Best movies like Shivers
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Set in the early 1950's, during the Stalin's Personality Cult. The story opens in a provincial town. Tomek's father, a former member of the Home Army is arrested so the mother is left with the task of raising two kids alone. The neighbor upstairs commits suicide when her husband is also arrested and transported to the prison camp. It's winter so the kids keep their hands warm at school by hand-beating themselves. The teachers at school are mean, narrow minded idealists, When they ask the kids who goes to church on Sundays, the whole class stands up to defeat the purpose of the propaganda lesson. Tomek is sent to the training school in the summer. There he absorbs most of the ideology pumped into his head, and when his father is released from prison he finds another boy he has left.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 509
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: political
Best tv shows and movies like Shivers (1981):
Similar in 81%
Hands Up! (1981)
Plot Summary:
Beginning with a sci-fi prologue before finding itself with several doctors attending a medical school reunion in a sealed-up railway carriage. Between drinks, the disenchanted medicos ruminate over the effect that communism (particularly the Stalinist brand) has had on their profession. Originally banned in 1967 and finally released in 1981 after Skolimowski shot new sequences, the 76 minute 1981 version was the only one ever officially released.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 409
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: philosophical, experimental, avant garde, dark comedy, political
Similar in 88%
Marcowe migdaly (1990)
Plot Summary:
Drama directed by Radoslaw Piwowarski.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 118
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
An Epitaph for Barbara Radziwill (1983)
Plot Summary:
Drama about historical figure Barbara Radziwiłł, her romance with King Sigismund II August, her death and her posthumous return to Vilnius.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 82
Genere: Drama, History, Romance
Country: Poland
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Death of a President (1977)
Plot Summary:
After Poland won freedom from of its long overlordship by Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, it took a further four years for its National Assembly to elect Gabriel Narutowicz as its first president. Narutowicz was a professor who until his election had been living in Switzerland. Those were chaotic times, and shortly after his election, he was assassinated by right-wing fanatics. This epic Polish film chronicles the circumstances of Narutowicz's election and assassination.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 272
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 144 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Abel, Your Brother (1970)
Plot Summary:
Karol is a newcomer to the class and instantly called "sissy". He tries to make friends with class bully called Balon, and eventually succeeds. The group uses him to steal lollipops and later for an assault on a small child. The victim's mother seeks out the responsible and Karol is identified. He eventually confesses to his mother and names his accomplices. Branded now as a "squealer" he is avoided by his former friends.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 146
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Inspection of the Crime Scene 1901 (1980)
Plot Summary:
More documentary in its approach than dramatized history, this is a compelling story about a 1901 children's strike in Wrzesnia near the Polish border with Prussia. Poland was partitioned at this time, and a rigidly patriotic Prussian teacher in Wrzesnia follows the dictates of the Germans in parliament and insists that the children be taught their religion classes in German. When the children refuse to take part in the classes, they are supported by the local priest, but that does not save them from being beaten. They are also kept after school and tormented in other ways as well. Newspapers, parents, and the nation as a whole get involved, transforming a simple children's strike into a national incident.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 56
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
At Full Gallop (1996)
Plot Summary:
Zanussi has described the film as his most autobiographical work. A young boy in post-World War II, Communist-dominated Poland, whose father's decision to remain in Britain after the war has made his family politically-suspect with the local Party authorities, is sent by his mother to stay with an "aunt" (in reality an old family friend) in Warsaw.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 349
Genere: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Wielki bieg (1981)
Plot Summary:
Set in 1952, the story follows events around the "Peace Run", a propaganda 3-day marathon for peace. The winner is to be presented with a new motorcycle by the country's president. Chief organizer is a ruthless manipulator who will stop at nothing to make sure that the right man wins. There are two runners, Budny and Stolar, who are participating in the race for different reasons.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 95
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Hotel Pacific (1975)
Plot Summary:
Set in the early 1930s, a young man finds a job as a dishwasher in a hotel and quickly works his way up the ladder. Loosely based on the novel by Henryk Worcell.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland, Czechoslovakia
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Fever (1981)
Plot Summary:
The film is set in 1905, in a time of feverish revolutionary underground activity in Poland partitioned between three neighbours. All the characters are committed anarchists. The bomb maker puts an invention together to place it at the disposal of young inexperienced terrorists fighting against Tsarist oppression. The story follows the passing of this bomb from anarchist to anarchist as several attempts are made on the life of Tsarist governor general, until, at the end, it is effectively and harmlessly defused by a bomb expert. The presence of the bomb has a destroying effect on all of the Polish revolutionaries, they either die or breakdown.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 279
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
The Mother of Kings (1987)
Plot Summary:
Made in 1982, shelved for five years. Story opens with Lucja Krol's husband under the tram. She gives birth to her fourth son on the floor of their new apartment. Neighbor Wiktor, a communist intellectual, befriends the poverty-stricken family but is soon arrested and sent to jail. During the war Lucja narrowly escapes a Nazi roundup at the black market. Her sons hold ardent Communist meetings in their apartment, with her blessing. Lucja works hard, but without complaint. After the war, Klemens is inexplicably arrested, accused by the new regime of being a collaborator. Wiktor, now a high-ranking party member, trying to defend him, himself falls into disgrace. Klemens is tortured to "confess" and dies in jail, a Communist to the end. Lucja is never told about his fate.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 303
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Poland
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: intellectual, pre war
Similar in 80%
Sunday Pranks (1983)
Plot Summary:
Made in 1983, shelved for four years. A chilling tale about kids playing in a bombed-out Warsaw courtyard on the day of Stalin's death, while their parents are away at the church or a memorial procession.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 92
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Escape from the 'Liberty' Cinema (1990)
Plot Summary:
The film is set just before Poland's communist regime came to an end, and the central character is a provincial censor (Janusz Gajos), a tired, sloppy, lonely man, whose wife has long since left him. For him, censorship is both an art and a game, but he does not enjoy it. During a screening of a sentimental Polish melodrama called "Daybreak" at the Liberty cinema across the road from the censor's office, the actors start to rebel and refuse to speak their lines. There is anarchy and when the censor is unable to control the situation, senior party officials are called in. Eventually a film critic notes that the situation reminds of "The Purple Rose of Cairo" by Woody Allen and brings a reel of the film to demonstrate. The officials watch the film with amusement until another mix-up occurs: the second projector is turned on accidentally and superimposes "Daybreak" over "Purple Rose".
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: surreal, mind bending, psychedelic, intellectual
Similar in 85%
Nightmares (1979)
Plot Summary:
Set before the first Wold War in part of Poland under Austrain occupation, the story of a young boy in primary school who later grows up to become a rebellious, poetic-minded teen in the same school when the national movement toward liberation is under way. The story of a country where church amd state work together to suppress the human spirit.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 288
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: intellectual, political
Similar in 82%
The Here After (2015)
Plot Summary:
When John returns home to his father after serving time in prison, he is looking forward to starting his life afresh. However, in the local community his crime is neither forgotten nor forgiven.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden, Poland, France
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
My Good Enemy (2010)
Plot Summary:
Sensitive 12-year-old Alf is the low man on his class' totem pole, and he's sick of it. Forming a secret, Machiavellian alliance with another student who also has grown weary of being bullied, he hatches a plan to throw a wrench into the well-oiled gears of the school social order. Everything seems to go according to plan, until Alf discovers that turning the tables on his tormentors has its own dire consequences.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 421
Genere: Drama
Country: Denmark
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, captivating, contemplative
Similar in 77%
The Magnate (1987)
Plot Summary:
This Polish historical drama film traces the fascinating saga of a wealthy, princely Polish dynasty in years 1900-1935.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 155
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 171 min
Plot tags: family saga
Similar in 82%
The Silent Revolution (2018)
Plot Summary:
It's 1956. During a visit to a cinema in West Berlin, East German high school pupils Theo and Kurt see disturbing newsreel footage of the uprising in Budapest. Back in Stalinstadt, one of the GDR’s flagship workers’ settlements, they have the idea of holding a minute’s silence in class for the victims of the Hungarian struggle for freedom.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Germany
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, suspenseful, disturbing, captivating, political, social, crying, banned
Similar in 88%
Hold Me Tight (2010)
Plot Summary:
I skoletimerne sender Mikkel prøvende blikke til klassens stille og indelukkede pige, Sara, der er smigret over opmærksomheden. Da Mikkel og hans ven Hassan leger flirtende med hende i et frikvarter, bliver Hassans kæreste, Louise, jaloux og begynder at sprede ondsindede rygter om Sara. Louises hævn udvikler sig hurtigt til mobning og det, der er værre.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 573
Genere: Drama
Country: Denmark
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: crying
Similar in 82%
Black Shack Alley (1983)
Plot Summary:
Martinique, in the early 1930s. Young José and his grandmother live in a small village. Nearly everyone works cutting cane and barely earning a living. The overseer can fine a worker for the smallest infraction. The way to advance is to do well in school. José studies hard and succeeds in an exam allowing him to attend school in the capital. With only a partial scholarship, the tuition is very costly. José and his grandmother move to Fort-de-France to make José's studies easier.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, Martinique
