Best movies like Memoirs of a Sinner
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Based on an 18th Century novel by James Hogg. Tells the story of a young man whose memories, recounted after death, are supposed to be a series of wrong moral choices ending up with him killing himself.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 180
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: gothic, gothic horror, baroque, grotesque
Best tv shows and movies like Memoirs of a Sinner (1986):
Similar in 84%
Archipelago (1992)
Plot Summary:
An architect witness the brutal massacre by the police of an anti-government meeting and escapes to a remote archipelago.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 22
Genere: Drama
Country: Chile
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: surprise ending
Similar in 83%
Round the Moons Between Earth and Sea (1997)
Plot Summary:
Giuseppe M. Gaudino made his directorial debut with this experimental film portrait contrasting the ancient Roman empire with poverty in present-day Naples. The film's narrator introduces the ancient town of Pozzuloi, home to Nero, his mother Agrippina, the Sibyl of Cumae, and Christian martyr Artema. This historical drama is intertwined with a modern-day story of a poverty-stricken family, forced by earthquakes during the '70s to move to the country, a devastating blow to the close-knit family. After a 1997 Venice Film Festival screening at 125 minutes, the filmmakers announced their plans to re-edit to a shorter running time. Also known as Moonspins Between Land and Sea.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 96
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, Germany
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
Daimler-Benz Limousine (1982)
Plot Summary:
Two brothers of German heritage live in the Polish town of Poznan. Michal is the sensitive brother who likes literature, Andrzej is the daredevil with no intellectual bent, and between the two of them, they steal the German consul's Daimler-Benz limousine, on a lark. When they are caught by the police, the German consul unexpectedly forgives them their prank -- but in the meantime, the episode has put the brothers in touch with a Nazi underground group who want to prepare the way for the pending German invasion (set to occur within a matter of days). Andrej helps the group kill the German consul and then they blame the death on the Poles -- giving the Germans an excuse to cross the border. Not only the consul, but "artistic" types like Michal are also killed for the same reasons. After these murders, Michal realizes his brother is no better than the group he joined, and decides to set his own course in the face of the rising threat of invasion.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 70
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland, West Germany
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: pre war
Similar in 88%
Saving Grace (1998)
Plot Summary:
Grace is a homeless teenager. She befriends an unemployed carpenter and he invites her to share his flat. She moves in and to her surprise a delicate relationship develops. He helps her repair her shattered self-esteem and she begins to feel loved and secure. But then she discovers his secret - he tells her he is Jesus Christ.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 81
Genere: Drama
Country: New Zealand
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 80%
Memed My Hawk (1984)
Plot Summary:
In 1920s Turkey, a young peasant is smitten with a beautiful young girl, who has been promised in marriage to the fat, dullard cousin of the province's powerful and corrupt governor. When an assassination attempt is made against the official, the young man flees his village and joins up with a group of outlaws fighting against the wealthy and powerful landowners who control the lives of the locals and make life miserable for them. The outlaws' successes prompt the governor to call in the Turkish army to capture or kill them.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 204
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Yugoslavia
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 85%
O ilios tou thanatou (1978)
Plot Summary:
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IMDB Rating: 4.2
IMDB Votes: 13
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Lighter Fluid (2016)
Plot Summary:
An experimental look into the lives of teens and young adults in a dysfunctional town.
IMDB Rating:
IMDB Votes:
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 66 min
Plot tags: experimental
Similar in 80%
How to Be Loved (1963)
Plot Summary:
An actress travels from Warsaw to Paris and during the trip reflects on the last few years of her life. It goes back to the German occupation and her hiding of a fellow actor who has supposedly killed a collaborator. He is weak and a bit cowardly, but suffers most from not having any audience for his vanity, ego and supposed bravery. After the war he leaves her but finds out that he has been accused of cowardice. He finally commits suicide and she clears herself of a collaboration charge and eventually becomes a popular actress.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 720
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: road movie
Similar in 89%
Time to Die (2007)
Plot Summary:
An impressionistic, black-and-white portrait of the day-to-day of a nonagenarian woman as she experiences the final act of her life. Danuta Szaflarska stars as Aniela, who lives in a massive yet rapidly-deteriorating wooden house, filled with souvenirs and treasures of eras gone by. Aniela runs into conflict in her dealings with others, particularly a nasty neighbor who sees her property as an eyesore and wants to do everything in his reach to buy it up and tear it down, and her married adult son, who - though kindly - triggers paranoia within Aniela (she cannot help but believe that he is scheming and planning to wheedle the property away from her). Driven aback by these individuals, Aniela finds one of her only sources of comfort and reassurance in her daily talks with her dog, Fila - and develops a great affinity for spying on the neighbors' doings whenever boredom creeps in.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 79%
How Far, How Near (1972)
Plot Summary:
A middle-aged man sets out on a symbolic journey through past, present, and future to learn why an old friend committed suicide, and learns much about his own life along the way.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 303
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: surreal
Similar in 76%
A Story Written with Water (1965)
Plot Summary:
Struggling with his true emotions, dreams, memories of the past and the reality Shizuo is about to marry, but is torn between his wife-to-be and the love to his mother.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 408
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Hospital of the Transfiguration (1979)
Plot Summary:
The film is set in 1943 in a mental asylum in the country. But this is an unusual hospital: there are several incurable schizophrenic cases, staff is bit strange and a writer has voluntarily entered the clinic because he is "peculiar" and a drug addict. Then the German Gestapo arrives. The commandant asks for the list of patients, sorts out the "Aryan" doctors from the others on a return trip, and herds everyone into trucks for evacuation to the extermination camps. A young doctor momentarily escapes by covering himself under a pile of laundry in the basement, and then escapes to the woods just as the Nazi soldiers appear.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 426
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Matthew's Days (1968)
Plot Summary:
A man who is socially inept and out of touch with the world lives with his sister in a small farmhouse. The overly sensitive man lives off his hard-working sibling, taking odd jobs as he gets them to secure his meager earnings. When he brings home a woodcutter from the forest, the sister and the newcomer fall in love. Terrified over a life without his sister, the man can't cope and decides to kill himself. This depressing tale of alienation, doubt and uncertainty was the Polish entry at the Cannes Film Festival in 1968.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 489
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
13 Summers Underwater (2017)
Plot Summary:
Parallel stories connected through an intimacy with death. The living and the dead communicate through visions, memories and reality.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 10
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland, UK, Brazil
Duration: 64 min
Plot tags: surreal
Similar in 76%
Our Lady of the Turks (1968)
Plot Summary:
A man (Carmelo Bene) can not bear to be part of society. He considers himself a "jerk" and so invents its own philosophy, which involves the destruction of his land of Puglia where all citizens are devoted to the Catholic religion. However, the man can not destroy the belief of the pilgrims of Salento, because a woman would prevent that. It is an unknown "Santa Margherita", which tries to divert man from his weird and impossible philosophy. Successive scenes of the film show various situations unreal and dream in which the two protagonists try to obtain the best one on the other. After a blasphemous dialogue between monks, the man includes his whole philosophy in a Moorish building. In fact, this seems to have been the scene of the massacre of the famous 800 Martyrs of Otranto, which are considered by the scetic man the absolute death of Christianity.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 353
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: experimental, aesthetic, avant garde
Similar in 80%
The Shadow (2008)
Plot Summary:
Adapted from Peyami Safa’s novel Selma and Her Shadow, the movie tells the story of Selma. Selma (Görkem Yeltan) is the ultimate femme fatale whose alluring and seductive nature and irresistible charms exude an aura of death for men.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 181
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: neo noir
Similar in 75%
Doctor Glas (1968)
Plot Summary:
Doktor Glas finds himself attracted to a young woman, married to a corrupt clergyman. She's miserable in her marriage, so he agrees to help in anyway he can. But he is quickly torn between passion and morality. The story is based on the 1905 novel by author Hjalmar Söderberg but is updated to the time of the release of the film in 1968.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 144
Genere: Drama
Country: Denmark, Sweden
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
Happy Day (1976)
Plot Summary:
A concentration camp on a barren island is hell for the exiled prisoners. The everyday life of the people who live there consists of interrogations, psychological and physical violence, arbitrary punishments and other torments. One of the prisoners who refuses to yield is subjected to torture. Trying to escape, he falls into the sea. When the Queen visits the island, the prison guards find the runaway and murder him without a second thought, since he is already assumed dead.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 290
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: absurd, allegory
Similar in 80%
The Law and the Fist (1964)
Plot Summary:
At the end of World War Two, Polish people move to the western lands vacated by Germans. But some ruthless profiteers pose as government representatives and intend to make off with loot from a deserted town they took over. One honest man stands up against them because he believes these goods belong to the people.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 412
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
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 81%
The Last Fine Day (2011)
Plot Summary:
The phone call from Sybille was usual. Her family didn't even know that this call just started their last fine day.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 251
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Whispering Pages (1994)
Plot Summary:
The pages that whisper through this brooding, beautiful tone poem are from nineteenth-century Russian literature, primarily Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. An anonymous man wanders through decomposing, fog-enshrouded catacombs and encounters a series of “the degraded and the humiliated,” including a holy prostitute and a Kafkaesque bureaucrat. Shot partly in Sokurov’s dreamlike black and white with a dense sound track of eerie, echoing voices and bursts of mournful Mahler.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 630
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia, Germany
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags: spiritual, contemplative, existential, poetic, avant garde
Similar in 79%
The Story of Sin (1975)
Plot Summary:
A beautiful Polish girl whose lover has gone to Rome to seek a divorce from his previous wife travels around Europe in search of him and suffers a variety of tragic adventures as the men around her try to fit her into their own selfish schemes.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 859
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: erotic, disturbing, controversial, beautiful
Similar in 88%
Sunset Song (2015)
Plot Summary:
The daughter of a Scottish farmer comes of age in the early 1900s.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Luxembourg
Duration: 135 min
Plot tags: captivating, psychological, tense, realistic, costume drama, historical drama, period drama
Similar in 87%
Heart of Glass (1976)
Plot Summary:
A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: surreal, art house, disturbing, experimental, allegory, atmospheric, mind bending, psychedelic, psychological, serious
Similar in 88%
The Annunciation (1984)
Plot Summary:
The Annunciation (in Hungarian: Angyali üdvözlet) is a Hungarian film directed by András Jeles in 1984, based on The Tragedy of Man (1861) by Imre Madách. When Adam (Péter Bocsor) and Eve (Júlia Mérő), having succumbed to Lucifer's temptation, are cast out of the Garden of Eden, Adam holds Lucifer (Eszter Gyalog) to his promise, reminding him that "You said I would know everything!". So Lucifer grants Adam a dream of the world to come. And what a bizarre dream: Adam becomes Miltiades in Athens; a knight called Tancred in Byzantium; Kepler in Prague; Danton in revolutionary Paris; and a nameless suitor in Victorian London. Guided by a deceptively sweet but ultimately contemptuous Lucifer, Adam confronts an endless procession of the horror of the human story ... rapists and concubines, betrayal and savagery, mindless cruelty and fanaticism.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 577
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, surreal, serious, captivating, realistic, stylized, experimental, existential, art film, cult classic
Similar in 84%
The Four Times (2010)
Plot Summary:
An old shepherd lives his last days in a quiet medieval village perched high on the hills of Calabria, at the southernmost tip of Italy. He herds goats under skies that most villagers have deserted long ago. He is sick, and believes to find his medicine in the dust he collects on the church floor, which he drinks in his water every day.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, Germany, Switzerland
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, surreal, emotional, realistic, contemplative, existential, philosophical, spiritual, art house
Similar in 88%
Electra (1990)
Plot Summary:
Born with the beauty of the gods, Electra's lust for sexual gratification is exceeded only by her lust for vengeance. Enter a world of forbidden family love, betrayal and murder.
IMDB Rating: 3.0
IMDB Votes: 83
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 79%
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Plot Summary:
Jesus, a humble Judean carpenter beginning to see that he is the son of God, is drawn into revolutionary action against the Roman occupiers by Judas -- despite his protestations that love, not violence, is the path to salvation. The burden of being the savior of mankind torments Jesus throughout his life, leading him to doubt. As he is put to death on the cross, Jesus is tempted by visions of an ordinary life married to Mary Magdalene.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 62000
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, USA
Duration: 164 min
Plot tags: controversial, psychological, biblical, epic, melancholic, talky, atmospheric, serious, spiritual, sincere
Similar in 79%
Purgatory House (2004)
Plot Summary:
An inside glimpse of how it feels to be a teen in today's disconnected world. PURGATORY HOUSE chronicles the after-life journey of Silver Strand: a lonely teen who abandons her life of turmoil and drug addiction, only to find herself caught somewhere between heaven and hell. There, she must choose whether she will accept her drab existence or discover within herself the power to change.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 470
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: gothic, serious, independent film, realistic, non-linear