Best movies like Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A female talk show host in Cairo, Egypt, stirs up a political controversy when she focuses her on-air discussions on the topic of women's issues.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Egypt
Duration: 150 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, realistic, serious, tense, touching, islamic, contemplative, gloomy
Best tv shows and movies like Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story (2009):
Similar in 79%
The Big Dream (2009)
Plot Summary:
Italian Revolution, 1968. Police officer, Nicolas, wants to become an actor. He goes out in plain clothes and meets Laura who is among students against the government, Vietnam War and who seek sexual freedom. One day, his identity gets exposed and she leaves him.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 908
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic, tense, suspense, touching, contemplative, hot
Similar in 83%
Murder in Pacot (2014)
Plot Summary:
In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, a middle-aged Port-au-Prince couple come face to face with the stark contradictions of Haitian society when they are forced to rent out their villa to a foreign aid worker and his enterprising local girlfriend.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 176
Genere: Drama
Country: Haiti, France, Norway
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, realistic, suspense
Similar in 77%
The Yacoubian Building (2006)
Plot Summary:
Cairo: a 70-year-old building of once-luxury flats with tenements on the roof. Zika, an aging libertine, feuds with his sister. Pius Haj Azzam takes a second wife, in secret, to satisfy sexual drive within religious bounds. Bothayna, poor and beautiful, supports her family, wanting to do so with dignity intact. Her former fiancé, Taha, the janitor's son, humiliated by the police, turns to fundamentalism. Hatem, a gay editor, seduces and corrupts a young man from the sticks. Two brothers, Copts, one a tailor and one Zika's factotum, connive for property. Allah is on most everyone's lips, and corruption is in their hearts.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Egypt, France
Duration: 165 min
Plot tags: touching, emotional, serious, realistic, sad, multicultural, islamic, iconic
Similar in 89%
Distant Lights (2003)
Plot Summary:
Lichter is an episodic tale from Hans-Christian Schmid about the life on the boarder between Germany and Poland. The film sheds light on the everyday stories of escape and desperateness.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: contemplative, serious, captivating, sincere, atmospheric, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 81%
Entranced Earth (1967)
Plot Summary:
Eldorado, a fictitious country in Latin America, is sparkling with the internal struggle for political power. In the eye of this social convulsion, the jaded journalist Paulo Martins opposes two equally corrupt political candidates: a pseudopopulist and a conservative. In this context, Paulo is torn between the madness of the elite and the blind submission of the masses. But, in this complex tropical reality, nothing really is what it seems to be.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Brazil
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: political, avant garde, mind blowing, thought provoking, serious, realistic, surreal, contemplative, cynical, non-linear
Similar in 85%
Cairo 678 (2010)
Plot Summary:
Deals with the phenomenon of sexual harassment in Egypt. Film depicts the moving story of three women Atfguen in some way or another to address the disturbing fact, the phenomenon can not be overlooked in the Egyptian and Arab street and the suffering of almost daily exposure to a sexual harassment despite their differences.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: Egypt
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, social, islamic, sincere, bleak
Similar in 81%
Cut Loose (2008)
Plot Summary:
A journalist is about to settle with his girlfriend when his life and views get shaken up by the young and beautiful Pakistani refugee Nadia. At work his ideals are more and more confronted with the harsh reality of modern urban society, while his flamboyant grandfather fights his last personal battle - a battle for his right to die.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 460
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious, multicultural
Similar in 83%
Third Person Singular Number (2009)
Plot Summary:
A woman breaks with traditional Muslim culture by living with her boyfriend before getting married, but when the relationship ends, she must face the harsh consequences of being an outcast in her community.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Bangladesh
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: sentimental, thought provoking, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Adanggaman (2000)
Plot Summary:
In West Africa during the late 17th century, King Adanggaman leads a war against his neighboring tribes, ordering his soldiers to torch enemy villages, kill the elderly and capture the healthy tribesmen to sell to the European slave traders. When his village falls prey to one of Adanggaman's attacks, Ossei manages to escape, but his family is murdered except for his captured mother. Chasing after the soldiers in an effort to free her, Ossei is befriended by a fierce warrior named Naka.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 197
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Switzerland, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Italy
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: disturbing, thought provoking, serious, suspenseful, tense, atmospheric, captivating, realistic, contemplative, baroque
Similar in 76%
On the Path (2010)
Plot Summary:
Loving young couple Luna and Amar try their best to overcome unexpected obstacles that threaten their relationship. After Amar's dramatic change in a fundamentalist community, Luna tears herself apart searching if love is truly enough to keep the couple together on the path to a lifetime of happiness.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria, Germany, Croatia
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sincere, captivating, thought provoking, serious, realistic, contemplative, islamic, tense, gloomy
Similar in 84%
The Hidden Half (2001)
Plot Summary:
