Best movies like Race to Freedom: Um Bok-dong
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
During the Japanese colonial rule of Korea, while people are in despair, Jae-ho tries to raise morale by winning cycle championship. Bok-dong, who started cycling with Jae-ho just to make a forture, becomes a symbol of hope for Koreans by defeating Japanese cyclists.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 143
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like Race to Freedom: Um Bok-dong (2019):
Similar in 78%
The Messenger (2012)
Plot Summary:
Petr is a courier, a messenger as a matter of fact. He is one of those young men who believe that on their bikes they have become part and parcel of the atmosphere of modern cities. He is a non-conformist who refuses to settle into today‘s deformed society, he abhors its indolence, consumerism and lies, as well as its pseudo-truths, pseudo-feelings, pseudo-loves and pseudo-values. Petr’s untrammelled personality keeps causing more and more serious problems. And Petr is also one of those who will never admit to themselves that they might be at the end of their tether.
IMDB Rating: 4.7
IMDB Votes: 42
Genere: Drama
Country: Czech Republic
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Die Chance (1979)
Plot Summary:
Jerzy Stuhr plays a high school teacher with a sensitive outlook on life and a soft spot for students who like art and literature as passionately as he does. His adversary is a possessed sports instructor, gaining growing control over the students and authorities. His methods are questionable and his influence dangerous, but the handball team's prospects look good and the school needs success.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 63
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Swing Kids (2018)
Plot Summary:
Rebellious Ki-soo from North Korea is mesmerized by tap dance in prison camps. Ki-soo joins as a team member of a dance team named ‘Swing Kids’. Yet suddenly, their dreams about dancing in prison camps are put in danger.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 133 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, intense, funny, cult film
Similar in 87%
Get Lost! (2018)
Plot Summary:
Instead of making the planned trip to India, the 27 year old Fem becomes a backpacker in her hometown; Amsterdam. Fem does not dare to tell her boyfriend the truth and she gets tangled up in a crazy lie.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 122
Genere: Drama
Country: Netherlands
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me (2015)
Plot Summary:
Muhammad, a rejected boy from the fringe of society, floats through the streets of a filthy city, exposed and desolated, until he meets Gurevich; a lone rover who rides his motorcycle into the bowels of the city, through the shadows of the back alleys, sharpening the knives of butcher shops and gourmet restaurants. Stubborn and tenacious, the boy forces his way under the man's wing. Within this hypnotic urban hell, what starts as an unstable and hesitant apprenticeship evolves into a struggle for self-control.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 68
Genere: Drama
Country: Israel, France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
The Unknown Cyclist (1998)
Plot Summary:
A man's dying wish is for the people in his life to participate in a 450-mile charity bicycle ride through Northern California.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 224
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 79%
The Great & The Small (2016)
Plot Summary:
Twenty-six year old Scott is living on the streets and trying to find his way back into society while on probation for petty crimes. He attempts to navigate his relationship with his two bit criminal of a boss and an enigmatic detective, while at the same time winning back the heart of his ex-girlfriend, a working single mom. Never having a mother or father himself, Scott discovers the true meaning of fatherhood.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 344
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: independent film, detective
Similar in 82%
Shor (1972)
Plot Summary:
Shankar (Manoj Kumar), his lovely wife Geeta (Nanda) and Deepak (Master Satyajeet) are a poor but happy family. Tragedy strikes one day, when Deepak wonders over to the railway tracks. When Geeta rushes in to warn and rescue him, she is run over by the train and is instantly killed. Deepak loses his vocal chords and cannot speak. Shankar takes Deepak to see a doctor (Raj Mehra), who examines Deepak, and tells Shankar that Deepak can recover his voice after a surgerical operation, which may cost around 1000 to 1500 rupees. Shankar is unable to afford this but is determined to find the money to cure his son. Shankar's mom (Kamini Kaushal), sister (Naaz), Khan Badshan (Prem Nath), Rani alias Raat ki Rani (Jaya Bhaduri) offer support. And Shankar takes part in a grueling tournament that puts his very life at risk.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 398
Genere: Drama
Country: India
Duration: 170 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Miracle: Letters to the President (2021)
Plot Summary:
Dreaming of making a way station for his sister and the villagers who have no choice but to commute along the dangerous train tracks every day, Joon-kyung sends many letters to the President, but with no reply. Ra-hee, who has a crush on Joon-kyung, does everything she can to help him meet the President.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
A Resistance (2019)
Plot Summary:
17-year-old Yu Gwan-Sun participates in the Korean independence movement. The country is under the rule of Japan, which annexed the country in 1910.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 185
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
Strikebound (1984)
Plot Summary:
Via the New York Times: "...reconstructs the true story of a coal miners' strike in the small town of Korumburra in the mid-30's... based on the real-life story of two remarkable characters, Wattie Doig, a miner who became a militant Communist activist, and his wife, Agnes, who progressed from staunch Presbyterianism to membership in the Salvation Army and, finally, to labor organization.".
