Best movies like Life Is a Dream
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A baroque mix of revolutionary politics, pop culture and semiotics loosely based on the play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. A young prince learns that life is just a dream from which we wake when we die. And that dreams may be as real as life.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 123
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: France
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: spiritual, baroque
Best tv shows and movies like Life Is a Dream (1986):
Similar in 77%
The Marcorelle Affair (2000)
Plot Summary:
François Marcorelle, an investigation magistrate in Chambéry, finds himself in the room of a young Polish girl that he met in a restaurant.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 186
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Thriller
Country: France
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: political
Similar in 81%
The Woman Who Dreamed (1987)
Plot Summary:
Something changes in the relationship of Achilleas and Anna when she starts to dream vividly and insists on relating her dreams to her husband. He is a barrister in the middle of an important murder trial and his temper becomes frayed with Anna's seeming indifference and involvement and preoccupation with her dream world.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 101
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Greece
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: allegory, detective
Similar in 77%
Paandurangadu (2008)
Plot Summary:
A playboy in the medieval times discovers his divinity towards Lord Krishna.
IMDB Rating: 3.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: India
Duration: 156 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
La Telenovela Errante (2017)
Plot Summary:
The film revolves around the concept of soap opera. Its structure is based on the assumption that Chilean reality does not exist, but rather is an ensemble of soap operas. There are four audiovisual provinces, and the threat of war is felt among the factions. The political and economic problems are immersed in a fictional jelly divided into evening episodes. The entire Chilean reality is viewed from the point of view of the soap opera, which acts as a revealing filter of this same reality.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 353
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Chile
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: cerebral, soap opera, telenovela
Similar in 82%
Tres tristes tigres (1968)
Plot Summary:
A rambling portrait of Chilean society.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 371
Genere: Drama
Country: Chile
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sex comedy, experimental, independent film
Similar in 77%
Days in the Country (2004)
Plot Summary:
In a bar in Santiago, two old men talk over their past. This is a strange discussion. In fact, they talk of themselves as if they were dead. We don't know what is true or false, what is dream or reality.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 154
Genere: Drama
Country: Chile, France
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
The Braves (2021)
Plot Summary:
Best friends Alma and Margot are inseparable, whether it’s terrorizing cheating lovers or crashing wedding parties. The two women also share the same dream of a successful career on the stage. They get one step closer when they are cast as lead and understudy in a high-profile play in Paris. Alma is keeping a secret that puts her role in jeopardy, but with the unwavering support of Margot, they will try their best to ensure that the show goes on.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 444
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
The Blind Owl (1987)
Plot Summary:
H., 35, an Arabian immigrant, works as projectionist in an old cinema. One day, drawn by the music, he looks through the window of the booth and is fascinated: the dancer he sees on the screen seems to be looking straight into his eyes. He falls in love with her, but the vision last only a moment. Shortly afterwards, an elderly man storms into the projection booth and claims he is his uncle. H. wants to prepare a meal for him and reaches for the oil bottle: he sees the same dancer on the label…. H begins to find echoes of his own life in the images he projects. Everything changes when fiction and reality merge.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 140
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Switzerland, France
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
The Lost Domain (2005)
Plot Summary:
Set in 1973 during the coup d'etat in Chile, Max recalls his encounters in London during Worl War II with French aviator Antoine, a childhood hero he first met in his native country one morning in 1932 and who initiated him to the wonders of aviation.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 109
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: France, Italy, Romania, Spain
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Dragonflies (2022)
Plot Summary:
Álex and Cata, two young women who live on the outskirts of the city, a desolate place full of empty stores and ramshackle bars where dreams end up fading, have been preparing their escape all their lives.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 151
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Love Torn in a Dream (2000)
Plot Summary:
Raul Ruiz's Love Torn in a Dream is introduced with a fake newsreel, taking place in postwar France, in which the cast of the film meet with the producer, who explains the film's complex weave of nine narratives. A diagram in which each story is represented by a letter of the alphabet explicates the intertwining of the nine tales. As the producer explains each actor's role, the film begins. The stories, rooted in folklore, bump up against each other as the film leaps back and forth in time.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 370
