Best movies like Rice People
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A poor, rural Cambodian family slowly disintegrates during the cycle of a single rice crop in this moving, and beautifully photographed European drama adapted from a novel by Shahnon Ahmad. Pouev, his wife Om, and his seven children, live in a small rural village in Cambodia. Their whole precarious life depends upon the success of their rice crop. Both husband and wife are worried, but for different reasons. Pouev is concerned because their acreage is shrinking. Om worries about Pouev; what would happen to her and the children if he died or was injured? Her worst fear is manifest after Pouev steps upon a poisoned thorn and dies. Om finds herself heavily burdened with the responsibilities of maintaining the crop and caring for seven youngsters. She suffers paranoia from worrying about whether the children are doing their share and the other villagers lock her up leaving eldest daughter Sokha to bring in the crop.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 310
Genere: Drama
Country: Cambodia, France, Switzerland, Germany
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: political, independent film
Best tv shows and movies like Rice People (1994):
Similar in 84%
The Last Reel (2014)
Plot Summary:
A lost film, buried beneath Cambodia's killing fields, reveals different versions of the truth. A contemporary story about love, family and the ghosts of Cambodia's past.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 129
Genere: Drama
Country: Cambodia
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Sisters Apart (2008)
Plot Summary:
Taru elää ratsutilalla harmonista elämää miehensä Harrin ja tytärpuolensa Ninnin kanssa. Kaikki muuttuu, kun Ninni loukkaantuu hevosonnettomuudessa. Kymmenen vuotta sitten Ruotsiin lähtenyt Ninnin biologinen äiti Eve kutsutaan paikalle Tarun pyynnöstä. Even pikaiseksi kuviteltu käynti muuttuu pidemmäksi vierailuksi, kun Eve tajuaa, että hän haluaa menetetyt kymmenen vuotta elämästään takaisin. Kauan kytenyt kaipaus Ninni-tytärtä kohtaan nousee pintaan. Vähä vähältä Eve alkaa vallata tilaa perheestä takaisin itselleen, jolloin Taru menettää elämänsä hallinnan. Esiin nousee syyllisyyttä ja muistoja - rakkaitakin, vihaa ja tarvitsevuutta. Kaikki minkä Taru luuli olevan ehjää ja hallinnassa, kyseenalaistuu. Kymmenen vuotta puhumattomana olleet asiat vaativat selvittämistä ja kaikki neljä joutuvat etsimään oman paikkansa uudessa tilanteessa.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 231
Genere: Drama
Country: Finland
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
Stubborn Boy (2015)
Plot Summary:
The people of this remote village in the Black Forest don't talk much, but when they do, it's in the Alemannic dialect. Hanna, 21 has traveled far to work here. She shovels manure, milks cows and tries to cope with the farmer, Uwe Kiefer, 39. Rather than sell his milk, he pours it down the drain. The villagers condemn him for continuing the milk strike. Both his marriage and his finances are on the rocks. As Hanna becomes more involved in Uwe's troubles, it seems she may be his only hope. But that's not why she came here. In the neighboring town, she spies on a small family and then Uwe finds her out.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 32
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
Village in the Jungle (1980)
Plot Summary:
Baddegama or, more correctly, Beddegama is a 1980 award winning Sinhalese language film directed by Lester James Peries that follows the lives of village people in British Colonial Sri Lanka. The film is based on the 1913 book titled as "The Village in the Jungle" by Leonard Woolf.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 124
Genere: Drama
Country: Sri Lanka
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: sinhala
Similar in 79%
Neria (1991)
Plot Summary:
A classic African film that has struck a nerve that runs across the continent, with an original soundtrack and supporting performance by Zimbabwe's legendary World Music sensation, Oliver Mtukudzi.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 93
Genere: Drama
Country: Zimbabwe
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: suspense
Similar in 89%
Vacation (2007)
Plot Summary:
All summer long, a group of people circumnavigate each other. A group of people who are so close and yet so alienated from one another. Their isolated holiday home is the site for a resurgence of smouldering conflicts and lifelong illusions that threaten to wreck the family’s fragile unity forever. (Berlinale).