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 68
Genere: Drama
Country: Australia
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 86%
Fontamara (1980)
Plot Summary:
Fontamara is a village in the Marsica, forgotten by all but God and its inhabitants are called 'cafoni' (boors). Berardo Viola wants to marry Elvira but only after gaining enough money to buy some land and in order to reach his aim he has the idea of going to a great city. When Maria Grazia is raped by the fascists, Berardo and Antonio decide to leave Fontamara and go to Rome. Here they are swindled by a lawyer and afterwards they are invited by an antifascist to a restaurant where they are arrested by the police because of some subversive papers they had.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 69
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 139 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
Liten Ida (1981)
Plot Summary:
Little Ida's mother is working for the Germans during WW2, and she is also having a relationship with a German SS-officer. Ida is experiencing the problems of having a mother who is involved with the enemy, without being old enough to understand what is actually going on.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 135
Genere: Drama
Country: Norway, Sweden
Duration: 78 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
Assassination (2015)
Plot Summary:
Assassination is set in Korea and Shanghai in the 1930's during the Japanese occupation. The government resistance assigns a secret commando group with killing collaborators.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Action, Drama, Thriller
Country: South Korea
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, exciting, suspense, neo noir, political, historical drama
Similar in 90%
Green Fish (1997)
Plot Summary:
Returning home and finding his town drastically changed, a former soldier falls in with gangsters.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: crime drama, exciting, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful
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Dream of Illumination (2017)
Plot Summary:
Noboru (Yuya Takagawa) runs a real estate agency in a provincial city. He is cold-blooded when it comes to make a sale. His daughter is high school senior Nana (Sara Shida). Nana has continuously changed schools due to her father's work. She has lived in the same city for the past 4 years, which has been the longest span for her. Nano hopes to stay there, but her father wants her to go to Tokyo. -AsianWiki.
IMDB Rating: 1.1
IMDB Votes:
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Canola (2016)
Plot Summary:
A girl who went missing after an accident returns 10 years later and reunites with her grandmother.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, disturbing, sad
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The roundup (1965)
Plot Summary:
One of filmmaker and expatriate writer Adonis Kyrou's best-known quotes translates roughly as "I urge you: Learn to look at 'bad' films, they are so often sublime." The same could be said of Kyrou's own directorial work in Greece before the advent of the 1967 dictatorship forced him to flee to Paris. This confused mess, the first cinematic attempt at portraying the Greek resistance in WWII, caused quite a stink upon release, as much for its surprising style (recalling that of Bertolt Brecht) as for its subject matter. Reaction to its screening as part of the 1966 Cannes Film Festival's International Critic's Week was heated and divisive, proving Kyrou's later statement by rising above its own inherent silliness to achieve a sort of rarefied critical status. It's bad drama that nonetheless succeeds by dint of audacity more than quality (a comment which could apply equally to the work of many exploitation directors like Jean Rollin whom Kyrou later so lovingly profiled).
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 149
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Greece
Duration: 74 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
From the Clouds to the Resistance (1979)
Plot Summary:
'Dalla nube alla resistenza (From the Cloud to the Resistance ) (1978), based on two works by Cesare Pavese, falls into the category of History Lessons and Too Early, Too Late as well. It, too, has two parts—a twentieth-century text and a text regarding the myths of antiquity, each set in the appropriate landscape. Pavese's The Moon and the Bonfires looks back on the violent deaths of Italian anti-Fascist resistance fighters; Dialogues with Leucò is a series of dialogues between heroes and gods, connecting myth and history and returning to an ambiguous stage in the creation of distinctions, such as that between animal and human, which are fundamental to grammar and language itself. Such a juxtaposition of political engagement with profoundly contemplative issues such as myth, nature, and meaning points to the characters of Empedocles and Antigone in the Hölderlin films.' (From "Landscapes of resistance. The German Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub" by Barton Byg).
