Best movies like Lara
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
It is Lara's sixtieth birthday and it is surely no coincidence that her son Viktor is giving the most important piano concert of his career – since it was her who mapped out and forced Victor's musical career in the first place. Yet the day does not go as expected and Lara has to discover that Viktor is using the concert to finally free himself from her grip.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Germany
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, melancholic, depressing, visual, wistful
Best tv shows and movies like Lara (2019):
Similar in 83%
BlackJack (1990)
Plot Summary:
Kaj, Lennart and Robert are 30-somethings who goes out to dance every weekend. At one dance they meet Inger, whom Kaj falls in love with. Kaj has some friends who are playing in a band. The drummer Tommy is known for being the local Casanova, seducing women when ever he gets the chance. It doesn't take him long to have an affair with Inger, behind Kaj's back. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Sweden
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic
Similar in 76%
The Touch (1992)
Plot Summary:
Henry Kesdi is a silenced classical composer and a survivor of the Holocaust. He is coaxed out from retirement by an inspired musicologist, Stefan, who convinces him to compose a complex symphony on his neglected piano. As a help Kesdi gets his new musical secretary. His loyal wife reluctantly accepts her as his young lover.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 307
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Poland, UK, Denmark
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
I Was at Home, But... (2019)
Plot Summary:
After a 13-year-old student disappears without a trace for a week and suddenly reappears, his mother and teachers are confronted with existential questions that change their whole view of life.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, Serbia
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, serious, melancholic, atmospheric
Similar in 85%
Don Giovanni (1979)
Plot Summary:
Screen adapatation of Mozart's greatest opera. Don Giovanni, the infamous womanizer, makes one conquest after another until the ghost of Donna Anna's father, the Commendatore, (whom Giovanni killed) makes his appearance. He offers Giovanni one last chance to repent for his multitudinious improprieties. He will not change his ways So, he is sucked down into hell by evil spirits. High drama, hysterical comedy, magnificent music! (and unfortunately poor direction by film maker Joseph Losey. The final scene looks more like an industrial mishap than a supernatural event.).
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: France, Italy, West Germany
Duration: 176 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, emotional, realistic, stylized
Similar in 89%
Eroica (2003)
Plot Summary:
British filmmaker Simon Cellan Jones directs the BBC drama Eroica, starring Ian Hart as Ludwig van Beethoven. Shot on digital video, this TV film depicts the first performance of Beethoven's Third Symphony, June 9th, 1804, in Vienna, Austria. Prince Lobkowitz (Jack Davenport) has invited friends to listen to Beethoven conduct his new symphony for the first time. Among the aristocratic attendees are Count Dietrichstein (Tim Pigott-Smith), Countess Brunsvik (Claire Skinner), and composer Josef Haydn (Frank Finlay). The actual musical score is performed by the Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique, under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 657
Genere: Drama, History, Music
Country: UK
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, disturbing, period drama
Similar in 78%
Paganini (1989)
Plot Summary:
Kinski believed that he lived through the same experiences as the legendary "devil violinist" Niccolo Paganini, who set whole Europe of the 19th century into frenzy and through whose personality Kinski offers us an incredibly profound and honest insight into his own life; a life of extremities.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Music
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, sincere, touching, melancholic
Similar in 82%
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968)
Plot Summary:
Using letters Anna Magdalena Bach wrote to her husband, seminal composer Johann Sebastian, filmmakers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet created one of the most precise, rewarding biopics ever put to screen. CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH's intense emotional pull can be understood by its status as a musical film in the most thorough sense: its performances – staged as extended sequences set within the very spaces once occupied by Bach himself, with trained performers both donning and playing items accurate to the period – are immense, bringing us closer to the sound than was ever thought possible. Immaculately restored on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH invites viewers to experience a bygone age.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Music
Country: West Germany, Italy
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: contemplative, spiritual, atmospheric, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, gloomy, baroque, concert film
Similar in 76%
Berlin Calling (2008)
Plot Summary:
A man tours clubs around the globe with his manager and girlfriend. On the eve of their largest album release he is admitted to a psychiatric clinic after overdosing at a gig.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 15000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: Germany
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: serious, rough, humorous, realistic, dark comedy, sincere, psychedelic, spiritual, underground film, deep
Similar in 77%
The Sandy Bottom Orchestra (2000)
Plot Summary:
The young-adult novel by Garrison Keillor and Jenny Lind Nilsson gets a lively update in this Showtime feature about an unusual family in Sandy Bottom, Wisconsin. The Greens share musical aspirations, but daughter Rachel (Madeline Zima), a talented violinist, is the one most likely to achieve them. Norman (Tom Irwin) is a dairy farmer and Ingrid (Glenne Headly) is a choir director who abandoned the piano when she married and settled down, but the Greens are a happy family, for the most part. The trick is finding a way to reconcile their dreams with a reality that may hold more riches than they realize. When Norman gets a chance to conduct the local orchestra for the Dairy Days celebration, it's an opportunity for the family to come together, not just with each other, but with a community they had never fully appreciate.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 267
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, feel good, serious, realistic
Similar in 80%
Hilde (2009)
Plot Summary:
A biography of Hildegard Knef, one of Germany's biggest post-war stars.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 790
Genere: Biography, Drama, Music
Country: Germany
Duration: 137 min
Plot tags: sentimental, atmospheric, serious, captivating, realistic, compassionate, non-linear
Similar in 88%
The Silence (1998)
Plot Summary:
Khorshid lives with his mom in a house near a river somewhere in Tajikistan. Th landlord comes around every morning to ask for the rent. Khorshid has to provide the money or else they'll have to leave. His blindness has given him an amazing skill in tuning musical instruments which gets him a job at an instrument making workshop. But the problem is That Khorshid is mesmerized by sonorous music all the time; whenever he hears a great musician play, he loses track of time and place. For this, he always gets lost and gets to work late. How is he going to make a balance between his love of music and his task as a breadwinner?.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Iran, Tajikistan, France
Duration: 76 min
Plot tags: independent film, islamic, atmospheric, touching, serious, realistic, fairy tale
Similar in 78%
Lisbon Story (1994)
Plot Summary:
Lisbon Story is Wim Wender’s homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterous postcard of a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Germany, Portugal
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, serious, sentimental, sincere, inspirational, road movie, visual, psychological, contemplative
Similar in 87%
Hilary and Jackie (1998)
Plot Summary:
The tragic story of world-renowned cellist Jacqueline du Pré, as told from the point of view of her sister, flautist Hilary du Pré-Finzi.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Music
Country: UK
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: emotional, philosophical, independent film, depressing, steamy, tense, sentimental, clever, serious, captivating
Similar in 85%
I Am Not a Hipster (2012)
Plot Summary:
Things are not looking good for Brook, a young, talented singer/songwriter who has become the clichéd tortured artist. Slow to come to terms with the death of his mother, Brook is self-absorbed, aggressive, and the major obstruction to his own career success. His isolation is lifted when his three sisters and estranged father come to spread his mother’s ashes. Brook’s loving sisters have a magical effect on his anger and apathy, suggesting there may be hope for the misanthropic musician after all.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: serious, sincere, atmospheric, touching, realistic, mumblecore, gloomy, independent film, inspirational
Similar in 82%
Duet for One (1986)
Plot Summary:
When Stephanie, a famous violinist, contracts multiple sclerosis her life begins to fall apart. Her career ends, her husband leaves her for another woman and her favorite pupil leave the country. Unable to bear all this loss, Stephanie attempts suicide.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 998
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, touching, emotional, realistic, depressing, independent film
Similar in 79%
Beyond Silence (1996)
Plot Summary:
Beyond Silence is about a family and a young girl’s coming of age story. This German film looks into the lives of the deaf and at a story about the love for music. A girl who has always had to translate speech into sign language for her deaf parents yet when her love for playing music grows strong she must decide to continue doing something she cannot share with her parents.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Germany
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, spiritual, sad, crying, sentimental, sincere, serious, emotional, sexy
Similar in 84%
Saraband (2003)
Plot Summary:
The movie is a sequel to Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (1973), where we revisit the characters of Johan and Marianne, then a married couple. After their divorce, Johan and Marianne haven't seen each other for 32 years. Marianne is still working, as a divorce lawyer. Johan is quite well off and has retired to a house in the Orsa finnmark district of Sweden. On a whim, Marianne decides to visit him. Johan's son from a previous marriage, Henrik, lives nearby in a cottage with his daughter Karin, a gifted cello player. The relationship between father and son is strained. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Finland, Germany, Austria
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: psychological, emotional, meditative, sincere, touching, depressing, art house, cerebral, philosophical, eros
Similar in 77%
Autumn Sonata (1978)
Plot Summary:
After a seven-year absence, Charlotte Andergast travels to Sweden to reunite with her daughter Eva. The pair have a troubled relationship: Charlotte sacrificed the responsibilities of motherhood for a career as a classical pianist. Over an emotional night, the pair reopen the wounds of the past. Charlotte gets another shock when she finds out that her mentally impaired daughter, Helena, is out of the asylum and living with Eva.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 37000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: West Germany, UK
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: art house, depressing, emotional, philosophical, sincere, touching, mind bending, psychedelic, spiritual, ironic
Similar in 86%
Quadrophenia (1979)
Plot Summary:
Based on the 1973 rock opera album of the same name by The Who, this is the story of 60s teenager Jimmy. At work he slaves in a dead-end job. While after, he shops for tailored suits and rides his scooter as part of the London Mod scene.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 20000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: UK
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: surreal, cult classic, stylized, depressing, melancholic, lyrical, atmospheric, captivating, rough, serious
Similar in 83%
Copying Beethoven (2006)
Plot Summary:
A fictionalised exploration of Beethoven's life in his final days working on his Ninth Symphony. It is 1824. Beethoven is racing to finish his new symphony. However, it has been years since his last success and he is plagued by deafness, loneliness and personal trauma. A copyist is urgently needed to help the composer. A fictional character is introduced in the form of a young conservatory student and aspiring composer named Anna Holtz. The mercurial Beethoven is skeptical that a woman might become involved in his masterpiece but slowly comes to trust in Anna's assistance and in the end becomes quite fond of her. By the time the piece is performed, her presence in his life is an absolute necessity. Her deep understanding of his work is such that she even corrects mistakes he has made, while her passionate personality opens a door into his private world.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Music
Country: Germany, UK, Hungary
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: touching, captivating, realistic, serious, stylized, period piece, psychological, inspirational, sincere, spiritual
Similar in 83%
A Late Quartet (2012)
Plot Summary:
When the beloved cellist of a world-renowned string quartet is diagnosed with a life threatening illness, the group’s future suddenly hangs in the balance as suppressed emotions, competing egos and uncontrollable passions threaten to derail years of friendship and collaboration. As they are about to play their 25th anniversary concert — quite possibly their last — only their intimate bond and the power of music can preserve their legacy.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 15000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: realistic, intense, sentimental, sincere, touching, thought provoking, art house, serious, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 89%
Last Days (2005)
Plot Summary:
The life and struggles of a notorious rock musician seeping into a pit of loneliness whose everyday life involves friends and family seeking financial aid and favors, inspired by rock music legend Kurt Cobain and his final hours.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 24000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: psychedelic, art house, atmospheric, bleak, intense, lyrical, serious, psychological, realistic, stylized
Similar in 83%
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Plot Summary:
In Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, gifted but volatile folk musician Llewyn Davis struggles with money, relationships, and his uncertain future following the suicide of his singing partner.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 161000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA, UK, France
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: depressing, atmospheric, bleak, meditative, clever, independent film, melancholic, harsh, lyrical, contemplative
Similar in 76%
Four Minutes (2006)
Plot Summary:
Jenny is young. Her life is over. She killed someone. And she would do it again. When an 80-year-old piano teacher discovers the girl’s secret, her brutality and her dreams, she decides to transform her pupil into the musical wunderkind she once was.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Germany
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, captivating, emotional, sincere, sad, independent film, serious, realistic, gay cinema
Similar in 82%
Boychoir (2014)
Plot Summary:
Stet, a troubled and angry 11-year-old orphan from a small Texas town, ends up at a Boy Choir school back East after the death of his single mom. Completely out of his element, he finds himself in a battle of wills with a demanding Choir Master who recognizes a unique talent in this young boy as he pushes him to discover his creative heart and soul in music.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: sentimental, serious, touching, realistic
Similar in 84%
Together (2002)
Plot Summary:
When a violin prodigy Xiaochun and his father head to Beijing seeking fame and fortune, they soon discover a fierce world of cutthroat ambition. But when Xiaochun is "adopted" by a famous music tutor, success finally seems within reach - until a shocking discovery begins to unravel his entire world, and the boy must make the most difficult choice of his life. Can he achieve the fame his father had always hoped for without losing the extraordinary passion that sets him apart?.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: China, South Korea
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, emotional, stylized, uplifting, atmospheric, sincere, depressing, sad, feel good
Similar in 86%
Mr. Holland's Opus (1995)
Plot Summary:
In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 41000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 143 min
Plot tags: inspirational, emotional, touching, sentimental, sincere, serious, realistic, dramatic, sad, motivational
Similar in 89%
Georgia (1995)
Plot Summary:
Sadie looks up to her older sister Georgia, a successful folk singer who's happily married with children, but can't break out of the bar-band circuit and hit the big time she desperately covets. It's in part due to her attraction to drugs and booze, and also to her own unwise choice in men. Finally, though, Sadie's Achilles heel is a rough, unlovely voice very different than her sister's crowd-pleasing singing.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: France, USA
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: emotional, melancholic, sincere, serious, realistic, talky, independent film, touching, gloomy, sexy
Similar in 90%
Sound of Metal (2019)
Plot Summary:
Metal drummer Ruben begins to lose his hearing. When a doctor tells him his condition will worsen, he thinks his career and life is over. His girlfriend Lou checks the former addict into a rehab for the deaf hoping it will prevent a relapse and help him adapt to his new life. After being welcomed and accepted just as he is, Ruben must choose between his new normal and the life he once knew.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 145000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: psychological, disturbing, tense, captivating, melancholic, realistic, philosophical, touching, offbeat, serious
Similar in 81%
The Piano Teacher (2001)
Plot Summary:
Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 70000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: France, Austria, Germany
Duration: 131 min
Plot tags: sexual, disturbing, psychological, controversial, bleak, emotional, art house, serious, erotic, psycho sexual