Best movies like Marching in Darkness
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A young recruit to the Italian army (Albanese) discovers and rejects the seedy world of soldiers who prostitute themselves to supplement their income. But before leaving this world he is raped by a highly-respected senior officer (Barr) and must decide whether to risk bringing proceedings against him.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 115
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: controversial, gay cinema
Best tv shows and movies like Marching in Darkness (1995):
Similar in 80%
Soldati - 365 all'alba (1987)
Plot Summary:
Claudio Scanna is a private in the Italian army: during his first night in a new military base he gets in a fight with senior recruits. Lieutenant Fili, Claudio's commanding officer, is denied a promotion because his superiors discover he was absent without justification during the night of the fight. Fili blames Claudio and vows to make his remaining months in the service a living hell.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 387
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Beautiful Mystery (1983)
Plot Summary:
Shinohara, a young bodybuilder, joins a para-military sect in northern Japan. His instructor, Takizawa, takes a liking to the new recruit. After an early “special” training session the two develop a lasting and loving relationship. “Beautiful Mystery” was the first gay “adult” film to come out of Japan. Although tame by U.S. standards, it is ground–breaking nonetheless.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 123
Genere: Drama, Comedy
Country: Japan
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: gay cinema
Similar in 75%
Cover boy: L'ultima rivoluzione (2006)
Plot Summary:
Cover-boy racconta l’amicizia fra Ioan (Eduard Gabia) e Michele (Luca Lionello) l’uno rumeno e l’altro italiano. Due mondi che casualmente s’incontrano: l’esperienza di chi, figlio della rivoluzione post comunista, è fuggito dal proprio paese alla ricerca di un futuro migliore e l’esperienza di chi, precario, vive la crisi del lavoro occidentale.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 689
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
The Wind in the Evening (2004)
Plot Summary:
Nightfall. Marco, a politician, is murdered while he is going home. Also Luca, a gay man, is going home, where his partner Paolo is waiting. But he is on the killer's way, and he is shot. Paolo dashes to the hospital but the doctor doesn't want to tell him anything because Paolo isn't a "real" relative. Luca dies. Paolo starts walking in the streets of the town, where his loneliness will be ever misunderstood. A barman tries to comfort him supposing he was discharged by his girlfriend. Luca's mother orders Paolo to leave the house. A guy takes Paolo to him's, looking for a partner in the night. Paolo runs away from everybody, also from his friend Francesca: she says she is understanding but she can't. While the dawn is coming, Paolo reads about the murders on the newspapers, and realizes that what happened was reality.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 96
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Postcards from America (1994)
Plot Summary:
Inspired by the autobiographical writings of David Wojnarowicz, "Postcards From America" chronicles the abuse the artist suffered as a child at the hands of his father and his subsequent running away to New York to become a street hustler.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 258
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: semi autobiographical, independent film, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 84%
Pretty Boy (1993)
Plot Summary:
Nick is a handsome 13-year-old runaway whose search for a family leads him into the arms of male prostitution. While Nick's sexual exploits with strange men keep his pockets lined with cash, the experience does nothing to preserve his waning innocence. Soon enough, he's as hardened as a man three times his age.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 524
Genere: Drama
Country: Denmark
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
The Gold Rimmed Glasses (1987)
Plot Summary:
In this tragic romance set in Ferrara, Italy in 1938, and at a nearby seaside resort, a wealthy Jewish boy is thwarted in marrying the girl he loves when Mussolini's race laws (enacted to cement the regime's growing alliance with Germany) take effect. Rather than suffer as a Jewess, his intended converts to Catholicism and marries a young fascist. Meanwhile, the town doctor, who is a homosexual, becomes increasingly outcast when he openly falls in love with a boxer. The boxer at first is the man's lover, but when he decides to beat and rob the doctor, no one comes to his aid, and later he commits suicide. This movie is part of a trilogy about prewar Ferrara by director Giuliano Montaldo.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 651
