Anchoress in 1325, the film follows Christine as she awakens to her own sensuality and explores her own female, earth-based spirituality.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 435
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium, UK
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: black and white, psychological, sexy, bleak, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 80%
Into Temptation (2009)
Plot Summary:
A call girl goes to a priest to confess a sin she hasn't committed yet: she plans to kill herself on her next birthday. Then she disappears and he goes looking for her, enlisting the help of an ad hoc congregation of troubled souls along the way. A story about forgiveness.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 882
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, realistic, captivating, psychological, serious, gloomy, independent film
Similar in 88%
Weighed But Found Wanting (1974)
Plot Summary:
The son of a wealthy man, Junior has everything he could possibly want. But the emptiness of his extravagant lifestyle and the hypocrisy of the town's so-called leading citizens weigh heavily on him, and he reaches out to the village outcasts.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 667
Genere: Drama
Country: Philippines
Duration: 126 min
Plot tags: existential, serious, realistic, sexual, sexy
Similar in 83%
Freedom (2000)
Plot Summary:
A few fugitives... And a very, very long way to freedom.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 352
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Portugal, Lithuania
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: serious, contemplative, atmospheric, realistic, slow cinema, aesthetic, stylized, gloomy, avant garde
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Just the Wind (2012)
Plot Summary:
Drawing inspiration from the death-squad murders of several Gypsy families in Hungary in 2008, director Bence Fliegauf's chilling and unforgettable real-life horror story follows a family whose dreams of emigration and escape are suddenly, horribly destroyed.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary, Germany, France
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: sincere, bleak, serious, realistic, thought provoking, slow cinema, aesthetic, tense
Similar in 89%
My Sweet Pepper Land (2013)
Plot Summary:
Baran, a war hero, becomes sheriff of the capital and refuses to bow down to a tribal chief.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Iraq, France, Germany, Iran
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, tense, atmospheric, realistic, captivating, art house, independent film, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Last Winter (2011)
Plot Summary:
A young farmer in Central France tries to sustain his spiritual connection to the land amid the crushing pressures of modern agriculture in this brooding drama.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 187
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic, captivating, gloomy
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The Ditch (2010)
Plot Summary:
The film focuses on the suffering of Chinese who were imprisoned in a forced labor camp called Jiabiangou in the Gobi Desert in winter 1960 under Mao Zedong on the grounds that they were "rightist elements". The film tells of the harsh life of these men, who coped with physical exhaustion, extreme cold, starvation and death on a daily basis.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 526
Genere: Drama
Country: Hong Kong, France, Belgium, South Korea, Netherlands
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, disturbing, bleak, contemplative, slow cinema, aesthetic, captivating, realistic, crying
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The Postman's White Nights (2014)
Plot Summary:
The film represents life in a godforsaken Russian village. The only way to reach the mainland is to cross the lake by boat and a postman became the only connection with the outside world. A reserved community has been set up here. Despite the modern technologies and a spaceport nearby the people of the village live the way they would in the Neolithic Era. There is neither government nor social services or jobs. The postman's beloved woman escapes the village life and moves to the city. Postman's outboard engine gets stolen and he can no longer deliver mail. His normal pattern of life is disrupted. The postman makes a decision to leave for the city too but returns before long with no certain reason. The script is based on real characters' stories. People from the village play their own parts in the film. The search for the protagonist lasted for over a year.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: neorealism, atmospheric, serious, realistic, stylized, social, contemplative, crying
Similar in 89%
My Joy (2010)
Plot Summary:
A routine run for a truck driver turns into a nightmare he can’t escape in this psychological drama from filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa. Georgy (Viktor Nemets) is driving a load of freight into Russia when, after an unpleasant encounter with the police at a border crossing, he finds himself giving a lift to a strange old man (Vladimir Golovin) with disturbing stories about his younger days in the Army. After next picking up a young woman (Olga Shuvalova) who works as a prostitute and is wary of the territory, Georgy finds himself lost, and despite asking some homeless men for help, he’s less sure than he was before of how to make his way back where he belongs. As brutal images of violence and alienation cross the screen, Georgy’s odyssey becomes darker and more desperate until it reaches an unexpected conclusion.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, Ukraine, Netherlands
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: road movie, disturbing, tense, bleak, serious, realistic, dread, slow cinema, aesthetic, atmospheric
Similar in 76%
One Hundred Mornings (2009)
Plot Summary:
Set in a world upended by a complete breakdown of society, two couples hide out in a lakeside cabin hoping to survive this crisis.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 508
Genere: Drama
Country: Ireland
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, serious, bleak, apocalyptic, tense, disturbing
Similar in 80%
Melancholia (2008)
Plot Summary:
A story about victims of summary executions. Three people start a strange therapy to escape their agonies.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 537