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 345
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
Clover (1997)
Plot Summary:
Sara marries Gaten a single father who is African-American. Not long after they're married Gaten dies. So Sara has to take care of Gaten's daughter, Clover. Problem is she and Clover have not exactly bonded and several of Gaten's friends and relatives object to her being Clover's guardian.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 177
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
Virgina (1991)
Plot Summary:
"Virgina" tells a tale from the end of the 19th century. It took place in a isolated village near the Adriatic Sea. Because of the extreme patriarchal culture there is a superstition that families without male heirs are cursed. When the wife of a farmer gives birth to their fourth daughter, father decides that the child will become a so-called "Virgina" and that she will live as a man, so that she can work and be the family heir. This heartbreaking story of Virgina's life is told with strong words, augmented with harsh environment.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 556
Genere: Drama
Country: Yugoslavia, France
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Marion (1997)
Plot Summary:
Marion is ten and befriends a couple so much that they want her to live with them.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 106
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
Caravan Serai (1986)
Plot Summary:
Set during the Greek civil war. A villager is forced to leave his house and property and go to Thessaloniki with his daughter and son. They find refuge in an old building with hundreds of other people. They live a miserable life as the daughter becomes a whore, and the son has to work.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 77
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
Vassa (1983)
Plot Summary:
A screen adaptation of the second version of A. M. Gorky’s play “Vassa Zheleznova”. In this family children were taught from the early years to put accent on the word “my”: my ship, my house, my factory… Here they counted the money earned by other people’s labour and could lose a fortune overnight playing cards; here they indulged in utter debauchery and were sneaking on each other; they prayed and engaged in shady dealings in the name of God… Vassa had it all: money, power, clout, brains and grip. And only one thing she did not have – the future, for the year 1917 was drawing nearer and the age of the Zheleznovs and the Khrapovs was coming to an end.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 301
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
All the Way Home (1981)
Plot Summary:
A wife and mother in 1915 Tennessee copes with the loss of her husband and the necessity of raising their children alone.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 105
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
Blessing (1994)
Plot Summary:
Set on a Wisconsin dairy farm, Randi, the daughter, is trying to find a way to escape the farm, but her devotion to her family especially Clovis her younger brother is preventing her from doing that; until, that is, she met the local milk truck driver.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 53
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 78%
Boxes (2007)
Plot Summary:
Anna, 50 years old, moves into her new house. Rooms are full of boxes which contain a lot of things and plenty of memories. Anna has lived many lives and her past comes out of these boxes. Her parents surely, but also her children and their fathers, the living and the dead. In this breakneck period of her life, time is running faster and faster and Anna takes a run-up to face the past and try to go towards the future. And, maybe, to manage to still believe in love?.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 174
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: semi autobiographical
Similar in 80%
See You Tomorrow (1992)
Plot Summary:
No overview found.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 52
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
The Migrants (1974)
Plot Summary:
A look at the lives of migratory farm workers, focusing on one family.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 112
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
Who Will Love My Children? (1983)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true story of Iowa farm wife Lucile Fray. Ann-Margret plays a dying mother of ten whose last wish is to find loving families for her children.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 629
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: depressing
Similar in 76%
Call Me Elisabeth (2006)
Plot Summary:
A 10 year old girl lives in post WWII rural France with her parents, who are about to divorce. Her older sister leaves home to finish school, and the young girl is left with a mysterious, almost silent housekeeper. Being afraid of the dark, and of other "phenomenoms" including a haunted château nearby, she curiously accepts a stranger she finds in her mansion's barn. This fact contradicts her fearful nature, but fulfills her loneliness. The stranger has run away from a nearby psychiatric clinic, where her father was treating the stranger. She hides the stranger, protects him, and he becomes her best friend. Is this girl searching for true companionship, coming of age, or is she asserting her independence for the first time in her short life?.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 457
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, exciting, sentimental, touching, melancholic
Similar in 82%
The Sea Wall (2008)
Plot Summary:
The film centers around a young French widow and her two adolescent children attempt to carve out a meager life for themselves by farming rice fields alongside the ocean in French Indo-China in the 1930's. Their efforts are hampered each year by the presence of the sea, which invariably floods the fields with saltwater and wipes out the crops. In desperation, the mother realizes that their only hope lies in the construction of a sea wall to prevent continued flooding, but the mother must cut a swath through the local bureaucracy in an almost Sisyphean attempt to make this happen. Meanwhile, her obstinate daughter, Suzanne, draws the romantic obsessions of a well-to-do Chinese gentleman, Monsieur Jo; though he could easily provide a way out, the possibility of a romantic relationship between Jo and Suzanne could just as easily fall prey to local racial prejudices that would damage or ruin the lives of both.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 858
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Cambodia, Belgium
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: sentimental, atmospheric, serious, realistic, semi autobiographical, stylized, sexual, sexy
Similar in 83%
Martha... Martha (2001)
Plot Summary:
Having received a frosty reception when visiting her parents, Martha drags her husband Reymond and infant daughter Lise to Spain, to renew her acquaintance with her estranged sister Marie. After a quarrel, Marthe and her family return to France, where the young mother shows signs of increasing mental instability. Abandoning her family, Marthe goes to town to get drunk and ends up being raped. With Marthe in a psychiatric hospital, Reymond is left to take care of Lise alone whilst struggling to make a living selling second hand clothes in an open-air market. When Marthe leaves hospital, Reymond takes her and Lise to a holiday home in the country. But Martha’s illness is far from cured….