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France, Yugoslavia
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: lgbt cinema, freeze frame, gay cinema
Similar in 82%
Burlesque King (1999)
Plot Summary:
Harry leaves Olongapo, the former site of American bases, with his best friend James. They end up in Manila where they soon find work as macho dancers in a gay bar run by Mama Odette. Harry has a troubled past -- his American father used to pimp him and his mother, Betty. When his father accidentally killed his mother, Harry struck out on his own. He made a vow to kill his father.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 200
Genere: Drama
Country: Philippines
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: erotic
Similar in 85%
Duffer (1972)
Plot Summary:
'Duffer' (1971) is a rarely seen cult British movie that has languished in the vaults of the British Film Institute for the best part of forty years until they decided to release it on DVD/BluRay for the first time last month. It's a black and white movie set in a declining Notting Hill with pretty much no dialogue spoken by those taking part in it. Almost everything is spoken as a commentary by Duffer, a lost teenage boy whose life bounces between homosexual and heterosuxual worlds. This movie anticipates David Lynch's 'Eraserhead' by five years.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 187
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Boys on the Outside (1990)
Plot Summary:
Young men with no future have little in the present as well. Natale is released from prison: he takes up with his friends again but none can find work. Claudio, from Palermo, gets out of juvenile detention in Naples and he's met by Vita, a girl who's come from home to run away with him. Where can they go? A young dad, whose potato stall at the market is shut down because he has no permit, takes his two small children to the beach and yells at them. Mario, gay, a prostitute in drag, gets a visit from his mom; he offers tea, then finds the water to his apartment is shut off. Social workers drop by, parole officers file reports. What hope is there? What options besides crime?.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 591
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
Hooks to the Left (2006)
Plot Summary:
Based on the journals of Nail, a male hustler who reentered the prostitution ring after 10 years in a relationship, Todd Verow's experimental documentary (shot entirely on a cell phone camera) examines the changing landscape of male prostitution. Nail's narrated journal entries accompany dreamy and abstract imagery shot all over the world. Verow also explores how the Internet has shaped the sex trade.
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 30
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 74 min
Plot tags: experimental, suspense, disturbing, avant garde
Similar in 86%
7 Kinds Οf Wrath (2014)
Plot Summary:
Petros is an archaeologist who experiences the naked Greek paranoia in the center of Athens. Either by choice or coincidence, he comes into contact with people who are "different": An Arab immigrant, who comes to Greece, a land of "infidels", determined to conquer it by any means; A Greek-French cello player, who is burdened by the agony of her alcoholic mother; A young Albanian pianist, who carries the curse of his own personal genius and divinity; A Greek immigrant, who was repatriated but now has nowhere to call home; A bank director, who believes everything can be bought, even love; A patrolman, who creates his own version of socio-political reality. Petros' contact with these people is in fact a traumatic experience. For each encounter he has to pay a price. Sometimes the price is material, while other times it's emotional. At times it is both. Will the experience gained make up for the loss?.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 116
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: queer cinema
Similar in 76%
Praxis (2008)
Plot Summary:
Praxis peels away the layers of narrative even as Brian, the film's axis, struggles to create his true self. Brian, a writer on the verge of a breakdown, is aided by Joe and an Elusive Woman as he sifts through the fragments of his persona to discover his true core. Fighting against fear and the indifference of society - aptly symbolized by the medical establishment - his quest reflects the classical mythos of Proteus and the human search for meaning in the universe.