Genere: Drama
Country: Philippines
Duration: 450 min
Plot tags: bleak, psychological, serious, stylized, atmospheric, slow cinema, psychedelic, aesthetic, experimental, contemplative
Similar in 76%
Boxing Day (2012)
Plot Summary:
A struggling, indebted business man leaves his family immediately after Christmas to pursue a lucrative property deal that could solve all of his problems: buying foreclosed properties from banks at a fraction of their value, refi tting them for a minimum cost, and then selling them for a large profi t. He hires a local chauffeur for 24 hours to drive him around the mountainous area but, as night sets in and the weather worsens, the car is trapped on an icy road and the men face an uncertain fate.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 200
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: captivating, realistic, atmospheric, thought provoking, serious, clever, gloomy, road movie, minimal cast, modern day adaptation
Similar in 76%
The Quispe Girls (2013)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true story occurred in 1974, this is the tale of sisters Justa, Lucia, and Luciana Quispe, sheperds in the Chilean altiplano who lead a solitary life. A visitor brings news about a law that might change their way of living. This event forces the women to question their existence and relentlessly brings them to a tragic end.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 111
Genere: Drama
Country: Chile, France, Argentina
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, serious, realistic, bleak
Similar in 77%
The King Is Alive (2000)
Plot Summary:
Stranded in the heat of a barren African desert, eleven bus-passengers shelter in the remnants of an abandoned town. As rescue grows more remote by the day and anxiety deepens, an idea emerges: why not stage a play. However the choice of King Lear only manages to plunge this disparate group of travelers into turmoil as they struggle to overcome both nature's wrath and their own morality.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, South Africa, Norway, USA
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: bleak, stylized, melancholic, atmospheric, psychological, independent film, offbeat, serious, realistic, road movie
Similar in 84%
Madeinusa (2006)
Plot Summary:
Madeinusa is a girl aged 14 with a sweet Indian face who lives in an isolated village in the Cordillera Blanca Mountain range of Peru. This strange place is characterized by its religious fervor. From Good Friday at three o'clock in the afternoon (the time of day when Christ died on the cross) to Easter Sunday, the whole village can do whatever it feels like. During the two holy days sin does not exist: God is dead and can't see what is happening. Everything is accepted and allowed, without remorse. Year after year, Madeinusa and her sister Chale, and her father Don Cayo, the Mayor and local big shot, maintain this tradition without questioning it. However, everything changes with the arrival in the village of Salvador, a young geologist from Lima, who will unknowingly change the destiny of the girl.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Peru, Spain
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, stylized, dark, political, realistic, witty
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Sounds of Sand (2006)
Plot Summary:
On the one hand, there's the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there's the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality. Rahne and his family travel across hostile lands under a lethal sun, walking endlessly onwards and frequently crossing paths with death. But "Sounds of sand" is also a parable about determination and eternity that takes us in the footsteps of Shasha, a nomad child full of the joys of life, whose tenacity and strength will conquer her father's love.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 553
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium, France
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: sincere, atmospheric, serious, captivating, bleak, realistic
Similar in 77%
Atlantic. (2014)
Plot Summary:
A Moroccan fisherman sets off on an epic journey towards Europe on his wind surfboard. But the pursuit of dreams does not come without sacrifice.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 575
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Morocco, France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic
Similar in 75%
October (1994)
Plot Summary:
In October 1970, one group from the Front de Liberation du Quebec kidnapped the British Consul in Montreal. Few days later, a second group did the same with one of the Minister of the Quebec Government. If the first was released, the second was murdered. This is the story of the second group from the stand point of the political kidnappers.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 835
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: political, sad, psychological, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing
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The Outlander (2005)
Plot Summary:
It is the early 20th century. A stranger arrives in the small, rural community and disrupts the lives of its inhabitants. The man, who refuses to give his name, is dubbed The Outlander. A traveller who disdains conventional behaviour and parochialism, The Outlander disturbs the villagers' complacency and scandalizes the community; he also elicits admiration and gains a woman's love. He ultimately leaves in the same manner he had arrived, but not before he has helped the villagers open their eyes to the larger world beyond their village.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 406
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, sentimental, touching, realistic, serious
Similar in 86%
Back to 1942 (2012)
Plot Summary:
In 1942, Henan Province was devastated by the most tragic famine in modern Chinese history, resulting in the deaths of at least three million men, women and children. Although the primary cause of the famine was a severe drought, it was exacerbated by locusts, windstorms, earthquakes, epidemic disease and the corruption of the ruling Kuomintang government.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: China
Duration: 145 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, captivating, bleak, realistic, intense