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 471
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, West Germany, UK, France
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: experimental
Similar in 84%
The Passerby (1982)
Plot Summary:
During an interview, Max Baumstein (Piccoli), respected chairman of a humanitarian organisation, shoots the Paraguayan ambassador dead, in cold blood. Tried for first-degree murder, he explains himself: the ambassador was a former Nazi official, responsible for the extermination of his family.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, West Germany
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: emotional, bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, surprise ending
Similar in 78%
Man of Will (2017)
Plot Summary:
Young Kim Chang-Soo is placed behind bars, charged with murdering a Japanese person who took part in Empress Myeongseong's assassination. In prison, Kim Chang-Soo sees how Koreans are persecuted and grows into a fighter for Korean independence.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 181
Genere: Action, Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
The Network of Freedom (2017)
Plot Summary:
France, beginning of World War II. Hélène Studler is a nun who has been dedicated to the care of orphans and the abandoned people. But the times have changed, the people are living a whole revolt, the Germansoldiers have entered their city and the reality that now faces far exceeds the harshness to which they are accustomed: Hélène discovers that near her locality, the Nazis have installed a concentration camp. Along with some people of the city, several of her Sisters Daughters of Charity plot a whole plan to free the captives from their tragic end.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 126
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, suspense, disturbing
Similar in 88%
Herstory (2018)
Plot Summary:
A true story of a six-year-long legal conflict of 10 comfort women and 13 attorneys against 200 Fukuoka supporters association.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 262
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, captivating, suspense, disturbing
Similar in 89%
Born Wild (2012)
Plot Summary:
After being released from prison for the murder of a fellow biker; CJ returns to his hometown to confront his former gang. However; he arrives to find that the past is not forgotten easily; and now they are out for blood.
IMDB Rating: 4.2
IMDB Votes: 193
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: psychological, unusual plot structure, captivating, suspense, suspenseful
Similar in 84%
Different Dreams (2019)
Plot Summary:
During the Japanese colonial rule of Korea, a Korean surgeon who was raised by a Japanese family becomes a spy for the Korean government.
IMDB Rating: 8.3
IMDB Votes: 79
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration:
Plot tags: sincere, captivating, suspense, disturbing
Similar in 84%
Pu-239 (2006)
Plot Summary:
A worker at a Russian nuclear facility gets exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. In order to provide for his family, he steals some plutonium and sets out to sell it on Moscow's black market with the help of an incompetent criminal.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, UK
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, cyber, cult classic, tense, bleak
Similar in 83%
The Cyclist (1989)
Plot Summary:
The wife of Nasim, an Afghan immigrant in Iran, is gravely ill. He needs money to pay for her care, but his day labor digging wells does not pay enough. A friend connects Nasim to a two-bit promoter who sells tickets to watch Nasim ride a bicycle continuously for a week. The promoter brings in sick and aged spectators, haranguing them to find hope in Nasim's strength. Aided by his son, who feeds him as he rides, Nasim grinds out the days and shivering nights. Local officials believe this may be a plot and Nasim may be a spy; they try to sabotage him as do those who bet he won't finish the week. Will desperation alone get Nasim the money? Is any triumph an illusion?.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: islamic, psychological, sincere, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 76%
The Battle: Roar to Victory (2019)
Plot Summary:
In 1920, when Korea is under Japanese rule the Korean Independence Army’s Hae-chul and his subordinates are carrying out the operation to deliver funds to the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai. During the operation Hae-chul is reunited with Jang-ha, a young squad commander, whose mission is to defend Samdunja. They unite and trap the Japanese soldiers in Samdunja, soundly defeating them. Now they’re chased by Japanese troops and Hae-chul finds out that Jang-ha’s mission isn’t over yet. A crucial yet dangerous task is still assigned to him.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 873
Genere: Action, Drama, History, War
Country: South Korea, USA
Duration: 135 min
Plot tags: rough, suspense, disturbing, compassionate
Similar in 82%
Spirits' Homecoming (2016)
Plot Summary:
Two Korean girls, Jung-Min (14) and Young-hee (15) are kidnapped by the Japanese Imperial Army and taken to a 'Comfort Station' in China. There, they join other kidnapped girls in serving Japanese soldiers as sexual slaves known as 'Comfort Women'. Decades later, an elderly lady attempts to reunite with the spirit of her lost friend. Inspired by the testimony of Kang Il-chul.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 564
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, suspense
Similar in 84%
Hero (2022)
Plot Summary:
Ahn Jung-geun, a commander in the Korean Independence Army, leaves behind his country, his family and his mother Cho Maria. Ahn Jung-geun and his comrades cut off the last segment of their ring fingers as a symbol of their dedication to liberate their nation, and as a solemn oath to kill Ito Hirobumi, a man at the center of Japan’s occupation of Korea, within three years. To keep his oath, Ahn Jung-geun arrives in Vladivostok. Meanwhile, Seol-hee, the independence fighters’ informant, disguises herself to get close to Ito Hirobumi. She finds out that Ito Hirobumi will be heading to Harbin to meet with a Russian delegation, and urgently informs the independence fighters. The fateful day of October 26, 1909 arrives. Ahn Jung-geun, who has been yearning for this day does not hesitate to fire his gun at Ito Hirobumi at Harbin Station. Arrested on site, he is charged with murder and tried not in a court of Joseon but in that of Japan….
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 214
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Musical
Country: South Korea
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: