Best movies like Sophie and the Rising Sun
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
In a small Southern town in the autumn of 1941, Sophie’s lonely life is transformed when an Asian man arrives under mysterious circumstances. Their love affair becomes the lightning rod for long-buried conflicts that erupt in bigotry and violence with the outbreak of World War ll.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: historical drama, tragic
Best tv shows and movies like Sophie and the Rising Sun (2016):
Similar in 76%
Treasure Island (1999)
Plot Summary:
This film has nothing to do with Robert Louis Stevenson's classic story, but rather a naval base of the same name located in San Francisco Bay. Set amid WWII, TREASURE ISLAND follows two American code specialists that are hard at work trying to decipher Japanese messages and sending confusing messages back to deceive the enemy. The film explores sexual themes that were prevalent during the period, but not shown in the movies of that era.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 193
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: independent film, serious, realistic, experimental
Similar in 80%
Cora Unashamed (2000)
Plot Summary:
From the short story by Langston Hughes.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 280
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
The Wizard of Loneliness (1988)
Plot Summary:
A family drama.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 283
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 85%
Rescuers: Stories of Courage: Two Women (1997)
Plot Summary:
The film is divided into two segments, both set in Europe during WWII.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 172
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
My Sweet Charlie (1970)
Plot Summary:
A pregnant white Southern girl and a black New York lawyer, both on the run in rural Texas, meet up in a boarded-up, abandoned house and realize they both need each other in order to survive.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 272
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: tension, suspense
Similar in 84%
Sour Grape (1974)
Plot Summary:
Two years after receiving news of his father’s death in WWII a young boy continues to wait for trains from the front. The boy lives with his crippled uncle rather than with his mother, who has remarried and has another child. Then one day the father returns.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 89
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 76 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Neger, Neger, Schornsteinfeger (2006)
Plot Summary:
This drama is based on the childhood memories of Hans Jürgen Massaquoi, who was one of the few black native Germans in Nazi Germany. In 1935 at the age of nine, he lives with his German mother in a small flat in Hamburg's working class district Barmbek, while his father and grandfather had left the country. Although the boy is not persecuted by the Nazis and dreams of joining the Hitler Youth, his skin color makes him a target for racist abuse.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 383
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 180 min
Plot tags: psychological, emotional, atmospheric, captivating
Similar in 90%
The World We Make (2019)
Plot Summary:
18 year old Lee (a spirited equestrian) and Jordan (an academic and football standout) are at the threshold of building a life together. But their character is tested when racial bias surfaces in their otherwise progressive small town.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 756
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, suspense, disturbing, christian film, romantic
Similar in 80%
Plenty (1985)
Plot Summary:
David Hare's account of a one-time French freedom fighter who gradually realizes that her post-war life is not meeting her expectations.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: independent film, psychological, tense, thought provoking, clever, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, sexy
Similar in 84%
The Artist and the Model (2012)
Plot Summary:
The story of a famous old sculptor, weary of life and the folly of men, who finds, thanks to the arrival of a Spanish girl escaped from a refugee camp, the desire to return to work and sculpt your final work in occupied France in 1943. Model and artist, as they work, speak with simplicity and closeness to everything around them: The life and death, the injustice of the war, youth and old age, the search for beauty in times of horror, the sense and the need for art.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain, France
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, light, touching, melancholic, dramatic, visually appealing, sexy, bleak, serious, realistic
Similar in 81%
Freedom Road (1979)
Plot Summary:
Muhammad Ali, in a rare acting role, plays Gideon Jackson, an ex-slave in 1870's Virginia who gets elected to the U.S. Senate in Washington D.C. and battles other former slaves and white sharecroppers to keep the land they tended all their lives.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 205
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 186 min
Plot tags: political, crying, period piece
Similar in 83%
Brush with Fate (2003)
Plot Summary:
A mystery hidden for generations. Now the truth will finally be revealed.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 475
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Paris Trout (1991)
Plot Summary:
Paris Trout is a vile Southern bigot. He owns a store and is a loanshark. He often sues people, and so his lawyer, Harry Seagraves, eventually meets Paris' wife Hannah. A former schoolteacher, she made the mistake of her life when she married Paris, who brutalizes her. Soon Paris goes beyond the overgenerous bounds of what a man in his position can get away with even in the segregated South, leading to a spiral of perverse insanity.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: neo noir, psychological, serious, emotional, realistic, disturbing, biting, suspense
Similar in 87%
Pressure Point (1962)
Plot Summary:
An African-American prison psychiatrist (Sidney Poitier) finds the boundaries of his professionalism sorely tested when he must counsel a disturbed inmate (Bobby Darin) with bigoted Nazi tendencies.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: mind bending, psychedelic, political, surreal, independent film, psychological, sincere, thought provoking, serious, realistic
Similar in 86%
Amin (2018)
Plot Summary:
Amin has come from Senegal to work in France, leaving behind his wife Aïcha, and their three children. He leads a solitary life in France, where the only space he occupies is his home and the building sites on which he works. Most of his earnings are sent to Senegal. One day, he meets a woman, Gabrielle, and a relationship is born.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 318
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: psychological, thought provoking, touching, suspense, melancholic
Similar in 82%
A Separate Peace (1972)
Plot Summary:
Gene and Finny are two boys who are best friends living in 1943, at the height of World War II. The idea that the boys will most likely be drafted when they turn eighteen is surrounding them, and they are practically forced to live their lives to the fullest. The two boys attend the Devon School, which prepares them for military life that they will most likely be subjected to. The film begins with a narration by an older Gene, traveling back to Devon some years later. The thing he wishes most to see is the tree, which had a great effect on the boys' lives.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 499
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, disturbing, sexual, sexy
Similar in 87%
Raggedy Man (1981)
Plot Summary:
Nita, a divorced mother of two boys, is stuck working as a telephone operator in a small Texas town in World War II. Her friendship with a sailor on leave causes tongues to wag in town.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, suspense, talky, sincere, serious, realistic, gloomy, light, sexy, touching
Similar in 87%
Ragtime (1981)
Plot Summary:
A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 155 min
Plot tags: clever, bleak, cult classic, independent film, sincere, touching, serious, captivating, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 87%
Timepiece (1996)
Plot Summary:
Set in the 1940's, James Earl Jones as an an old clockmaker faces racism and is tried for murder when the racist is killed. However, Kevin Kilner comes forward and claims to have commmitted the crime in self defense. All the while, Kilner's family life is in disarray with various crises including his daughter catching meningitis.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 514
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic
Similar in 83%
Hurry Sundown (1967)
Plot Summary:
Following the Second World War, a northern cannery combine negotiates for the purchase of a large tract of uncultivated Georgia farmland. The major portion of the land is owned by Julie Ann Warren and has already been optioned by her unscrupulous, draft dodging husband, Henry. Now the combine must also obtain two smaller plots - one owned by Henry's cousin Rad McDowell, a combat veteran with a wife and family; the other by Reeve Scott, a young black man whose mother had been Julie's childhood Mammy. But neither Rad nor Reeve is interested in selling and they form an unprecedented black and white partnership to improve their land. Although infuriated by the turn of events, Henry remains determined to push through the big land deal. And when Reeve's mother Rose dies, Henry tries to persuade his wife to charge Reeve with illegal ownership of his property, confident the the bigoted Judge Purcell will rule against a Negro.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 146 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, cult film
Similar in 89%
The Runaway (2000)
Plot Summary:
At the birth of two boys, one white and one black, a mysterious and powerful Conjure Woman (Maya Angelou) prophesies that they will start the change. Growing up as best friends in rural Georgia in the 1940s, the boys make a discovery that leads the town's new sheriff, Frank Richards (Dean Cain), to reopen the investigation of the unsolved murders of three black men. While the town would prefer that the truth remain hidden, the sheriff pursues the case, determined to see justice prevail. The Runaway is a stirring story of how friendship, determination and conviction can generate racial change in one heart or an entire town.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 322
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: tense, atmospheric, captivating, suspenseful, serious, realistic
Similar in 85%
Resistance (2003)
Plot Summary:
The epic tale of an American reconnaissance pilot downed in occupied Belgium at the height of World War II. Hidden by resistance fighters, the pilot falls in love with the wife of the man who will save him. When their affair is exposed, an act of betrayal threatens their lives and the entire resistance movement, forcing the pilot to make a powerful choice that could change the course of the war.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 702
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Netherlands
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, captivating, suspense
Similar in 78%
Life and Death on the Shore (2017)
Plot Summary:
Set in 1945 at the end of World War II. Saku arrives on Kakeromajima as the head of navy special forces. He is admired by the children on the island and he is interested in learning the island song as well as drinking with his men. Toe is an elementary school teacher on Kakeromajima and she has feelings for Saku.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 56
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 155 min
Plot tags: captivating
Similar in 83%
The Ogre (1996)
Plot Summary:
Frenchman Abel Tiffauges likes children, and wants to protect them against the grown-ups. Falsely suspected as child molester, he's recruited as a soldier in the 2nd World War, but very soon he is taken prisoner of war.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, France, UK, Poland
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: realistic, disturbing, sad, psychological, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, contemplative, erotic
Similar in 85%
Yanks (1979)
Plot Summary:
During WWII, the United States set up army bases in Great Britain as part of the war effort. Against their proper sensibilities, many of the Brits don't much like the brash Yanks, especially when it comes to the G.I.s making advances on the lonely British girls. One relationship that develops is between married John, an Army Captain, and the aristocratic Helen, whose naval husband is away at war. Helen loves her husband, but Helen and John are looking for some comfort during the difficult times.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: UK, USA, West Germany
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: serious, touching, emotional, realistic, historical drama
Similar in 84%
Delta of Venus (1995)
Plot Summary:
A struggling American writer and a fellow American expatriate begin a sordid affair among the chaos and discord of 1940 Paris, France on the brink of World War II.
IMDB Rating: 4.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: erotic, sexual, sexy, sensual, postmodern, independent film, serious, realistic, stylized, intellectual
Similar in 81%
Black Like Me (1964)
Plot Summary:
Black Like Me is the true account of John Griffin's experiences when he passed as a black man.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 753
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: deep, independent film
Similar in 86%
The Rising Place (2001)
Plot Summary:
The close friendship of two young women, each of a different race, and their struggle to find purpose in their lives during this time of social injustice and world war.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 208
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, realistic
Similar in 88%
Out of the Ashes (2003)
Plot Summary:
The real-life story of Gisella Perl, a Jewish Hungarian doctor imprisoned in the notorious Auschwitz death camp of World War II.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: realistic, touching, serious, bleak, captivating, emotional, contemplative, uplifting
Similar in 76%
The Magic of Ordinary Days (2005)
Plot Summary:
Pregnant out of wedlock, an educated young woman is pressured by her father into an arranged marriage with a lonely farmer in this drama set during WWII.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: touching, sentimental, sincere, serious, emotional, realistic, melancholic, contemplative, heartbreaking, sad