Best movies like Lev Tolstoy
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The film consists of two parts: “Insomnia” and “Departure”. We shall meet Lev Tolstoy in the final years of his life at Yasnaya Polyana. We shall see him surrounded by his family, friends, acquaintances and absolute strangers who were coming to the great man and artist from all over the world. We shall hear “the voice of his thoughts”. In his sleepless nights, we shall follow his memory of the happy youthful years and the crucial, hard ones. We shall witness Tolstoy’s tragic departure from Yasnaya Polyana and his death at an obscure little station of Astapovo.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 120
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia
Duration: 168 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like Lev Tolstoy (1984):
Similar in 84%
Men and Beasts (1962)
Plot Summary:
The story of a man who fought in WW2, was captured by the Nazis and put into different concentration camps, witnessed much cruelty, after his liberation fate took him to Argentina, to work for a German landowner and his Russian wife, then he goes to live in Germany, working as a chauffeur for a rich family, after becoming disillusioned there he returns home to Russia after about 17 years of being away.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 107
Genere: Drama
Country: East Germany, Soviet Union
Duration: 178 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
Florbela (2012)
Plot Summary:
Shaken by a divorce in the 1920s, Portuguese poetess Florbela Espanca uses her writing to deal with her tumultuous relationship with men, eroticism and love.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 518
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Portugal
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 80%
Our Struggles (2018)
Plot Summary:
While Olivier, a 39 year-old foreman gives his job everything he’s got, Laura, his wife and the mother of their two children, abandons the family home, leaving Olivier alone to face his responsibilities. Lost and completely thrown, Olivier is going to have to come to terms with his new status as a single father raising his children alone. Because Laura’s not coming back.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium, France
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes & Arthur Conan Doyle (2005)
Plot Summary:
What led Arthur Conan Doyle to create, and then destroy the world famous detective, Sherlock Holmes? This compelling drama explores the dark secrets that surround the author and his creation.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 279
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
The Pact (2021)
Plot Summary:
Aged 63, Karen Blixen is at the pinnacle of her fame and next in line to win the Nobel Prize for literature. It has been 17 years since she gave up her famous farm in Africa, only to return to Denmark with her life in ruins. Devastated by syphilis and having lost the love of her life, she has reinvented herself as a literary sensation. She is an isolated genius, however, until the day she meets a talented 30-year-old poet. She promises him literary stardom if he in return will obey her unconditionally – even at the cost of him losing everything else in his life.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 846
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Finland
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud (1993)
Plot Summary:
May, 1946, in Paris young poet Jacques Prevel meets Antonin Artaud, the actor, artist, and writer just released from a mental asylum. Over ten months, we follow the mad Artaud from his cruel coaching of an actress in his "theatre of cruelty" to his semi-friendship with Prevel who buys him drugs and hangs on his every word. Meanwhile, Prevel divides his time between Jany, his blond, young, drug-hazed mistress, and Rolande, his dark-haired, long-suffering wife, who has a child during this time. Cruelty, neglect, poverty, egoism, madness, and the pursuit of art mix on the Left Bank.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 164
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: black and white, sexy, thought provoking, enigmatic, bleak, bloody, entertaining, melancholic, surreal, meditative
Similar in 90%
Choice of Purpose (1975)
Plot Summary:
A story of the creation of the atomic bomb in America, Germany and the USSR.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 81
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 158 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Angelus novus (1987)
Plot Summary:
The dramatic and scandalous life of the variously renowned and reviled poet, screenwriter and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) is reportedly poorly served in this highly allegorical and intellectual film which focuses rather more on his poetic and intellectual contributions to Italian Marxism than anyone except a highly intellectual Italian Marxist could possibly want to know. This is hardly surprising, given that the neophyte director of this film has a day job as an assistant professor of "the sociology of conscience." Pasolini, who at one point was convicted of the crime of "offending the religion of the (Italian) state" (Catholicism), later received the Grand Prize from the Catholic Film Office for his straightforward and stunning film of Il Vangelo Secundo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew).
IMDB Rating:
IMDB Votes:
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: intellectual
Similar in 87%
My Heart Is Mine Alone (1997)
Plot Summary:
Helma Sanders-Brahms directs this inventive film that uses the verse of Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler and Nazi poet Gottfried Benn to dramatize the passionate, real-life affair between the two unlikely lovers. Forced out of Germany, Lasker-Schüler makes her way to Jerusalem even as Benn discovers the true nature of the Nazi ideology he had once championed. Lena Stolze and Cornelius Obonya star.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 33
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: art house, expressionism
Similar in 79%
Wojaczek (1999)
Plot Summary:
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IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 443
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Becoming Colette (1991)
Plot Summary:
Erotic French author Colette during her formative years in Paris at the turn of the century, married to a hedonistic bounder who publishes her writings under his name until she leaves him to embark on her own career.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 276
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Germany, UK, France
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: erotic, independent film
Similar in 89%
The Young Schiller (2005)
Plot Summary:
No overview found.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 400
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
The Youth of Peter the Great (1980)
Plot Summary:
The years of the tsar’s adolescence and youth were permeated with deadly danger coming from some of the Boyars, the rebellious Streltsy and Tsarevna Sophia who aspired for power. But already at that early time Peter demonstrates a profound, bright intellect, a strong will and the sense of purpose, which help him disarm both his open and secret enemies.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 208
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Soviet Union, East Germany
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
At the Beginning of Glorious Days (1980)
Plot Summary:
Late 17th century. With no access to the sea, Russia suffers great losses in foreign trade. Peter tries to capture the Turkish fortress of Azov, but with no success: he can win only if he has a fleet. Peter’s ukases provoke the Boyars’ indignation. Europe looks in amazement: the Russian tsar begins to work at a Dutch shipyard learning the subtleties of shipbuilding?! But his training is cut short. Peter has to return to Russia in order to brutally suppress the Streltsy rebellion organized by his sister Sophia.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 175
Genere: Drama, History
Country: East Germany, Soviet Union
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
Karl May (1974)
Plot Summary:
This ethereal, three-hour biopic is the middle film in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s “German Trilogy” on the mythological foundations of the Third Reich. By fusing theater, music, and cinema, Syberberg conjures up Karl May (1842-1912), the immensely popular German author, who set many of his adventure novels in an idealized version of the American Wild West. His tales of the cowboy and the Ubermensch alike were beloved by many, including (Our) Hitler, who supposedly ordered his generals to read May works after defeats in the Russian campaign.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 166
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: West Germany
Duration: 187 min
Plot tags: surreal, visual, avant garde
Similar in 89%
A Season in Hell (1971)
Plot Summary:
Biopic about the life of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 78
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
The Last Road (1986)
Plot Summary:
About the death and the 'last road' of Aleksandr Pushkin, the leading poet and writer of Russia, who was shot on a duel at age 37. Pushkin was defending the reputation of his wife and mother of his four children - Nataly. She was a center of public attention because of her stunning beauty, and she was accused of infidelity. Pushkin reacted by calling the accuser baron Dantes to fight a duel with guns. A deadly gunshot caused Pushkin's death after the duel. Around the dead poet gathered all the leading intellectuals and writers of St. Petersburg. They were helpless to undo the tragedy. Pushkin's home in St. Petersburg was the site where thousands came to see Pushkin on his 'last road'.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 87
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Romance
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Antonia. (2015)
Plot Summary:
Distinguished Italian poet Antonia Pozzi (1912–1938) was among those women who were at odds with the times in which they lived. Her poems record her inability to adapt to social norms and her desire to live fully, and in poetry she sought an escape from reality and from her own complex soul and emotional life.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 292
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Italy, Greece
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Stevie (1978)
Plot Summary:
Portrayal of British poet/author Stevie Smith and her life with her beloved aunt through direct dialogue with the audience by Stevie, as well as flashbacks, and narration by a friend. The movie mainly focuses on her relationship with her aunt, romantic relationships of the past, and the fame she received late in her life.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 538
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: independent film, uplifting, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy, sexual, sexy
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Dovlatov (2018)
Plot Summary:
Dovlatov charts six days in the life of brilliant, ironic writer who saw far beyond the rigid limits of 70s Soviet Russia. Sergei Dovlatov fought to preserve his own talent and decency with poet and writer Joseph Brodsky while watching his artist friends get crushed by the iron-willed state machinery.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Russia, Poland, Serbia
Duration: 126 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, melancholic, visually appealing, art house, beautiful
Similar in 77%
Zelda (1993)
Plot Summary:
Biopic about Zelda Fitzgerald, as played by Natasha Richardson.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 141
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Canada, USA
Duration:
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
You and Me (1971)
Plot Summary:
A neurosurgeon returns back to the USSR from Sweden and has to deal with rejection - both at work and at home.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 431
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
War and Peace: Part IV (1967)
Plot Summary:
As Moscow is set ablaze by the retreating Russians, the Rostovs flee their estate, taking wounded soldiers with them, and unbeknownst to them, also Andrei. Pierre, dressed as a peasant, tries to assassinate Napoleon but is taken prisoner. As the French are forced to retreat, he is marched for months with the Grande Armée, until being freed by a raiding party. The French are defeated by Kutuzov in the Battle of Krasnoi. Andrei is recognized and is brought to his estate. He forgives Natasha on his deathbed. She reunites with Pierre and they marry as Moscow is being rebuilt.