IMDB Rating: 3.4
IMDB Votes: 151
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Lonesome (2022)
Plot Summary:
Two young men make a connection neither of them expects or knows how to navigate. Casey, a young man from the countryside running from a small-town scandal, finds himself down and out in the big smoke of Sydney. When he meets Tib, a young city lad, struggling with his own scars of isolation, there’s chemistry, not only sexually but also emotionally as both men find something they have been missing. Can they overcome their own insecurities and let the other in or are the walls they have built too strong to knock down?.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 802
Genere: Drama
Country: Australia
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: art house, gay cinema
Similar in 79%
Body Electric (2017)
Plot Summary:
Elias is a handsome young deputy manager in a garment factory in São Paulo. When he’s not working, he enjoys casual encounters in the big city. The arrival of a young African, Fernando, on the production line piques his interest and Elias finds himself increasingly drawn into socialising with his work colleagues.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 896
Genere: Drama
Country: Brazil
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: queer cinema
Similar in 76%
Moneyboys (2021)
Plot Summary:
Fei works illegally as a hustler in order to support his family, yet when he realizes they are willing to accept his money but not his way of life, there is a major breakdown in their relations. Through his relationship to the headstrong Long, Fei seems able to find a new lease on life, but then he encounters Xiaolai, the love of his youth, who confronts him with the guilt of his repressed past.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Austria, France, Belgium, Taiwan
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, disturbing, gay cinema, interesting
Similar in 90%
Lie with Me (2022)
Plot Summary:
An author returns to his hometown of Cognac for the first time in 35 years to help promote a distillery. Once there, he meets his first love’s son, Lucas. Memories come rushing back to him: irrepressible attraction, bodies becoming one in the heat of desire, a passion that can never be revealed… His first love’s name was Thomas. They were 17.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: gay cinema
Similar in 82%
Beefcake (1998)
Plot Summary:
Thom Fitzgerald's (The Hanging Garden) provocative blending of fiction and documentary, tells the story of Bob Mizer, the pioneering founder of the Athletic Model Guild, a company which produced still photographs and short films extolling the beauty and chiseled physiques of men. The fiction story follows photographer and enterprising businessman Mizer, who teamed up with his mother in 1945 to film his beefy star-wannabes around his sun-drenched pool. It is here that Neil, a naive, right-off-the-bus teen is lured into using his handsome looks to become a model. The wide-eyed Neil soon learns about the world of sex and prostitution. But a police raid and ensuing criminal trial soon threaten both of the men's worlds. Interspersed with the story are rare archival footage and interviews with former co-workers, customers and models.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, UK, France, Italy
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: stylized, factual, controversial, realistic, sexual, independent film, semi documentary, sentimental, witty, semi serious
Similar in 77%
Open Bodies (1998)
Plot Summary:
Born to a North African father and a French mother, 18-year-old Parisian high school senior Rémi works part-time in an Arab grocery store while studying management and commerce. He responds to a school ad seeking subjects for a film, and Marc, who placed the ad, auditions Rémi by filming an interview with him. Rémi and Marc wind up in bed, and Rémi soon has other sexual experiences – with a guy in a men's room and with a young woman who grabs him while she's dancing in the street.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 189
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 47 min
Plot tags: queer cinema
Similar in 76%
Sergeant Matlovich vs. the U.S. Air Force (1978)
Plot Summary:
The true story of Leonard Matlovich, a U.S. Air Force sergeant who was dismissed from the Air Force for being gay and the story of his fight to be reinstated.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 74
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: political
Similar in 81%
Love in the Time of Civil War (2014)
Plot Summary:
Lauded Quebec filmmaker Rodrigue Jean (Lost Song) takes a fearless, unflinching look at the reality of addiction in this tough-minded docudrama set in the bleak milieu of hustlers and junkies in Montreal.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 498
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: touching, bleak, realistic, disturbing, serious
Similar in 89%
Marilyn (2018)
Plot Summary:
Marcos and his family work as ranch hands. While his father and brother handle the heavier tasks, Marcos stays home, close to his mother. Each one has their future laid out before them, yet Marcos bides his time waiting for Carnival, the one moment where he can let his true self out to shine. The sudden death of his father leaves his family in a very vulnerable situation. The ranch owner hounds them to go away, while Marcos’s mother pressures him to take over the work in the fields. Nicknamed Marilyn by the other teenagers in town, Marcos is a target for desire and discrimination.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 450
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina, Chile
Duration: 79 min
Plot tags: psychological, sexy, tense, sincere, unusual plot structure, disturbing, contemplative, crying, interesting, queer cinema
Similar in 85%
Hidden Pleasures (1977)
Plot Summary:
The plot follows a middle-aged, closeted homosexual banker from a wealthy family, who falls in love with a much younger heterosexual man.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 329
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: social, independent film, gay cinema
Similar in 78%
Longing Nights (2013)
Plot Summary:
Aitana, Pierrick, Rita and Jorge are all in their twenties and all look for ways to make their nights in the city of Madrid a little less lonely. Aitana is a sweet girl trapped in a men’s body; Pierrick is a cute French gay; Rita doesn't much care about her partner, Carolina, and walks through life with no expectations; Jorge is trapped in a relationship with no future: the one he has with Maria. Set against a background of drugs, sex, multiple partners and differing sexualities, Longing Nights follows the individual stories of these young people. A candid portrait of four relationships highly loaded with eroticism from beginning to end. Four stories told without no borders between fiction and reality.