An official is sent from his home in Tehran to hear the final appeal of a woman sentenced to death, a political prisoner. The official's wife of nearly 20 years, Fereshteh Samimi, writes him a letter to read when he reaches the hotel - the story of her student days during the revolution of 1978. We see the story in flashbacks as he reads: she leaves her province on scholarship, joins a Communist youth group, avoids arrest, and comes under the sway of a suave older man, Roozbeh Javid, a literary-magazine editor. As she tells her husband about the hidden half of her life, Fereshteh asks that he listen to the woman facing execution, a woman and therefore one of Iran's hidden half.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 866
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, serious, captivating, islamic, realistic, contemplative, intellectual
Similar in 81%
A Minor Leap Down (2015)
Plot Summary:
Nahal is around thirty and in her fourth month of pregnancy. During a routine check-up she learns that her baby has died and she now faces a curettage abortion in two days’ time. When she tries to address the subject, neither her mother nor her husband give her a chance to speak.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 228
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran, France
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 87%
Iron Island (2005)
Plot Summary:
Squatters live on a mothballed oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. The children attend a school on board; men harvest scrap metal and old oil in the hull; women keep house and raise children and Captain Nemat runs it all with an iron hand. We follow a lad who rescues fish trapped in the hull, an old man who stares at the sun, the idealistic teacher, and Ahmad, the Captain's assistant who has fallen in love with a young woman whose father wants to marry her to someone of means. What future has this sinking city?.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 980
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative, atmospheric, offbeat, gloomy
Similar in 82%
Paju (2009)
Plot Summary:
A young woman living in the South Korean town of Paju recalls the last 8 years of her life, since a young man on the lam escaped to it from Seoul and married her older sister.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 550
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, touching, serious, realistic, sexy, controversial, contemplative
Similar in 76%
Communists (2014)
Plot Summary:
Jean-Marie Straub pushes this musicality of blocks to a paroxysmal extreme, mixing blocks of time (40 years separate the various extracts that are going to be used, and what is to be filmed), blocks of text (Malraux, Fortini, Vittorini, Hölderlin) and blocks of language (French, Italian, German), and from this ruckus emerges the history of the world, yes, History with a capital H, and from the same movement, the political hope of its being overtaken. So this is an adventure film, about the Human adventure, still one that is always, in the end, overtaken by Nature. (Arnaud Dommerc).
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 192
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Switzerland
Duration: 70 min
Plot tags: experimental, thought provoking, atmospheric, serious, realistic, political
Similar in 75%
Dance Town (2010)
Plot Summary:
A North Korean refugee, Jung-Nim, is trying to find a new life in South Korea, with people suspecting that she is a spy.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 83
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, touching, sincere, thought provoking, bleak, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 76%
Goodbye (2011)
Plot Summary:
Without her husband and without her lawyer’s licence, which has been withdrawn, Noora is left pregnant and alone in her apartment. Her attempt to leave Iran turns into a fight with male chauvinism. A personal, nerve-wracking and infuriating film by Rasoulof, who was himself convicted for his films in Iran. Goodbye is a sober, frightening portrait of a society that is stooping under the continual control and threats of its religious regime. Noora, a young, pregnant lawyer in Tehran whose husband has been sent to work in the desert because of his critical journalistic activities, continually faces opposition from the regime and decides to leave the country. That turns out to be very difficult. Because Rasoulof was already banned from making films, Goodbye was shot partly in secret in the winter of 2010/2011. The result is a disquieting film that makes impotence and the desire for freedom painfully tangible in all its simplicity.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 814
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, realistic, thought provoking, contemplative, islamic, bleak, interesting
Similar in 88%
On the Edge (2009)
Plot Summary:
Alfredo and Susanna are two well-off fifty-year-olds who lead a stimulating cultural life. He is an architect and she is a psychologist; they live in Rome but spend their weekends at their country home in Umbria, where they love to spend their days walking in the forests or relaxing poolside with a good book. One day, as she goes into town, Susanna sees a girl prostituting herself in the bushes on the side of the road and decides to save her from her unhappy existence, despite the enormous differences that separate their ways of life.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 580
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, emotional, realistic, erotic
Similar in 79%
Crossroads (2006)
Plot Summary:
The life of a young Jesuit seminarian is turned upside down when he falls in love with a young woman while working as a volunteer at a soup kitchen.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 300
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, realistic, psychological, captivating, sincere, touching, serious, sexual
Similar in 80%
18 Days (2011)
Plot Summary:
10 Film makers made 10 Separate stories about the "25January " revolution in Egypt and the Egyptian people in the revolution and the protests against the previous President Hosni Mubarak and the departure of President Hosni Mubarak and also displays what happened in Tahrir Square since the start of the sit-in.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Egypt
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, touching, serious, realistic, sad, anthology, islamic, sincere
Similar in 82%
The Dust of Time (2008)
Plot Summary:
