Best movies like Mother Night
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
An American spy behind the lines during WWII serves as a Nazi propagandist, a role he cannot escape in his future life as he can never reveal his real role in the war.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: political, political thriller, dieselpunk, independent film, uplifting, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Best tv shows and movies like Mother Night (1996):
Similar in 80%
Ship of Fools (1965)
Plot Summary:
Passengers on a ship traveling from Mexico to Europe in the 1930s represent society at large in that era. The crew is German, including the ship's Dr. Schumann, who falls in love with one of the passengers, La Condesa. A young American woman, Jenny, is traveling with the man she loves, David. Jenny is fascinated and puzzled by just who some of the other passengers are.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA
Duration: 149 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, emotional, tense, serious, realistic, black and white, talky, intellectual, retro, psychological
Similar in 78%
Death in Love (2008)
Plot Summary:
Death in Love is a psychosexual-thriller about a love affair between a Jewish woman and a doctor overseeing human experimentation at a Nazi German concentration camp, and the impact this has on her sons' lives in the 1990s.
IMDB Rating: 4.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, serious, emotional, bleak, erotic, sexy, realistic, independent film
Similar in 90%
Frankie Starlight (1995)
Plot Summary:
The quirky story of a young boy's adventures growing up with his stunningly beautiful mother and the two very different men who love her.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 926
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Ireland, UK, France, USA
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: talky, serious, psychological, touching, realistic, cult classic, independent film, crying, fairy tale, sentimental
Similar in 88%
Twin Sisters (2002)
Plot Summary:
Twin Sisters is an epic love story based on the Dutch bestseller by Tessa de Loo that has been read by more than 3.5 million readers in Holland and Germany.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Netherlands, Luxembourg
Duration: 137 min
Plot tags: captivating, sentimental, thought provoking, touching, serious, realistic, emotional, contemplative, non-linear, tear jerker
Similar in 79%
A Year of the Quiet Sun (1984)
Plot Summary:
Shortly after WWII an American soldier (Norman) and a Polish refugee (Emilia) fall in deep love. Eventually he will return to USA and both expect that she will soon follow him. Emilia's mother is sick but would recover by available medicine. Somehow the mother but not Emilia knows that there will only be one ticket. Realising that Emilia would never abandon her, the mother secretly throws away the daily doses given her by Emilia - and dies.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Poland, Italy, West Germany
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: contemplative, intellectual, depressing, atmospheric, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 75%
Come See the Paradise (1990)
Plot Summary:
Come See The Paradise is a deeply touching love story set against the backdrop of a dramatic and controversial period in American history, It follows the romance and eventual marriage of Jack McGurn (Dennis Quad), a hot blooded Irish American, and a beautiful Japanese American Lily Dawanura (Tamlyn Tomita), at the outset of World War II. The clash of cultures, at once painful for the two lovers, becomes insurmountable after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Lily and the Kawamuras are relocated To a bleak, outdoor internment camp in California, Jack is drafted into the Army, powerless to help the woman he loves abandoning all hope of ever winning her family's approval.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: emotional, sincere, thought provoking, serious, realistic, contemplative, crying, sentimental, romantic, clever
Similar in 90%
Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)
Plot Summary:
"Listen: Billie Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." Slaughterhouse-Five is an award-winning 1972 film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same name. Director Hill faithfully renders for the screen Vonnegut's obsessive story of Pilgrim, who survives the 1945 firebombing of Dresden, then lives simultaneously in his past, present, and future.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi, War
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: surreal, atmospheric, philosophical, non-linear, talky, tense, serious, emotional, depressing, cerebral
Similar in 75%
Lili Marleen (1981)
Plot Summary:
Lili Marleen is the story of a German singer named Wilkie who while working in Switzerland falls in love with a Jewish composer named Robert who’s family is helping people to flee from the Nazis. Roberts family is skeptical of Walkie thinking she could be a Nazi as she becomes famous for singing Lili Marleen.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Music, Romance, War
Country: West Germany
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: clever, witty, stylized, art house, romantic drama, sincere, serious, realistic, cynical, light
Similar in 79%
Landscape After Battle (1970)
Plot Summary:
Film opens with the mad rush of haphazard freedom as the concentration camps are liberated. Men are trying to grab food, change clothes, bury their tormentors they find alive. Then they are herded into other camps as the Allies try to devise policy to control the situation. A young poet who cannot quite find himself in this new situation, meets a headstrong Jewish young girl who wants him to run off with her, to the West. He cannot cope with her growing demands for affection, while still harboring the hatred for the Germans and disdain for his fellow men who quickly revert to petty enmities.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 874
Genere: Drama, History, Romance, War
Country: Poland
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: touching, bleak, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, crying