IMDB Rating: 4.2
IMDB Votes: 167
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain, Portugal
Duration: 70 min
Plot tags: sexy, psychological, romantic, touching, unusual plot structure, melancholic, contemplative, eros, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 82%
Label Me (2019)
Plot Summary:
Sex is power, and Waseem, a Syrian gay-for-pay hustler seeking asylum in Cologne, wields it like a shield. Keeping his johns at an emotional arm’s length while satisfying their most carnal desires in order to eke out a living, he meets his match in Lars: a kind, affluent professional with a growing personal interest in Waseem. This gripping tale of transactional identity explores the tactical exchange of trust and intimacy in a partnership, and the divisions between immigrants and their host countries in contemporary Europe.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: psychological, sentimental, romantic, sexy, touching, unusual plot structure, melancholic, contemplative, gay cinema
Similar in 85%
Boys Life: Three Stories of Love, Lust, and Liberation (1994)
Plot Summary:
Each of the three short films in this collection presents a young gay man at the threshold of adulthood. In "Pool Days," Justin is a 17-year old Bethesda lad, hired as the evening life guard at a fitness center. In the course of the summer, he realizes and embraces that he's gay. In "A Friend of Dorothy," Winston arrives from upstate for his freshman year at NYU. He has to figure out, with some help from Anne, a hometown friend, how to build a social life as a young gay man in the city. In "The Disco Years," Tom looks back on 1978, the year in high school that he came out of the closet after one joyful and several painful encounters.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 531
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: anthology, independent film, sentimental, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious, sexy, feel good, sweet
Similar in 81%
Cal (2013)
Plot Summary:
Twenty-year-old Cal returns from France to Britain after receiving news that his mother is ill. His finds his home city of Bristol facing hard economic times brought on by the global economic crisis, with poverty and crime on the rise and rioting and looting almost a nightly occurrence. It is not a warm homecoming as his sick mother remains stubbornly homophobic and wants nothing to do with the now openingly gay Cal while his battered Auntie Jane, now living in a run down council house, dulls her stagnation with welfare funded booze and disturbing attempts to sexually seduce her nephew. Navigating his way across this new landscape he meets a young student who needs his help. However his act of kindness brings him into contact with a lawless drug dealing pimp and a race against time to make peace with his mother and get out of town as quickly as possible. An intense tale of a family mired in poverty, angry and lost but still searching for love, respect and acceptance.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 474
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, erotic, tense, gloomy, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 78%
Sauvage (2018)
Plot Summary:
Leo is 22 and sells his body on the street for a bit of cash. The men come and go, and he stays right here... longing for love. He doesn’t know what the future will bring. He hits the road. His heart is pounding.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: rough, melancholic, suspense, suspenseful, bleak, erotic, romantic, crying, queer cinema, gay cinema
Similar in 84%
Mandragora (1997)
Plot Summary:
Marek is a 15-year-old from a provincial village who runs away to Prague when he begins to fail at school. He is mugged shortly after arriving in the city and is rescued by Honza with the promise of work. Marek is taken to an apartment, drugged, and becomes a male prostitute. He is a bit smarter than his colleagues and teams up with a friend, David, in order to go after bigger scores – to cash in and get out. They manage to stash away a bit of money, but when it comes time to return home, Marek loses his nerve and is soon back in the city.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Czech Republic
Duration: 126 min
Plot tags: disturbing, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, gloomy, semi documentary, controversial, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 90%
End of the Century (2019)
Plot Summary:
Two men meet in Barcelona and after spending a day together they realize that they have already met twenty years ago.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: unusual plot structure, sexy, psychological, sentimental, romantic, captivating, melancholic, lgbt cinema, queer cinema, gay cinema