A, an American film director of Greek ancestry, is making a film that tells his story and the story of his parents. It is a tale that unfolds in Italy, Germany, Russia, Kazakhstan, Canada and the USA. The main character is Eleni, who is claimed and claims the absoluteness of love. At the same time the film is a long journey into the vast history and the events of the last fifty years that left their mark on the 20th century. The characters in the film move as though in a dream. The dust of time confuses memories. A searches for them and experiences them in the present.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece, Italy, Germany, Russia, France
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, atmospheric, touching, serious, postmodern, slow cinema, aesthetic, epic, realistic
Similar in 88%
Strike (2006)
Plot Summary:
In poverty, she found strength. In oppression, she found courage. In solidarity, she found a reason to believe again. Acclaimed German actress Katharina Thalbach (THE TIN DRUM, SOPHIES CHOICE) stars in this hard-hitting historical drama set during the rise of Polands Solidarity movement. An illiterate single mother, Agnieszka Kowalska is a Socialist "heroine of labor" for working long hours as a shipyard welder until her superiors deny compensation to the widows of 21 workers killed in an industrial disaster. Risking her job, her life, and the love of her son to defy the bureacracy, Agnieszka inspires the largest labor strike in world history and becomes a national hero. Volker Schlöndorff adapted this "ballad based on historical events" from the biography of Anna Walentynowicz, the free trade activist who mobilized a million Poles for Solidarity and helped hasten the fall of Communism. Filmed entirely on location at Polands Lenin Shipyard, where history was made.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 490
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, Poland
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, sincere, captivating
Similar in 85%
The Kite (2003)
Plot Summary:
A young 15 year old girl, Lamia, lives in a southern Lebanese village on the border with Israel. She is given in marriage to her cousin on the other side of the border. As Lamia crosses the barbed wire she also passes from childhood into adulthood, as brutal as our countries and the events that are to follow.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 785
Genere: Drama
Country: Lebanon, France
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic
Similar in 77%
The F Word (2005)
Plot Summary:
A frustrated radio DJ takes to the streets of Manhattan during the Republican National Convention after the FCC has slapped his station with $1 million in indecency fines, and popular radio personality Joe Pace (Josh Hamilton) isn't going down without a fight. As the streets fill with restless republicans, angry protestors, and other colorful characters, Joe arms himself with a wireless microphone and a portable transmitter in order to get the opinions of the average person on the street.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 484
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing, political
Similar in 87%
Personal Belongings (2006)
Plot Summary:
Young Doctor Ana lives alone because she couldn't bear to leave Cuba when her family sailed away on a raft to the US. Ernesto lives in his car with his belongings in a small case, traveling from embassy to embassy trying to fulfill his dream of leaving Cuba. These Star-crossed lovers long to be together, they are pulled apart by different dreams rooted in different countries. In his directorial debut, Alejandro Brugués offers his personal view on the insistently revisited theme in Cuban art and literature - emigration and the laceration that it implies.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 105
Genere: Drama
Country: Cuba
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, realistic
Similar in 89%
Inherit the Wind (1999)
Plot Summary:
Based on a real-life case in 1925, two great lawyers argue the case for and against a science teacher accused of the crime of teaching evolution.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: gothic, sincere, thought provoking, clever, serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing, contemplative, talky
Similar in 76%
Freedom Song (2000)
Plot Summary:
Freedom Song (2000) is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan. In the midst of the Freedom Summer, a group of high school students in the small town are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community. The young activists meet resistance not only from white southerners, but from their parents, who have experienced firsthand the violence that can result from speaking out.[1] As high school students band together with the support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they make strides in registering African-American voters and gaining awareness for their cause.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 891
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, captivating, emotional, political, tense, serious, realistic
Similar in 80%
Mandela and de Klerk (1997)
Plot Summary:
Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine both received Emmy nominations for their performances in this made-for-TV movie. The plot follows Nelson Mandela's 27-year struggle to end apartheid.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 667
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: tense, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, disturbing, contemplative
Similar in 77%
Power (1986)
Plot Summary:
Pete St. John is a powerful and successful political consultant, with clients spread around the country. When his long-time friend and client Ohio senator Sam Hastings decides to quit politics, he is rapidly drafted to help with the campaign of the man destined to succeed him, unknown and mysterious businessman Jerome Cade.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, clever, cynical, political, retro, talky
Similar in 79%
The Last Sentence (2012)
Plot Summary:
Renowned journalist Torgny Segerstedt declares war against Hitler as he criticizes Swedish politicians who tried to look away from the tyranny of the Nazis with the good excuse of “neutralism”. His only weapon is his pen and his life is full of gossip such as an affair with his boss’ wife, a love scandal with a secretary younger than his daughter, and the suicide of his wife. However, he continues to fight a one man battle against Hitler and the Nazi regime until his death, throwing the question “Can one person really change history?” to the audience.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 839
Genere: Biography, Drama
Country: Sweden, Norway
Duration: 126 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, touching, serious, uplifting, bleak, realistic, gloomy, period drama