Best movies like Once In The Desert
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The films follows a Syrian War Explosive Ordnance Disposal team who are targeted by ISIS militants while they prepare the recently liberated historic site of Palmyra to hold a symbolic concert of the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra. The peacekeeping event can only be held in Palmyra that has been severely damaged by the terrorists only if the ancient city and the roads leading to it are defused. The EOD team clears the way one kilometer at a time. But the closer they get to the center of Palmyra, the more destructive the explosives. Tension grows between the young team Captain and the most experienced of the EOD experts. And yet, despite their differences, when the team falls into an ambush and the Captain goes missing, it’s the experienced sapper that sets out to search for him.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 410
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like Once In The Desert (2022):
Similar in 78%
Alias Maria (2015)
Plot Summary:
A vision of Colombia's inhuman armed conflict, seen through the eyes of a young - and pregnant - girl soldier.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 398
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Colombia, Argentina, France
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: tense, psychological, rough, unusual plot structure
Similar in 88%
The Best in Hell (2022)
Plot Summary:
Units of the "whites" (PMC "Wagner") perform an assault operation to capture buildings. They are opposed by the "yellow" units, which have dug in these buildings and are also ready to fight to the end.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 717
Genere: War
Country: Russia
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Presences (2022)
Plot Summary:
A man who loses his wife and goes to seclude himself in a cabin in the woods, where strange things happen.
IMDB Rating: 4.3
IMDB Votes: 245
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Twilight (2006)
Plot Summary:
In the last winter 1945 of WWII a group of captive German soldiers is brought to a remote Russian village, where widows, a child and a crippled are the only ones left. This is a military drama about those, who can love and forgive.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 253
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Germany, Russia
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, touching, heartbreaking, disturbing
Similar in 90%
Killzone (1985)
Plot Summary:
It turns awry for a Vietnam veteran with problems during an exercise at a survival camp, and he believes that he is back in Vietnam. He kills many of the leaders whom he believes is the Vietcong. The other participants venture out to find him and catch him before he injures or kills any more. The camp holds that against have no plans to capture him alive. Is this going out, he namely major problems.
IMDB Rating: 4.3
IMDB Votes: 136
Genere: Action, Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 76%
My Good Hans (2015)
Plot Summary:
It is a story about the Soviet worker Pyotr and the German engineer Hans, who came to the USSR before the war on a business trip. At a Soviet plant the German team works in cooperation with Russian specialists. Once Hans makes a mistake which causes the explosion of the furnace and human losses. Hans finds himself at the mercy of Pyotr, the only witness to his actions near the furnace. Pyotr also depends on Hans, because Pyotr’s very presence near the furnace entails accusation of subversive actions and a death sentence. Mutual suspicion gives way to silent sympathy and later friendship. They even look like each other, both have small children. Pyotr secretly leaves the town with his family but Hans feels loss rather that relief at the disappearance of the embarrassing witness.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 210
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Germany, Russia
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: exciting, serious, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 85%
A Russian Youth (2019)
Plot Summary:
The First World war was a tragedy that launched a series of severe tests for the Russian people: revolution, civil war, famine, political repression, the Second World war. And all this fell on one generation of people. What courage and patience did those people must have had in order to survive all the upheavals of the XXth century? What was their character like? What they must've been thinking and feeling? These questions are asked by the authors of the film "A Russian Youth". The film tells the story of a simple village boy who goes to the front of the First World war with a naive youthful dream of fame and medals. In the first battle he loses his sight. He is left to serve as a listener - he must listen carefully through huge metal funnels and raise an alarm in case of enemy airplanes' approach. Back then the basis of the Russian Empire army was wormed of peasants and working class - people with a characteristic appearance, who lived lives of hard physical labor. Many.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 808
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
The Man from the Oak Forest (1964)
Plot Summary:
An ex-servant becomes a lonely Shepard, killer hidden in the mountain woods during wartime. Under disguise of a black marketeer, a woman from the town maintains steady connection between the town and mountain, and organizes a resistance movement. Shepard falls in love with her, but suspects that she possibly wants gold instead.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 73
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Yugoslavia
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: black and white, epic
Similar in 80%
Beanpole (2019)
Plot Summary:
