Best movies like Hanussen
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A man's story parallels Hitler's rise. Austrian Klaus Schneider, wounded in World War I, recovers in the care of Dr. Emil Bettleheim. Bettleheim discovers that Schneider possesses powers of empathy and of clairvoyance, such that could aid suicidal patients. After the war, with one friend as his manager and another as his lover, Schneider changes his name to Eric Jan Hanussen and goes to Berlin, as a hypnotist and clairvoyant performing in halls and theaters. He always speaks the truth, which brings him to the attention of powerful Nazis. He predicts their rise (good propaganda for them) and their violence (not so good). He's in pain and at risk. What is Hanussen's future?.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Hungary, West Germany, Austria
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: spiritual, sad, esoteric, intelligent, tense, thought provoking, bleak, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Best tv shows and movies like Hanussen (1988):
Similar in 77%
Germany Pale Mother (1980)
Plot Summary:
Germany 1939. Hans and Lene marry the day before the war breaks out, and Hans is sent to the Eastern front. During a bombing raid their daughter Anna is born. The house is destroyed and Lene and Anna moves in with relatives in Berlin. Hans survives the war but he is not the same person as in 1939, and he and Lene find it difficult to live together again.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 825
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: West Germany
Duration: 152 min
Plot tags: art house, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing, gloomy, semi autobiographical, fairy tale, masterpiece
Similar in 78%
The 13 Roses (2007)
Plot Summary:
True story of thirteen totally normal young women that suffered harsh questioning and were put in prison under made up charges of helping the rebellion against Franco back in the 1940s. Despite of their innocence, the thirteen were soon executed without even a trace of evidence of any wrong doing.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Spain, Italy
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags: disturbing, thought provoking, touching, emotional, political, social, hispanic, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 79%
Uranus (1990)
Plot Summary:
After World War II, a small French village struggles to put the war behind as the controlling Communist Party tries to flush out Petain loyalists. The local bar owner, a simple man who likes to write poetry, who only wants to be left alone to do his job, becomes a target for Communist harassment as they try and locate a particular loyalist, and he pushes back.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, History, War
Country: France
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: anthology, psychological, clever, serious, realistic, biting, suspense
Similar in 82%
Waiting for Heaven (2006)
Plot Summary:
Eflatun is a master miniature artist who's living in 17th century Istanbul. One day, he's taken to the vizier's mansion by force. There he learns that Danyal, one of the Ottoman princes who has ignited an insurrection, is arrested in a far off state and to be executed soon. Eflatun is ordered to make a portrait of the rebel prince who's been condemned to death in a Western manner to help the authorities be certain on the identity of him. Upon the order, Eflatun sets off for an arduous journey to Anatolia. He picks up a girl named Leyla en route. Together, they find themselves in a great venture fraught with sensations.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Hungary, Turkey
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: exciting, serious, captivating, realistic, epic
Similar in 86%
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 80%
Purple Butterfly (2003)
Plot Summary:
Ding Hui is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover... and officer with a secret police unit tasked with dismantling Purple Butterfly.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: China, France
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic, bleak, captivating, suspenseful, tense, atmospheric, non-linear
Similar in 87%
A City of Sadness (1989)
Plot Summary:
Soon after Japan relinquishes control of Taiwan in 1945, the Lin brothers face hardships from the changing culture. Bar owner Wen-heung (Chen Sown-yung), the eldest brother, falls foul of local gangsters, Wen-sun disappears, and Wen-leung, scarred by his experiences in the war, ends up in an insane asylum. Deaf-mute photographer Wen-ching (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), the youngest brother, decides to make a stand and fight the Kuomintang government from China that is assuming power.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Taiwan
Duration: 157 min
Plot tags: realistic, sad, saga, black and white, slow cinema, aesthetic, tense, rough, serious, captivating
Similar in 83%
An Ordinary Execution (2010)
Plot Summary:
During the last days of Stalin's reign, a doctor (Marina Hands) tries to go unnoticed in a society of mutual dread where a neighbour or colleague might "denounce" you to the authorities at any moment.But tales of her healing touch have spread and one night she is taken away, not to the infamous Lubyanka prison, but to the Kremlin to attend the ailing Comrade Stalin himself. Uncle Joe (André Dussollier), an old man racked with pain but still as watchful and deadly as a snake.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 583
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, tense, sincere, bleak, contemplative, adaptation directed by original author
Similar in 80%
Dirty Hearts (2011)
Plot Summary:
In 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States and the Second World War was over. Right? Wrong. For eighty percent of the Japanese community in Brazil, Japan had won the war and defeat was nothing more than American propaganda. The few immigrants that accepted the truth were persecuted. Some were hunted down and assassinated - by their own countrymen - causing the start of a new, private war. Dirty Hearts is a thriller and love story told by the wife of one of the fanatics dedicated to preach Japanese victory. Little by little, she watches her husband, a hard-working immigrant, become an assassin and their love story fade away.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 681
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: Brazil, Japan
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: tense, bleak, serious, disturbing, rough, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 90%
Berlin '36 (2009)
Plot Summary:
Berlin 36 is a 2009 German film telling the fate of Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann in the 1936 Summer Olympics. She was replaced by the Nazi regime by an athlete later discovered to be a man. The film is based on a true story and was released in Germany on September 10, 2009. Reporters at Der Spiegel challenged the historical basis for many of the events in the film, pointing to arrest records and medical examinations indicating German authorities did not learn Dora Ratjen was male until 1938.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 944
Genere: Drama, History, Sport
Country: Germany
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: uplifting, disturbing, serious, realistic, period drama
Similar in 88%
Spring of Life (2000)
Plot Summary:
The film, 'The Spring Of Life', brings to light a little-known operation of the Nazi SS, started just before the outbreak of World War II. Through the careful selection and re-education of young women, it was the Nazi's mad dream to create an Aryan 'master race'.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 355
Genere: Drama, History, Romance, War
Country: Czech Republic
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, disturbing, bleak, rough
Similar in 85%
The White Rose (1982)
Plot Summary:
During the Second World War, a small group of students at Munich University begin to question the decisions and sanity of Germany's Nazi government. The students form a resistance cell which they name the "White Rose" after a newsletter that is secretly distributed to the student body. At first small in numbers and fearful of discovery, the White Rose begins to gain massive support after a Nazi Gauleiter nearly incites a student riot after a provokative speech. At this point, the matter is taken over by the German Gestapo, who pledge to hunt down and destroy the members of the White Rose.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Crime, Drama, History, Thriller, War
Country: West Germany
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: bleak, thought provoking, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, disturbing, light, atmospheric, sexy
Similar in 88%
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 80%
Mephisto (1981)
Plot Summary:
A German stage actor finds unexpected success and mixed blessings in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany. As his associates and friends flee or are ground under by the Nazi terror, the popularity of his character supercedes his own existence until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary, West Germany, Austria
Duration: 146 min
Plot tags: political, art film, mind twisting, horror musical, tense, serious, realistic, disturbing, biting, expressionism
Similar in 86%
The Kautokeino Rebellion (2008)
Plot Summary:
Religious and cultural reawakening inspires rebellion in a 19th century Norwegian village.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Denmark, Norway, Sweden
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: epic, serious, captivating, realistic, esoteric, bleak
Similar in 89%
Zuzu Angel (2006)
Plot Summary:
"Zuzu Angel" covers the last years of the famous Brazilian fashion designer in her doomed quest for justice in the case of her activist son Stuart's arrest, torture, murder and subsequent corpse disposal by the military forces in early 1970s Rio de Janeiro, during the darkest era of Brazilian military regime and media censorship. Not even the fact that she was a widely known public figure saved her from being killed in a car crash in 1976, in one of the regime's favorite elimination techniques (many other similar "car crashes" still have to be re-investigated).
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Brazil
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: disturbing, psychological, serious, suspenseful, thought provoking, captivating, realistic
Similar in 88%
The Pentagon Papers (2003)
Plot Summary:
This compelling political drama is based on the true story of high-ranking Pentagon official Daniel Ellsberg, who, during the Nixon era, strove to preserve American democracy by leaking top-secret documents to the New York Times and Washington Post. The documents in question would eventually become famous as the Pentagon Papers, which revealed the true reasons for U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, disturbing, captivating, realistic, political, bleak
Similar in 89%
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 77%
Beyond Friendship (2006)
Plot Summary:
A tale of friendship between two men, one Jewish and the other Arab, as the state of Israel is being created.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 947
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, UK, Italy, Greece, Israel, USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing, inspirational, sad, informative
Similar in 82%
The Edelweiss Pirates (2004)
Plot Summary:
Im Kölner Stadtteil Ehrenfeld lebt eine Gruppe von Arbeiterkindern kurz vor Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs ihren ganz eigenen Alltag. Die selbsternannten „Edelweißpiraten“ träumen von einer gerechten Welt und sehnen sich nach der unbeschwerten Vergangenheit. Sie rebellieren gegen das Naziregime. (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edelwei%C3%9Fpiraten_(Film)).
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 565
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Germany, Netherlands
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, bleak, serious, independent film
Similar in 86%
Reunion (1989)
Plot Summary:
Two young boys from very different backgrounds become friends in 1933 Stuttgart. However, they don't realize how different they are until much later as one is the son of a well-to-do Jewish doctor and the other the son of a German aristocrat. After that summer and the election of Hitler, things change as antisemitism gains fervor. After the core of the film deals with that era, the film flashes to the present and the Jewish man now returns to his boyhood home and seeks his old friend with some surprises.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 557
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, West Germany, UK
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: independent film, thought provoking, serious, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 81%
Saviors in the Night (2009)
Plot Summary:
Drama, based on the book "Retter in der Nacht", in which Marga Spiegel tells her memories: In Westfalia of 1943 Marga Spiegel, her husband and her daughter are about to be deported. Yet westfalian farmers help the jewish family, grant Marga and her daughter refuge under false names and hide her husband.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 295
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Germany, France
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, emotional, realistic, bleak
Similar in 87%
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 89%
The Bunker (1981)
Plot Summary:
Dramatization depicting the events surrounding Adolf Hitler's last weeks in and around his underground bunker in Berlin before and during the battle for the city.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: France, USA
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: bleak, realistic, psychological, serious, captivating, disturbing, suspenseful, rough, suspense, contemplative
Similar in 88%
Varian's War: The Forgotten Hero (2001)
Plot Summary:
Varian Fry rescues more than 2,000 artists from Nazi persecution during World War II.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 896
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: UK, USA, Canada
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: tense, sincere, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 90%
Labyrinth of Lies (2014)
Plot Summary:
A young prosecutor in postwar West Germany investigates a massive conspiracy to cover up the Nazi pasts of prominent public figures.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Germany
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: serious, disturbing, thought provoking, captivating, realistic, heartbreaking, emotional, social, crying, tense
Similar in 80%
The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank (1988)
Plot Summary:
During the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, Otto Frank decides to hide his family, who are Jewish, after his daughter Margot is called to appear for transport to a Nazi labour camp. Miep Gies, Otto Frank's office assistant hides them in the attic above the office. The film tells the true story of Gies' struggle to keep the family hidden and safe, as the Nazis turn Amsterdam upside-down. Based upon Gies' memoirs and Anne Frank's famous diary.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 483
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: USA, UK
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, bleak, serious, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 81%
The Last Sentence (2012)
Plot Summary:
Renowned journalist Torgny Segerstedt declares war against Hitler as he criticizes Swedish politicians who tried to look away from the tyranny of the Nazis with the good excuse of “neutralism”. His only weapon is his pen and his life is full of gossip such as an affair with his boss’ wife, a love scandal with a secretary younger than his daughter, and the suicide of his wife. However, he continues to fight a one man battle against Hitler and the Nazi regime until his death, throwing the question “Can one person really change history?” to the audience.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 839
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Sweden, Norway
Duration: 126 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, touching, serious, uplifting, bleak, realistic, gloomy, period drama
Similar in 76%
Colonel Redl (1985)
Plot Summary:
Set during the fading glory of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the film tells of the rise and fall of Alfred Redl, an ambitious young officer who proceeds up the ladder to become head of the Secret Police only to become ensnared in political deception.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, West Germany
Duration: 144 min
Plot tags: political, clever, serious, realistic, witty, cynical, biting, suspense, period drama, queer cinema
Similar in 81%
Day One (1989)
Plot Summary:
Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard leaves Europe, eventually arriving in the United States. With the help of Einstein, he persuades the government to build an atomic bomb. The project is given to no-nonsense Gen. Leslie Groves who selects physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to head the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where the bomb is built. As World War II draws to a close, Szilard has second thoughts about atomic weapons, and policy makers debate how and when to use the bomb.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 494
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 141 min
Plot tags: tense, thought provoking, serious, captivating, realistic