Similar in 79%
Adam Resurrected (2008)
Plot Summary:
Before the war, in Berlin, Adam was an entertainer- cabaret impresario, magician, musician-loved by all until he finds himself in a concentration camp, confronted by Commandant Klein. Adam survives the camp by becoming the Klein's "dog", entertaining him while his wife and daughter are sent off to die. "Adam Resurrected" is the story of a man who once was a dog who meets a dog who once was a boy.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Germany, Israel, USA
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: touching, bleak, serious, realistic, contemplative, emotional, gloomy, entertaining, period drama
Similar in 85%
Edges of the Lord (2001)
Plot Summary:
A 12-year-old Jewish boy hides with a family of Catholic peasant farmers to escape the Nazis.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA, Poland
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, emotional, realistic, tense, serious, contemplative
Similar in 78%
Zelary (2003)
Plot Summary:
A nurse and her surgeon-lover are part of a resistance movement in 1940s Czechoslovakia. When they are discovered, her lover flees and she must find a place to hide. A patient whose life she saved, a man from a remote mountain village where time stopped 150 years ago, agrees to hide her as his wife.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: touching, emotional, realistic, sincere, contemplative, epic, mysterious, serious, sentimental, romantic
Similar in 88%
The Good German (2006)
Plot Summary:
An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 26000
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, War
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: black and white, neo noir, atmospheric, suspenseful, serious, realistic, period piece, clever, stylized, political
Similar in 79%
Shining Through (1992)
Plot Summary:
Spirited New Yorker Linda Voss goes to work for international lawyer and secret Office of Strategic Services operative Ed Leland just before World War II. As they fall in love, the United States enters the fight against Hitler, and Linda volunteers to work for Ed spying undercover behind Nazi lines. Assigned to uncover information about a German bomb, Linda also has personal motives to fulfill: discovering the fate of her Jewish family members in Berlin.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Thriller, War
Country: USA, UK
Duration: 132 min
Plot tags: suspenseful, sentimental, suspense, melancholic, exciting, serious, realistic, romantic, retro, anamorphic
Similar in 90%
The Exception (2016)
Plot Summary:
A German soldier tries to determine if the Dutch resistance has planted a spy to infiltrate the home of Kaiser Wilhelm in Holland during the onset of World War II, but falls for a young Jewish Dutch woman during his investigation.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 15000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: UK, USA, Germany, Belgium
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: captivating, suspense, exciting, tense, suspenseful, historical drama, sexy, romantic drama, action drama, ambiguous ending
Similar in 79%
Good (2008)
Plot Summary:
The rise of national socialism in Germany should not be regarded as a conspiracy of madmen. Millions of "good" people found themselves in a society spiralling into terrible chaos. A film about then, which illuminates the terrors of now.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: UK, Germany
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, disturbing, captivating, christian film, retro, political, sad, period piece, romantic drama
Similar in 83%
A Midnight Clear (1992)
Plot Summary:
Set in 1944 France, an American Intelligence Squad locates a German Platoon wishing to surrender rather than die in Germany's final war offensive. The two groups of men, isolated from the war at present, put aside their differences and spend Christmas together before the surrender plan turns bad and both sides are forced to fight the other.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: bleak, realistic, sexy, scenic, cult classic, rough, serious, suspenseful, independent film, psychological
Similar in 79%
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)
Plot Summary:
Free-spirited writer Juliet Ashton forms a life-changing bond with the delightful and eccentric Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, when she decides to write about the book club they formed during the occupation of Guernsey in WWII.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 51000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: UK, France, USA
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: touching, romantic, uplifting, sincere, period piece, costume drama, feel good, sweet, historical drama, motivational
Similar in 80%
Fateless (2005)
Plot Summary:
An Hungarian youth comes of age at Buchenwald during World War II. György Köves is 14, the son of a merchant who's sent to a forced labor camp. After his father's departure, György gets a job at a brickyard; his bus is stopped and its Jewish occupants sent to camps. There, György find camaraderie, suffering, cruelty, illness, and death. He hears advice on preserving one's dignity and self-esteem. He discovers hatred. If he does survive and returns to Budapest, what will he find? What is natural; what is it to be a Jew? Sepia, black and white, and color alternate to shade the mood.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Hungary, Germany, UK, Israel, France, USA
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, disturbing, emotional, realistic, gloomy, retro, touching, educational, sad
Similar in 82%
The Aryan Couple (2004)
Plot Summary:
A WWII Drama about a German/Jewish industrialist who, in order to ensure his family's safe passage out of Germany, is forced to hand over his business to the Nazis.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, captivating, suspenseful, tense, realistic, gloomy, crying, freeze frame
Similar in 87%
Rosenstrasse (2003)
Plot Summary:
When Ruth's husband dies in New York, in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house - Ruth's cousin - with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lena who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Germany, Netherlands
Duration: 136 min
Plot tags: uplifting, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 85%
Hart's War (2002)
Plot Summary:
Fourth-generation Army Col. William McNamara is imprisoned in a brutal German POW camp. Still, as the senior-ranking American officer, he commands his fellow inmates, keeping a sense of honor alive in a place where honor is easy to destroy, all under the dangerous eye of the Luftwafe vetran Col. Wilhelm Visser. Never giving up the fight to win the war, McNamara is silently planning, waiting for his moment to strike back at the enemy. A murder in the camp gives him the chance to set a risky plan in motion. With a court martial to keep Visser and the Germans distracted, McNamara orchestrates a cunning scheme to escape and destroy a nearby munitions plant, enlisting the unwitting help of young Lt. Tommy Hart. Together with his men, McNamara uses a hero's resolve to carry out his mission, ultimately forced to weigh the value of his life against the good of his country.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 55000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: realistic, tense, suspense, harsh, factual, rough, serious, sincere, emotional, suspenseful
Similar in 85%
Angry Harvest (1985)
Plot Summary:
In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's now a farmer of some wealth, discovers the woman, Rosa, and hides her in his cellar. Leon's a middle-aged Catholic bachelor, tormented by his sexual drive. He doesn't tell Rosa he's seen signs her husband is alive, and he begs her to love him. Rosa offers herself to Leon if he'll help a local Jew in hiding who needs money. Leon pays, and love between Rosa and him does develop, but then Leon's peasant subservience and his limited empathy lead to tragedy. At the war's end, a ray of sunshine comes from an unexpected place.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 852
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: West Germany
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: political, insightful, psychological, tense, sincere, serious, realistic, suspenseful, crying, eighties
Similar in 78%
Lore (2012)
Plot Summary:
After her Nazi parents are imprisoned, Lore leads her younger siblings across a war-torn Germany in 1945. Amidst the chaos, she encounters mysterious Jewish refugee Thomas, who shatters her fragile reality with hatred and desire. To live, she must trust someone she was taught to hate and face the darkness within herself.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 16000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Australia, Germany, UK
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: tense, disturbing, bleak, suspense, psychological, harsh, sincere, realistic, art house, road movie
Similar in 86%
The Truce (1997)
Plot Summary:
Although liberated from Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, Levi did not reach Turin until October 19 of that year. After spending some time in a Soviet camp for former concentration camp inmates, he embarked on an arduous journey home in the company of Italian former prisoners of war from the Italian Army in Russia. His long railway journey home to Turin took him on a circuitous route from Poland, through Russia, Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: sincere, historical drama, uplifting, bleak, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 87%
Walking with the Enemy (2013)
Plot Summary:
Regent Horthy is the leader of Hungary and a German ally, but his favorable standing with Hitler changes as the war comes to an end. Forced to cede Hungary’s power or else witness the execution of his son, Regent Horthy gives up control of his country to the Nazis, who quickly move Hungarians to ghettos and death camps, with no hope in sight. But the despair changes when a young man named Elek emerges. Separated from his family during the relocations and aided by the woman he loves , Elek defies the enemy by becoming one of them. In a race against time, disguised as a Nazi Officer he embarks on a mission to save his family and thousands of his countrymen.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Action, Drama, History, Romance, War
Country: Romania, Hungary, Canada, USA
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: bleak, emotional, realistic, political thriller, costume drama, serious, independent film
Similar in 82%
The Grey Zone (2001)
Plot Summary:
A Nazi doctor, along with the Sonderkomando Jews – who are forced to work in the crematoria of Auschwitz against their fellow-Jews – find themselves in a moral grey zone.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: depressing, bleak, disturbing, factual, emotional, harsh, compassionate, serious, realistic, heartbreaking
Similar in 84%
Jakob the Liar (1999)
Plot Summary:
In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being caught out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA, France, Germany
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: sad, cult classic, sincere, uplifting, humorous, emotional, realistic, gloomy, semi serious, sentimental
Similar in 87%
Sophie's Choice (1982)
Plot Summary:
Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 52000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: depressing, sad, realistic, heartbreaking, serious, touching, crying, emotional, bleak, disturbing
Similar in 86%
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008)
Plot Summary:
When his family moves from their home in Berlin to a strange new house in Poland, young Bruno befriends Shmuel, a boy who lives on the other side of the fence where everyone seems to be wearing striped pajamas. Unaware of Shmuel's fate as a Jewish prisoner or the role his own Nazi father plays in his imprisonment, Bruno embarks on a dangerous journey inside the camp's walls.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 239000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: emotional, touching, sad, heartbreaking, sentimental, tear jerker, serious, crying, thought provoking, gloomy