Set in post-WWII Leningrad as two female soldiers return from war and attempt to rebuild their lives in the ravaged city.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 12000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: heartbreaking, rough, art house, compassionate, sad, erotic, psychological thriller, tense, philosophical, independent film
Similar in 87%
Thirst (2013)
Plot Summary:
Young Chechnya war veteran alienates himself from his friends and family because of his burned face. When he has to help find his war-time friend, he manages to get back to life again.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 177
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Paradise (2016)
Plot Summary:
The historical drama set during the Second World War centres on three people whose paths cross: a Russian aristocratic emigrant and member of the French resistance, a French collaborator and a high-ranking German SS officer.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia, Germany
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: psychological, rough, touching, black and white, philosophical
Similar in 80%
Break-through (2006)
Plot Summary:
Russian paratroopers company meets superior forces of Chechen separatists during raid in mountains and accept uphill battle with no chance to survive. Based on Battle for Height 776.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 79
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: tense, suspense, disturbing
Similar in 75%
The One (2015)
Plot Summary:
During WWII a Soviet artillery unit is fighting Nazis while trying to do everything to save lives of a group of deaf children near their position.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 463
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: tense, touching, sincere, captivating, emotional
Similar in 90%
Inbetween Worlds (2014)
Plot Summary:
Jesper is a soldier in the German army, who reports for a new tour of duty in Afghanistan. His unit is to protect a village from the Taliban.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 681
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Germany
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, psychological, tense, captivating, sincere, rough
Similar in 77%
The Dawns Here Are Quiet... (2015)
Plot Summary:
It is late spring of 1942, and the Great Patriotic War is in full swing. A long way off from the front-line, at some God-forgotten junction, the Germans make an air landing operation in an attempt to get through to the Kirov railway and the White Sea - the Baltic Sea Canal. These aren't just ordinary paratroopers. This is a team of seasoned and highly trained infiltrators, the elite of the Waffen-SS, superhumans. The only thing in their way is an anti-aircraft artillery unit of corporal Vaskov and five young women in training. It may seem like a fight of local significance, but the countrys main strategic transportation artery is at stake. Can the corporal and his 'petite newbies' prevent Nazi sabotage and at what cost?.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 175 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, compassionate, rough, suspense, disturbing, dramatic, uplifting
Similar in 89%
Convoy 48 (2019)
Plot Summary:
Yesterday's Leningrad schoolgirl Masha Yablochkina, after a fierce blockade winter of 1941-1942, comes to the railway courses hoping to survive and gain strength. From there, the girl is sent to the construction of the Shlisselburg highway, which connects the city with the mainland and is in direct sight of German artillery. So the heroine gets into the 48th locomotive column of the special reserve NKPS, which, at the cost of the deadly risk, will have to deliver 75% of all cargo and military equipment to Leningrad.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 385
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: exciting, tense, bleak, suspense, suspenseful
Similar in 79%
Alexandra (2007)
Plot Summary:
An elderly woman takes a train trip to visit her grandson at his army camp inside Chechnya.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia, France
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, realistic, contemplative, touching, slow cinema, aesthetic
Similar in 85%
Prisoner of the Mountains (1996)
Plot Summary:
Based upon a short story by Leo Tolstoy, two Russian soldiers, Sacha and Vania, are ambushed by Muslim rebels in the grandly forbidding Caucasus and taken prisoner. Although complete understanding never fully emerges, their bittersweet ordeal reveals the human soul of two vastly different cultures.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia, Kazakhstan
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: realistic, bleak, rough, suspenseful, serious, emotional, gloomy, sentimental, road movie, atmospheric
Similar in 88%
Sniper. The White Raven (2022)
Plot Summary:
Mykola is an eccentric pacifist who wants to be useful to humanity. When the war begins at Donbass, Mykola’s naive world is collapsing as the militants kill his pregnant wife and burn his home to the ground. Recovered, he makes a cardinal decision and gets enlisted in a sniper company. Having met his wife’s killers, he emotionally breaks down and arranges “sniper terror” for the enemy. He’s saved from a senseless death by his instructor who himself gets mortally wounded. The death of a friend leaves a “scar” and Mykola is ready to sacrifice his life.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Ukraine
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, thought provoking, captivating, suspense, disturbing
Similar in 76%
The Patience Stone (2012)
Plot Summary:
A woman in an unnamed, war-torn Middle Eastern country delivers an engrossing, emotional monologue to her comatose husband, in novelist and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi's poetic and politically charged allegory based on his award-winning novel. (TIFF).