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 196
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 88%
Lost Paradise (2012)
Plot Summary:
Lucie and her father Hugo have grown closer since Lucie's mother left unexpectedly a year prior. When her mother returns, Hugo becomes jealous and angry.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 241
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: serious, touching, emotional, realistic, sexy, erotic, disturbing
Similar in 89%
South Mountain (2019)
Plot Summary:
When her teenagers head off to camp and her husband abruptly leaves her to begin a new family, Lila is left to her own curious and chaotic devices for a summer in her rural home in the Catskill mountains.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 257
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: sincere, melancholic, sentimental, light, romantic, disturbing
Similar in 87%
Cities of the Plain (2000)
Plot Summary:
Directed by Robert Kramer.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 117
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: experimental, touching, serious, captivating
Similar in 84%
75 Degrees in July (2000)
Plot Summary:
Sibling rivalry and other conflicts are revealed as one daughter, now a successful modern artist living in New York, returns to visit her Texas family.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 127
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, captivating, psychological
Similar in 75%
Country (1984)
Plot Summary:
Gilbert Ivy and his wife Jewell are farmers. They seem to be working against the odds, producing no financial surplus. Gilbert has lost hope of ever becoming prosperous, but his wife decides to fight for her family.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: sentimental, serious, emotional, realistic, bleak, sexy, feel good, entertaining, melancholic, dramatic
Similar in 86%
Suzaku (1997)
Plot Summary:
Depicts the life of a family in a remote Japanese timber village. Family head Tahara Kozo lives with his mother Sachiko, wife Yasuyo, nephew Eisuke and young daughter Michiru. Economic recession and failed development plans cause tragedy in the family.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: slow cinema, independent film, aesthetic
Similar in 88%
Shiba (1993)
Plot Summary:
A multi-lingual tour guide who owns multiple passports one day drives his wife and daughter to a desolate seashore town and checks in a secluded, spacious, ruins-like hotel. From that moment on, he throws himself into gambling, tossing the dice with local residents all day. Sometimes he wins big, but sometimes he loses all. Feeling neglected and uncomfortable, his wife and daughter soon leave him and return home. He stays and wanders in this fishing village and gradually immerses himself in the surroundings—a place rife with immoral vagabonds, outlaws and weirdoes.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 21
Genere: Drama
Country: Taiwan
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
A Family Upside Down (1978)
Plot Summary:
An elderly married couple find that as their physical and mental health deteriorates, they find themselves dependent more and more upon their grown children.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 156
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
The Gate (2014)
Plot Summary:
Two decades after forging an unlikely alliance in Pol Pot's Cambodia, a French ethnologist and a former Khmer Rouge official meet again after the latter is arrested for crimes against humanity.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 371
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Cambodia, Belgium
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: disturbing, rough, serious, captivating, thought provoking, bleak, realistic
Similar in 88%
Three Brothers (1981)
Plot Summary:
In a farmhouse in southern Italy, an old woman dies. Her husband summons their sons: from Rome, Raffaele, a judge facing a political case for which he risks assassination; from Naples, the religious and ideological Rocco, a counselor at a correctional institute for boys; from Turin, Nicola, a factory worker involved in labor disputes. Once home, each encounters the past and engages in reveries of what may come: Raffaele imagines his death, Rocco dreams of lifting the youth of Naples out of violence, drugs, and corruption, Nicola pictures embracing his estranged wife. Meanwhile, the old man and his young granddaughter explore the rhythms of the farm and grieve together.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, crying