Best movies like Jonah Who Lived in the Whale
Last updated March 2024
Looking for movies similar to Jonah Who Lived in the Whale? Offer your familiarity to direct others to tv series and films you've already seen that might appeal to them as well. Support expanding the community of people introducing videos to one another. We encourage your participation!
Plot Summary:
The story of the Holocaust, seen as Jonah, a young jewish boy living in Amsterdam at the onset of WW II, who with his family is taken by the Nazis to a concentration camp. (Based on the book 'Childhood' by Jona Oberski.).
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 457
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France, Hungary
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like Jonah Who Lived in the Whale (1993):
Similar in 81%
Hourglass (2007)
Plot Summary:
A story of a Jewish-Hungarian-Serbian family. The plot is centered about trying of an adult son to reconstruct his childhood dream of and memories. Looms, but a sunken world, the central European town with its figures, the way to experiencing deep and see a sensitive boy, his father, who by their fears that penetrate to the bone and the final humiliation of acting madness escapes and becomes a lonely, pathetic buffoon in the drama of life.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 101
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Serbia, Hungary
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
Terezín (2023)
Plot Summary:
The story of Antonio, an Italian clarinetist, and Martina, a Czech violinist, who fall in love with each other during the World War II, in Prague.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 28
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, Czech Republic, Slovakia
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
Princesses (2000)
Plot Summary:
Johan has three children with different women. Two adult daughters: Sophie and Virginie, and a young son in Amsterdam. Loïc gave Johan diamonds of a criminal origin. Her husband Simon thought they were his and murdered her. Then he set out his hunt for the diamonds and for killing Johan. The police thought that Johan had murdered Loïc and called his daughters, who had not known about each other. Afterwards Sophie receives a note to take a certain train to Amsterdam. A young boy gives Virginie the oral message "The treasure is in the trout". She immediately understands that this trout must be in her mother's freezer, unknown to the mother. Both girls take the train. Simon contacts them as a helpful fellow-passenger. The girls soon detect his aim of murdering them. In Brussels they escape the train. Virginie steals a car but is not as good at driving as at stealing (she will prove this again).
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 78
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
The Last Letter (2002)
Plot Summary:
Locked away in the Jewish ghetto of an occupied Ukrainian town in 1941, a mother revisits her life in a last letter to her son.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 179
Genere: Drama
Country: France, USA
Duration: 61 min
Plot tags: minimal cast
Similar in 84%
The Day the Clown Cried (1972)
Plot Summary:
A circus clown is imprisoned by the Nazis and goes with Jewish children to their deaths.
IMDB Rating:
IMDB Votes:
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: emotional, controversial, independent film, weird
Similar in 80%
Cold Days (1966)
Plot Summary:
Andras Kovacs' film, considered one of the most important Hungarian films of the 1960's, centers around four men who await trial for their involvement in the massacre of several thousand Jewish and Serbian people of Novi Sad in 1942. Each denies any responsibility, claiming that they were only following orders. The film is sigificant for its willingness to address the subject of Hungary's role in WWII, which was taboo at the time of the its release.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 502
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: epic, cult film, cult movie cast
Similar in 75%
Hungarians (1978)
Plot Summary:
A group of landless Hungarian peasants accept work as migrant-laborers on a farm in northern Germany where the wages are good, and the wives and family are allowed to accompany them. Though it is in the midst of World War II, they are relatively well-off. However, they glimpse the treatment accorded to POWs and others who are not so gently treated, and at the conclusion of the year's harvest, they choose to return to Hungary and are quickly swept up in the tides of war. This film is part of a series of films by award-winning, well-respected director Zoltan Fabri who devoted much time and effort chronicling the struggle against fascism.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 353
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Kornblumenblau (1989)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true story of a Polish musician who survived the concentration camp only because he could play on the accordion the title melody.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 135
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Poland
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Gruber's Journey (2008)
Plot Summary:
On 22 June 1941, Germany and Romania attack Soviet Russia. Several days later, Curzio Malaparte, the Italian writer who would one day pen the novel « Kaputt », a war correspondent for « Corriere de la Sera », arrives in Iasi, in the north of Moldova, on his way to the front, which is nearby. He is incapacitated by a severe allergy and his only chance of recovery is to find a Jewish doctor, an allergologist who had studied in Florence, called Josef Gruber. All his attempts to find him are unsuccessful. While looking for him, Curzio discovers that in Iasi, several days prior to his arrival, a violent anti-Semitic pogrom took place and that a large number of the Jewish citizens of Iasi were deported by train and that Dr Gruber may be among them. In order to find him, Curzio, aided by Guido Sartori, the Italian consul in Iasi, tries to obtain an official warrant to bring Josef Gruber back. He confronts indifference, rudeness and the desire by the Romanian authorities to hide something.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 200
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary, Romania
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
1945 (2017)
Plot Summary:
An unsettling feeling overwhelms a small Hungarian town when two orthodox Jews arrive with a mysterious trunk. As residents begin to speculate on the purpose of the visit of these two strangers, order starts to crumble in town with some pursuing devious plans and others finding remorse in their hearts.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: black and white, motivational, tense, art house, grim
Similar in 78%
My Best Friend Anne Frank (2021)
Plot Summary:
Based on the real-life friendship between Anne Frank and Hannah Goslar, from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to their harrowing reunion in a concentration camp.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: Netherlands
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, disturbing, entertaining
Similar in 76%
The 25th Hour (1967)
Plot Summary:
A Romanian peasant fights to get back to his family after he's imprisoned by the Nazis.The picture is based on real events. It includes Hungary's government in collaboration with the Nazis, the encroachment of Romania by Stalin's troopers, and other happenings.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: France, Italy, Yugoslavia
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Hidden in Silence (1996)
Plot Summary:
Poland 1939, shortly before invasion of the German troops. To save their belongings from the Nazis, the Jewish family Diamant transfers them to their 17-year-old catholic maid Fusia. In return Fusia provides them with food until the ghetto is dissolved, and then hides 13 people in her loft for over two years. However, as the front approaches and two German nurses take quarter in Fusias apartment everything seems to be in vain.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 531
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Madame Rosa (1977)
Plot Summary:
Madame Rosa lives in a sixth-floor walkup in the Pigalle; she's a retired prostitute, Jewish and an Auschwitz survivor, a foster mom to children of other prostitutes. Momo is the oldest and her favorite, an Algerian lad whom she raises as a Muslim. He asks about his parents; she answers evasively. As she ages and takes fewer children, Momo must do more for her; as money is tight, he tries to earn pennies on the street with a puppet. He's a beautiful man-child, and Madame Rosa makes him promise never to sell himself or become a pimp. A film editor, Nadine, befriends him, and his father appears as well. Madame Rosa reaches her last days in fear of hospitals, and Momo must act.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 90%
And the Violins Stopped Playing (1988)
Plot Summary:
No overview found.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 192
Genere: Biography, Drama, War
Country: Poland, USA
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 78%
Valiant Hearts (2021)
Plot Summary:
In August 1942, during the Second World War, Six Jewish children are trying to escape the Nazis. They are hidden by the resistance in the Chambord Castle, where paintings from Le Louvre are being stored as well. The Nazis are looking for paintings from private collections that would be hidden there as well.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 83
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
The Execution (1985)
Plot Summary:
The members of a San Diego Wednesday night womens' mah jongg club are five survivors of a Nazi concentration camp. They recognize the owner of a local restaurant, Walter Grossman, as a doctor from the camp who performed experiments on them as young girls. To their horror they learn that he has already been tried as a war criminal and has served but a few years for his crimes. They decide that they will "execute" him, drawing lots to determine which one will perform the act, without letting the others know who it is.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 183
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: surprise ending
Similar in 90%
And Along Come Tourists (2007)
Plot Summary:
Sven arrives in nowadays Auschwitz to do his civil service at the memorial. He encounters unfriendliness, especially by Stanislaw Krzeminski, the 85 year old KZ-survivor, and Krzysztof Lanuszewski, brother of his early love affair Ania. Even his boss Herold, the places manager, does little to help Sven familiarize. But when problems accumulate Sven realises that he already has become involved.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, psychological, captivating
Similar in 82%
Never Forget (1991)
Plot Summary:
Mr. Mermelstein (Leonard Nimoy) and Mrs. Mermelstein (Blythe Danner) a true-life California couple, thrown into the spotlight of judicial history in the 1980s. He is a Hungarian-born Jew, sole-survivor of his family's extermination at Auschwitz, and she is a Southern Baptist from Tennessee. Their four children are good kids, typical Americans, with just enough orneriness to irritate each other, but enough love and class to pull together when it counts. When challenged by a hate group to prove that Jews were actually gassed at Auschwitz, Mel Mermelstein rises to the occasion with the support of his wife and children, in spite of the dangers to himself, his business, and his family. William John Cox (Dabney Coleman) provides legal help (pro bono) as a lawyer, originally a Roman Catholic from Texas.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 300
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: political
Similar in 82%
Bulgarian Rhapsody (2014)
Plot Summary:
the story of two adolescents, Moni and Zhozho, who meet 17-year-old Zheni in 1943 and with whom both fell in love. The events that follow unfold while Bulgaria has to decide on the deportation of 11 343 Jewish citizens in Macedonia and Thrace.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 437
Genere: Drama
Country: Bulgaria, Israel
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: touching, captivating, emotional, suspenseful, serious, realistic
Similar in 77%
One Day You'll Understand (2008)
Plot Summary:
A man endeavors to collect memories of his grandparents who died in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 367
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Germany, Israel
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, bleak, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 90%
Tsili (2014)
Plot Summary:
Tsili is a young girl caught in the middle of World War II. After her family is taken to a concentration camp, Tsili hides in the forest, free from hatred and men, until the arrival of Marek, a stranger who speaks to her in Yiddish.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 64
Genere: Drama
Country: Israel, France, Italy
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, bleak, disturbing, tense
Similar in 82%
Emotional Arithmetic (2007)
Plot Summary:
An emotionally scarred fifty-something female, a high-profile but haunted British novelist, and a heroic dissident-cum-Soviet psychiatric hospital veteran, all reunite decades after bonding and surviving together in a detention camp during World War II.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, disturbing, contemplative
Similar in 90%
The Rose Garden (1989)
Plot Summary:
In Germany, an old man attacks another old man and is arrested. The attacker refuses to speak. A female lawyer is appointed to him. She discovers that the attacker has numbers tattooed on his arm and the attacked man was a German officer.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 447
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, West Germany, Austria
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: grindhouse, psychological, tense, thought provoking, bleak, serious, realistic, suspenseful, contemplative
Similar in 77%
The Pawnbroker (1964)
Plot Summary:
A Jewish pawnbroker, a victim of Nazi persecution, loses all faith in his fellow man until he realizes too late the tragedy of his actions.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: depressing, emotional, realistic, bleak, heartbreaking, atmospheric, compassionate, psychological, serious, suspenseful
Similar in 78%
The Man in the Glass Booth (1975)
Plot Summary:
Arthur Goldman is a rich Jewish industrialist, living in luxury in a Manhattan high-rise. He banters with his assistant Charlie, often shocking Charlie with his outrageousness and irreverence about aspects of Jewish life. Nonetheless, Charlie is astonished when, one day, Israeli secret agents burst in and arrest Goldman for being not a Jewish businessman but a Nazi war criminal. Whisked to Israel for trial, Goldman forces his accusers to face not only his presumed guilt--but their own.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: sad, independent film, tense, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, talky
Similar in 83%
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 75%
Perlasca: The Courage of a Just Man (2002)
Plot Summary:
It is the real story of Giorgio Perlasca (Luca Zingaretti). During the 1920s he was an Italian Fascist supporter, fighting in Africa an in the Spanish civil war where he deserved a safe conduct for Spanish embassies. After some years, disillusioned by fascism, he is a fresh supplier for the Italian army. In the war years he is in Budapest for his business. He lives an easy life there, well introduced into the Hungarian high society, without any problem coming from the war situation. When the Nazi occupied Hungary, in 1944, instead to leave (Italy had already surrendered to the Allies) he escaped to the Spanish embassy in Budapest using his old safe conduct and becoming a Spanish citizen, changing name into Jorge Perlasca. He starts working as a diplomat here. When Sanz Briz (Geza Tordy), the Spanish consul, is removed, Perlasca immediately substitutes him, like if he was officially appointed from Spanish authorities... Written by 1felco.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 540
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, War
Country: Italy, France, Sweden, Hungary
Duration: 197 min
Plot tags: disturbing, uplifting, serious, emotional, captivating, realistic, epic
Similar in 82%
The Island on Bird Street (1997)
Plot Summary:
Alex is an 11-year old boy who, during WWII, hides in the Jewish ghetto from Nazis after all the relatives have been sent to the concentration camp. The movie portrays the ghetto through his eyes.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Denmark, UK, Germany, France
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: tense, bleak, serious, realistic, suspense, independent film, period piece
Similar in 79%
Out of the Ashes (2003)
Plot Summary:
The real-life story of Gisella Perl, a Jewish Hungarian doctor imprisoned in the notorious Auschwitz death camp of World War II.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: realistic, touching, serious, bleak, captivating, emotional, contemplative, uplifting