Best movies like Persona

Similar in 80%

Face to Face (1976)

Plot Summary:

A sensitive exploration of the tragic irony of the psychiatrist suffering with mental illness.

Similar in 84%

The Passion of Anna (1969)

Plot Summary:

Andreas, a man struggling with the recent demise of his marriage and his own emotional isolation, befriends a married couple also in the midst of psychological turmoil. In turn he meets Anna, who is grieving the recent deaths of her husband and son. She appears zealous in her faith and steadfast in her search for truth, but gradually her delusions surface. Andreas and Anna pursue a love affair, but he is unable to overcome his feelings of deep humiliation and remains disconnected. Meanwhile, the island community is victimized by an unknown person committing acts of animal cruelty.

Similar in 75%

Woman in the Dunes (1964)

Plot Summary:

An entomologist suffers extreme psychological and sexual torture after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village.

Similar in 84%

Shame (1968)

Plot Summary:

Ingmar Bergman's psychological study of how humans react in a situation of war. The film takes place on Gotland, where invasion forces arrives.

Similar in 82%

The Silence (1963)

Plot Summary:

Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.

Similar in 87%

Winter Light (1963)

Plot Summary:

A Swedish pastor fails a loving woman, a suicidal fisherman and God.

Similar in 80%

Repulsion (1965)

Plot Summary:

In Roman Polanski's first English-language film, beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

Similar in 88%

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

Plot Summary:

Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.

Similar in 81%

The Lighthouse (2019)

Plot Summary:

The story of two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.

Similar in 90%

Cries & Whispers (1972)

Plot Summary:

As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so deeply immersed in their own psychic pains that they can't offer her the support she needs. Maria is wracked with guilt at her husband's suicide, caused by his discovery of her extramarital affair. The self-loathing, suicidal Karin seems to regard her sister with revulsion. Only Anna, the deeply religious maid who lost her young child, seems able to offer Agnes solace and empathy.

Similar in 87%

Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

Plot Summary:

Karin hopes to recover from her recent stay at a mental hospital by spending the summer at her family's cottage on a tiny island. Her husband, Martin, cares for her but is frustrated by her physical withdrawal. Her younger bother, Minus, is confused by Karin's vulnerability and his own budding sexuality. Their father, David, cannot overcome his haughty remoteness. Beset by visions, Karin descends further into madness.

Similar in 81%

Inland Empire (2006)

Plot Summary:

An actress's perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.

Similar in 89%

Naked Lunch (1991)

Plot Summary:

After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally murders his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in an Islamic port town in Africa.

Similar in 81%

Hour of the Wolf (1968)

Plot Summary:

An artist in crisis is haunted by nightmares from the past in Ingmar Bergman's only horror film, which takes place on a windy island. During "the hour of the wolf" - between midnight and dawn - he tells his wife about his most painful memories.

Similar in 88%

3 Women (1977)

Plot Summary:

An awkward young teen working at a spa becomes overly attached to her fellow worker, a lonely outcast. They hang out at a bar owned by a strange pregnant artist and her has-been cowboy husband. Amid emotional crises, the three woman steal and trade one another's personalities.

Similar in 90%

Santa Sangre (1989)

Plot Summary:

A young man is confined in a mental hospital. Through a flashback we see that he was traumatized as a child, when he and his family were circus performers: he saw his father cut off the arms of his mother, a religious fanatic and leader of the heretical church of Santa Sangre ("Holy Blood"), and then commit suicide. Back in the present, he escapes and rejoins his surviving and armless mother.

Similar in 84%

The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973)

Plot Summary:

Set in pre- World War II era. A young man is on a strange train to see his dying father in a sanatorium. But the place is going to ruin and recalls a lot of memories from the past. He is beset by soldiers from the past, colonial black mercenaries, girls from his early life, and his parents. It is an interior adventure, with unusual atmospheric flair and extraordinary sets.

Similar in 90%

Stalker (1979)

Plot Summary:

Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A Stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep seeded desires are granted.

Similar in 85%

Antichrist (2009)

Plot Summary:

A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

Similar in 75%

Dogtooth (2009)

Plot Summary:

Three teenagers are confined to an isolated country estate that could very well be on another planet. The trio spend their days listening to endless homemade tapes that teach them a whole new vocabulary. Any word that comes from beyond their family abode is instantly assigned a new meaning. Hence 'the sea' refers to a large armchair and 'zombies' are little yellow flowers. Having invented a brother whom they claim to have ostracized for his disobedience, the uber-controlling parents terrorize their offspring into submission.

Similar in 76%

Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)

Plot Summary:

A troubled rock star descends into madness in the midst of his physical and social isolation from everyone.

Similar in 89%

Enter the Void (2009)

Plot Summary:

This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta). When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.

Similar in 76%

The Holy Mountain (1973)

Plot Summary:

A Mexican master leads a Christ figure and other disciples to a mountain of immortal wise men. The scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky's flood of sacrilegious imagery and existential symbolism in The Holy Mountain is a spiritual quest for enlightenment pitting illusion against truth. The Alchemist (Jodorowsky) assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept's intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.

Similar in 86%

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Plot Summary:

After a car wreck on the winding Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesic, she and a perky Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality.

Similar in 75%

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Plot Summary:

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Similar in 90%

Black Swan (2010)

Plot Summary:

A ballet dancer wins the lead in "Swan Lake" and is perfect for the role of the delicate White Swan - Princess Odette - but slowly loses her mind as she becomes more and more like Odile, the Black Swan.

Similar in 77%

Donnie Darko (2001)

Plot Summary:

After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.

Similar in 82%

Enemy (2013)

Plot Summary:

A mild-mannered college professor discovers a look-alike actor and delves into the other man's private affairs.

Similar in 84%

The Machinist (2004)

Plot Summary:

The Machinist is the story of Trevor Reznik, a lathe-operator who is dying of insomnia. In a machine shop, occupational hazards are bad enough under normal circumstances; yet for Trevor the risks are compounded by fatigue. Trevor has lost the ability to sleep. This is no ordinary insomnia.

Similar in 80%

Fight Club (1999)

Plot Summary:

A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.