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic
Similar in 77%
King of the Hill (1993)
Plot Summary:
Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis. His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, heartbreaking, serious, depressing, sentimental, atmospheric, sad, grim, mind twisting
Similar in 82%
Sami Blood (2016)
Plot Summary:
Elle Marja, 14, is a reindeer-breeding Sami girl. Exposed to the racism of the 1930s and phrenological examinations at her boarding school, she starts dreaming of another life. To achieve this other life she has to become someone else and break all ties with her family and culture.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Norway, Denmark, Sweden
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: harsh, anthropological
Similar in 83%
Speed Walking (2014)
Plot Summary:
In a quirky, small town, situated in the outskirts of everything, 14-year-old Martin is getting ready for one of the most formal transitions from boy to man; the communion. It's 1976, music's in the air and hormones are blossoming. But in the midst of it all Martin's mother suddenly passes away and her tragic death trickers a series of events that not only changes Martin's life forever, but also affects everyone else in the local community. Overwhelmed with grief neither Martin's dad, nor his older brother, is capable to comfort Martin. He enters adulthood in a mixture of drunken happiness and immense sadness over the loss of his mother, and his relationship to both his friend Kim and girlfriend Kristine comes to its natural conclusion.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Denmark
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, captivating, psychological, controversial, touching, queer cinema
Similar in 89%
Harmony Lessons (2013)
Plot Summary:
During a medical examination, 13-year-old Aslan is humiliated in front of a load of his fellow pupils. The incident unleashes his latent personality disorder. Plagued by self-doubt, he strives for cleanliness and perfection and is obsessed with trying to control everything around him. His compulsion draws Aslan, who lives with his grandmother in a village in Kazakhstan, into increasingly difficult situations. He abhors the way most of his fellow pupils are held in the sway of a criminal scheme, in which Bolat, one of Aslan’s tormentors, is also involved. Bolat blackmails the younger children into paying him protection money; he has nothing but contempt for ostracised Aslan.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 994
Genere: Drama
Country: Kazakhstan, Germany, France
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, serious, disturbing, gloomy
Similar in 87%
Man of Iron (1981)
Plot Summary:
In Warsaw in 1980, the Communist Party sends Winkel, a weak, alcoholic TV hack, to Gdansk to dig up dirt on the shipyard strikers, particularly on Maciek Tomczyk, an articulate worker whose father was killed in the December 1970 protests. Posing as sympathetic, Winkel interviews the people surrounding Tomczyk, including his detained wife, Agnieszka.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Poland
Duration: 156 min
Plot tags: political, thought provoking, serious, realistic, contemplative, crying
Similar in 81%
Machuca (2004)
Plot Summary:
Santiago, capital of Chile during the Marxist government of elected, highly controversial president Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports his leftist views by introducing a program at the prestigious "collegio" (Catholic prep school) St. Patrick to allow free admission of some proletarian kids. One of them is Pedro Machuca, slum-raised son of the cleaning lady in Gonzalo Infante's liberal-bourgeois home. Yet the new classmates become buddies, paradoxically protesting together as Gonzalo gets adopted by Pedro's slum family and gang. But the adults spoil that too, not in the least when general Pinochet's coup ousts Allende, and supporters such as McEnroe.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Chile, Spain, UK, France
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: political, sincere, touching, emotional, thought provoking, serious, realistic, social, hispanic, sentimental
Similar in 89%
Song for a Raggy Boy (2003)
Plot Summary:
William Franklin is a teacher who was born in Ireland and moved to the United States only to repatriate in 1939 after his leftist political views cause him to lose his job. Franklin becomes the first non-cleric instructor at St. Jude's, a school for wayward boys run by Brother John, who is a firm believer in strong discipline.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Ireland, Denmark, UK, Spain
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, disturbing, bleak, serious, sincere, depressing, realistic
Similar in 83%
The Road Home (1999)
Plot Summary:
Prompted by the death of his father and the grief of his mother, a man recalls the story of how they met in flashback.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: China
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: emotional, romantic, road movie, sentimental, atmospheric, stylized, sad, psychedelic, feel good, epic
Similar in 82%
1900 (1976)
Plot Summary:
Set in Bertolucci's ancestral region of Emilia, the film chronicles the lives of two men during the political turmoils that took place in Italy in the first half on the 20th century.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 27000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Italy, France, West Germany
Duration: 317 min
Plot tags: epic, disturbing, controversial, compassionate, thought provoking, serious, realistic, captivating, political, stylized
Similar in 76%
Europa Europa (1990)
Plot Summary:
A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth. Although improbabilities and happenstance are cornerstones of the film, it is based upon a true story.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 17000
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Germany, France, Poland
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: political, realistic, retro, mind bending, psychedelic, surreal, epic, tense, thought provoking, serious