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: France, Germany, UK, Afghanistan
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: sincere, disturbing, rough, captivating, realistic, independent film, inspirational, social, sad, islamic
Similar in 81%
Timbuktu (2014)
Plot Summary:
A cattle herder and his family who reside in the dunes of Timbuktu find their quiet lives -- which are typically free of the Jihadists determined to control their faith -- abruptly disturbed. A look at the brief occupation of Timbuktu by militant Islamic rebels.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: France, Mauritania, Qatar
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: disturbing, harsh, compassionate, emotional, intense, social, art house, independent film, intercultural, slow cinema
Similar in 87%
The Road to Guantanamo (2006)
Plot Summary:
Part drama, part documentary, The Road to Guantánamo focuses on the Tipton Three, a trio of British Muslims who were held in Guantanamo Bay for two years until they were released without charge.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: UK
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: disturbing, rough, realistic, intense, serious, suspenseful, tense, sincere, political, road movie
Similar in 75%
Eleni (1985)
Plot Summary:
Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: political, independent film, psychological, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, suspenseful, contemplative
Similar in 77%
1612: Chronicles of the Dark Time (2007)
Plot Summary:
The czar of Russia has died and a power vacuum has developed. This period in the late 16th and early 17th century has been called "The Time of Troubles." There are many impostors who claim to the right to rule, but there's only one heir, the Czarina Kseniya Godunova. She has married a Polish military leader who wants to claim the Russian throne in her name so he can rule all of Russia. As the Poles move in on Moscow in an attempt to install the czarina on the throne, Andrei, a serf with a life-long infatuation of the czarina attempts to save her from her brutal Polish husband.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, History, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 144 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, tense, epic, baroque
Similar in 86%
4 Days in May (2011)
Plot Summary:
A group of Russian soldiers are sent into Northern Germany at the tail-end of WWII, where they occupy a children's home in close proximity to a larger German unit. Against these odds, a friendship forms between a German orphan and a childless Soviet captain.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 819
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Germany, Russia, Ukraine
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, captivating, suspense
Similar in 88%
Soldier Boy (2019)
Plot Summary:
The film is based on real events. This is a story about exciting events that occurred in the life of the smallest soldier - the hero of the Great Patriotic War, six-year-old Sergei Aleshkov. He lost all his relatives and got into the army. With a six-year-old boy, they started playing the soldier game in order to preserve his childhood, and he, in order to comply with this honorary title, became a real defender of the Motherland.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 795
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Belarus, Russia
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: exciting, rough, captivating, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 81%
Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil (1985)
Plot Summary:
The two-part TV movie Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil crystallizes that evil by concentrating on two Berlin brothers. In 1931, Helmut Hoffman (Bill Nighy) a brilliant student and self-styled opportunist, joins Hitler's SS. At the same time, his younger brother Karl (John Shea), a top athlete and idealist, becomes a chauffeur for the "S.A." (storm troopers).
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 857
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 135 min
Plot tags: bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 75%
Attack on Leningrad (2009)
Plot Summary:
When in 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, their troops quickly besieged Leningrad. Foreign journalists are evacuated but one of them, Kate Davies, is presumed dead and misses the plane. Alone in the city she is helped by Nina Tsvetnova a young and idealist police officer and together they will fight for their own survival and the survival of the people in the besieged Leningrad. Written by Marcio Eduardo.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia, UK
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 80%
Road to Berlin (2015)
Plot Summary:
A story about two young men during the last days of WWII.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 901
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Russia
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: exciting, rough, captivating, suspenseful
Similar in 86%
Beasts of No Nation (2015)
Plot Summary:
A drama based on the experiences of Agu, a child soldier fighting in the civil war of an unnamed African country. Follows the journey of a young boy, Agu, who is forced to join a group of soldiers in a fictional West African country. While Agu fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination Depicts the mechanics of war and does not shy away from explicit, visceral detail, and paints a complex, difficult picture of Agu as a child soldier.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 86000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA
Duration: 137 min
Plot tags: disturbing, political, bleak, harsh, dramatic, tense, atmospheric, suspense, serious, rough