IMDB Rating: 8.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: period drama
Similar in 78%
August (2007)
Plot Summary:
A portrait of Swedish writer August Strindberg.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 176
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 175 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Vysotsky: Thank God I'm Alive (2011)
Plot Summary:
Russian poet, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky was an idol of the 1970s and '80s. In 1980, at the age of 42, he passed away during the Moscow Olympic Games. This is the story of his last great love as handed down to his son from a family friend. Written by nitorch.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, captivating, dramatic, emotional, suspenseful, gloomy
Similar in 84%
Black Butterflies (2011)
Plot Summary:
Confronted by Apartheid and a father who was Minister of Censorship, Ingrid Jonker searched for a home, searched for love. With men like Jack Cope and André Brink she found much love, but no home. Later, in his first speech to the South African Parliament Nelson Mandela read her poem "The Dead Child of Nyanga" and addressed her as one of the finest poets of South Africa.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Netherlands, Germany, South Africa
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, captivating, sexy, edutainment, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 77%
Young Andersen (2005)
Plot Summary:
A powerful modern film narrative, set in a historical framework, about the crucial encounter between vulnerable eighteen-year-old Hans Christian Andersen, who rates himself so highly, and Mr. Meisling, the cynical school principal. An encounter that fundamentally transforms Hans Christian's life.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 533
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Denmark, Norway, Sweden
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: period piece
Similar in 87%
Set Fire to the Stars (2014)
Plot Summary:
An aspiring poet in 1950s New York has his ordered world shaken when he embarks on a week-long retreat to save his hell raising hero, Dylan Thomas.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, atmospheric, realistic, psychological, captivating, black and white, serious, stylized, gloomy
Similar in 79%
Genius (2016)
Plot Summary:
New York in the 1920s. Max Perkins, literary editor at Scribner’s Sons is the first to sign such subsequent literary greats as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. When a sprawling, chaotic 1,000-page manuscript by an unknown writer named Thomas Wolfe falls into his hands, Perkins is convinced he has discovered a literary genius. Together the two men set out to work on a version for publication and a seemingly endless struggle over every single phrase ensues. During this process, Perkins the gentle family man and Wolfe the eccentric author become close – a relationship eyed with suspicion by their wives. When ‘Look Homeward, Angel’ becomes a resounding success, the writer grows increasingly paranoid.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 21000
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: period piece, talky, touching, intellectual, informative, inspirational, melancholic, sexy, thought provoking, enigmatic
Similar in 78%
The End Is My Beginning (2010)
Plot Summary:
When an extraordinary man who has lived through all is approaching his end, he decides to call his son to join him for the last time at his home in Tuscany. His intention is to share some valuable conversations about his life as a press correspondent in Southeast Asia, about the political and social changes which he has seen, and about the spiritual transformation he has experienced in recent years. But for him the most important is to show his son how he is preparing for the last great adventure of a lifetime.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 654
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Germany, Italy
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, contemplative, talky