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: France, Portugal, Chile
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: semi serious, enigmatic, offbeat, humorous, avant garde, art house, baroque
Similar in 79%
City of Pirates (1983)
Plot Summary:
A surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island of pirates and encounters a man with multiple personalities.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 904
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
Country: France, Portugal
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: surreal, rough, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 81%
Under the Sun of Satan (1987)
Plot Summary:
Satan tempts Father Dossignan, who is trying to save the soul of a young girl who killed one of her lovers.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: France
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: spiritual, sad, controversial, psychological, atmospheric, serious, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 78%
Love and Anger (1969)
Plot Summary:
Five short stories with contemporary settings. In New York, people are indifferent to derelicts sleeping on sidewalks, to a woman's assault in front of an apartment building, and to a couple injured in a car crash. A man, stripped of his identity, dies in bed with actors expressing his agony. A cheerful, innocent young man walking a city street in a time of war pays a price for this innocence. A couple talks about cinema while it watches another couple talk of love and truth on the eve of one character's return to Cuba. Striking students take over a university classroom; an argument follows about revolution or incremental change.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 827
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: anthology, spiritual, art house
Similar in 77%
The Entreaty (1967)
Plot Summary:
Based on the poems “Aluda Ketelauri” and “The Guest and the Host” by the classic of Georgian literature Vazha Pshavela This film opens Tengiz Abuladze’s trilogy (“The Plea”, “The Wishing Tree”, “Repentance”), which discusses the subject of common human values using original national material. The death of heroes, the knights of truth and good, leads the Poet to the conclusion that the evil is invincible. Exhausted by struggle and privations, the Poet lays down his arms. He is visited then by all of his favorite heroes. They put out candles by dipping them into a beer cup – a ritual Khevsuri gesture meaning renunciation. And only after seeing what misfortune and harm the rejection of fighting the evil results in, the Poet takes up arms again.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 869
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags: spiritual, crying, avant garde
Similar in 81%
Mandorla (2015)
Plot Summary:
The only journey is the one within. Mandorla explores a man's search for a meaningful life despite conflicts between his inner and outer worlds. Ernesto is a visual artist and seeker stuck in a corporate job, who is drawn by dark magical visions to a medieval French city. There he seeks an elusive banker to help him unlock an obscure dream that threatens his job, family, and sanity.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 42
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: France, USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: spiritual, experimental
Similar in 86%
Heroic Purgatory (1970)
Plot Summary:
Rikiya Shoda is an engineer working for the Atomic Agency in Japan. One day, his wife Nanako returns home with a lost teenager called Ayu. A man, pretending to be the father, comes to get her back; Ayu keeps telling him that Rikiya and Nanako are her parents. Through this disruption, Rikiya suddenly starts remembering his youth as a revolutionary.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 817
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Japan
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: avant garde, weird
Similar in 77%
Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983)
Plot Summary:
In this classically surreal fantasy, a sailor, known for telling tales, sees a student killing his teacher and decides to spin a few yarns for him. He tells the boy of his many adventures in exotic South American ports where he visited opium dens and stayed in cathouses. In such dark, dreamlike places, the sailor meets many strange, mystical characters.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
Country: France
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: psychedelic, atmospheric, mind bending, offbeat, serious, experimental, surreal, contemplative, stylized, postmodern
Similar in 75%
Night Across the Street (2012)
Plot Summary:
A drama centered on an office worker on the verge of retirement who begins to relive both real and imagined memories.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 519
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Chile, France
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic, surreal, contemplative, crying
Similar in 90%
The Adventures of God (2000)
Plot Summary:
It tells the story of a man and a woman trapped inside what appears to be a dream set in the labyrinthine hallways, mysterious rooms of a large hotel in the 30's, facing the sea.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 158
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Argentina
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: art house, captivating, surreal, absurd, experimental
Similar in 76%
Medea (1969)
Plot Summary:
Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Italy, France, West Germany
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: spiritual, fairy tale, psychedelic, epic, surreal, neorealism, fantasy adventure, cult classic, serious, talky
Similar in 78%
A Buddha (2005)
Plot Summary:
Un Buda follows two brothers orphaned as children when their parents were taken by the military during the "Dirty Wars" of the 1970s in Argentina. Tomas is now a drifting and withdrawn young man who experiments with ascetic practices and has an instinctive compassion for others. His older brother Rafael is a university philosophy professor, detached and alone. Their struggles with each other and the world around them in Buenos Aires take a dramatic turn when they find themselves at a rural Zen center.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 805
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: spiritual
Similar in 77%
The Asthenic Syndrome (1989)
Plot Summary:
In the old days it was called hypochrondria, or black melancholia. Now, apparently, it's termed the Asthenic Syndrome. Whatever it is, Nikolai, a teacher of epicly indifferent pupils, has got it, and it's not much fun.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 153 min
Plot tags: spiritual
Similar in 81%
A Christmas Carol (1977)
Plot Summary:
"If I could work my will, every idiot that goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips would be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly in his heart" So spoke the immortal words of Christmas’ most famous miser, Charles Dicken’s Ebenezer Scrooge. Too mean to join in with the festivities; he sits alone on Christmas Eve. The scene is set for a visitation by the ghost of his late business partner, Marley, now bound to earth by eternal chains and his introduction to the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. For it is they who will take him through his life to face the truth about himself….
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 561
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: UK
Duration: 58 min
Plot tags: spiritual, christmas horror, independent film
Similar in 80%
Northfork (2003)
Plot Summary:
"We are all angels. It is what we do with our wings that separates us." In the next two days, the town of Northfork will cease to exist. The year is 1955 and Northfork is literally about to be "dammed," flooded to make way for a new hydroelectric project.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: bleak, surreal, psychological, melancholic, touching, disturbing, mindfuck, visually stunning, independent film, spiritual
Similar in 88%
Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
Plot Summary:
Middle-aged Giulietta grows suspicious of her husband, Giorgio, when his behavior grows increasingly questionable. One night when Giorgio initiates a seance amongst his friends, Giulietta gets in touch with spirits and learns more about herself and her painful past. Slightly skeptical, but intrigued, she visits a mystic who gives her more information -- and nudges her toward the realization that her husband is indeed a philanderer.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 15000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 137 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychedelic, cerebral, art house, psychological, atmospheric, stylized, psychological thriller, philosophical, mind bending
Similar in 84%
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990)
Plot Summary:
A collection of magical tales based upon the actual dreams of director Akira Kurosawa.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 28000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Japan, USA
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: surreal, atmospheric, anthology, philosophical, cerebral, mind bending, art film, spiritual, artsy, visually appealing
Similar in 86%
The Exterminating Angel (1962)
Plot Summary:
The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave. The Exterminating Angel is a 1962 surrealist film, written and directed by Luis Buñuel, starring Silvia Pinal. Sharply satirical and allegorical, the film contains a view of human nature suggesting "mankind harbors savage instincts and unspeakable secrets". It is considered one of the best 1,000 films by The New York Times.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 35000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Mexico
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: surreal, avant garde, dark comedy, allegory, black comedy, philosophical, political, black and white, mindfuck, atmospheric
Similar in 80%
After Life (1998)
Plot Summary:
After death, people have just one week to choose only a memory to keep for eternity.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Japan
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: philosophical, surreal, emotional, spiritual, existential, psychological, sincere, touching, contemplative, stylized
Similar in 81%
The Shack (2017)
Plot Summary:
After suffering a family tragedy, Mack Phillips spirals into a deep depression causing him to question his innermost beliefs. Facing a crisis of faith, he receives a mysterious letter urging him to an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Despite his doubts, Mack journeys to the shack and encounters an enigmatic trio of strangers led by a woman named Papa. Through this meeting, Mack finds important truths that will transform his understanding of his tragedy and change his life forever.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 39000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA, Canada, Hong Kong
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags: christian film, spiritual, philosophical, psychedelic, motivational, inspirational, mystical, thought provoking, emotional, disgusting