Best movies like Tale of the Three Jewels
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
A Palestinian boy becomes entranced with a beautiful Gypsy girl and a fairy tale world she weaves amidst conflict in Gaza. The children explore nature, mysticism and what their future holds, while learning to live with the surrounding brutality c. 1990. Yusef's family scrapes by in a seaside camp while his father's in prison and his heavily-armed brother's on the run, parrying with Israeli troops. Salah, Yusef's schoolmate from a well-off Arab family strives faithfully to assist them, while Yusef helps an elderly, blind neighbor escape from his lonely abandonment into the North American dreamworld he's waited so long for.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 145
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Belgium, Spain, UK
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like Tale of the Three Jewels (1995):
Similar in 81%
Eden (2001)
Plot Summary:
In 1939, Kalman, an ambitious young businessman, leaves Europe to join his sister Samantha in Palestine. She lives with Dov, an idealistic architect obsessed with the Bauhaus style. With their friends, they form a group, which discusses the future Israeli State. A loose adaptation of Arthur Miller's novel "Homely Girl, A Life".
IMDB Rating: 4.7
IMDB Votes: 292
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Italy, Israel, France
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Darling, Something's Wrong with Your Head (2011)
Plot Summary:
“Darling, Something's Wrong with Your Head＂ a story of forbidden love, is the first fiction feature set in Gaza in over 15 years. The film is a modern re-telling of the legendary tragic romance 'Majnun Layla', which was set in seventh century Arabia, when a poet named Qays fell in love with Layla. Driven by the intensity of his passion, Qays was known as 'Majnun Layla', which translates as 'madman for Layla'. In the contemporary setting, two students in the West Bank are forced to return home to Gaza, where their love defies tradition. To reach his lover, Qays graffiti's poetry across town.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 163
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Netherlands, USA, United Arab Emirates
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Reach for Glory (1962)
Plot Summary:
During World War II, teenage boys in a small English town are consumed with jingoism and brutal war games, hoping dearly that the war won't end before they can fight in it.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 182
Genere: Drama, War
Country: UK
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 87%
Grandmother (1989)
Plot Summary:
A small African village. The story focuses on Bila, a ten year old boy who befriends an old woman, Sana. Everybody calls her 'Witch' but Bila himself calls her 'Yaaba' (grandmother). When Bila's cousin Nopoko gets sick it is Sana's medicine that saves her.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 739
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Burkina Faso, Switzerland, France, West Germany
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: independent film, black cinema
Similar in 86%
Farha (2021)
Plot Summary:
Palestine, 1948. After the withdrawal of the British occupiers, tensions rise between Arabs and Jews. Meanwhile, Farha, the smart daughter of the mayor of a small village, unaware of the coming tragedy, dreams of going to study in the big city.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 86000
Genere: Drama
Country: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sweden
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: suspense, period piece
Similar in 87%
Jamilya (1969)
Plot Summary:
The film is based on the story of the same name by Soviet writer Chinghiz Aitmatov. It is set in a remote Kirghiz village during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). A young wife of a soldier, Djamilya, fell in love with Daniar, a wounded war veteran living in her village. Daniar reciprocates her feelings. But suddenly Djamilya receives a letter from her husband with the news of his forthcoming return from the hospital. This forces the lovers to make a final decision. Years later, their young friend, Seid, who was a witness to their beautiful, albeit uneasy, love, reminisces about this wonderful couple….
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 300
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: black and white
Similar in 82%
Nahid (2015)
Plot Summary:
A woman tries to mend the broken pieces of her last life, as she is now involved with a new sexual relationship with a man.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Iran
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: psychological, touching, contemplative, independent film
Similar in 86%
Bride of Fire (2000)
Plot Summary:
A tragedy in which a young woman from an Arab tribe, prevented from marrying her non-Arab Persian lover is forced against her wishes to marry her cousin.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 573
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Iran
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Birth Certificate (1961)
Plot Summary:
Three separate stories depicting the tense everyday life during occupation, as seen through the eyes of children. In “On the Road,” the two main protagonists are lost in the September’s strife: a young boy, and a soldier transporting the valueless documents of his broken unit. In “Letter from the Concentration Camp” the story’s protagonists are young boys who help their mother during the hardships of the occupation. Their treasure is an officer uniform belonging their father who is being held in a prisoner of war camp. In “Blood Drop,” the Germans find a set of typical Aryan characteristics in this story’s protagonist – a Jewish girl, hiding in an orphanage.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 414
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Poland
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: anthology
Similar in 86%
Could We Maybe (1976)
Plot Summary:
15-year-old Kim - an ordinary teenager, given mostly to himself, living with an unmarried mother in a small apartment. Once Kim together with an unfamiliar girl falls hostage during a bank robbery, but after making friends with the leader of the robbers, Kim and his new friend run away from them. Settling for a while in an empty house, teenagers fall in love.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 399
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Denmark
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
The Night Bus (2007)
Plot Summary:
The film, which is in sharp monochrome, relates the story of a twenty-four-hour-long journey of two young Iranian soldiers (Issā and Emād) and a civilian driver (Amu Rahim) transporting thirty-eight Iraqi prisoners of war, taken from behind the Iraqi line, to a garrison inside Iran. From the details one is informed that the Iran–Iraq War has entered into its third year. The film masterfully depicts the deep inhumanity of acts of war amongst nations by showing the shared humanity of the combatants on both sides.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 626
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Iran
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
The Night (1992)
Plot Summary:
The film explores the Arab-Israeli conflict as seen through the experiences of an Arab family in newly-liberated city of Quneitra, headed by a resistance fighter.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 158
Genere: Drama, History, War
Country: Syria
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
Wedding in Galilee (1987)
Plot Summary:
A Palestinian seeks Israeli permission to waive curfew to give his son a fine wedding. The military governor's condition is that he and his officers attend. The groom berates his father for agreeing. Women ritually prepare the bride; men prepare the groom. Guests gather. The Arab youths plot violence. One Israeli officer swoons in the heat and Arab women take her into the cool house. A thoroughbred gets loose and runs to a mined field; soldiers and Arabs must cooperate to rescue it. As darkness falls, tensions between army and villagers rise, and the groom's wedding-night anger and impotence threaten family dignity and honor. Can cool heads prevail?.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 515
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic
Similar in 85%
Marcel Proust's Time Regained (1999)
Plot Summary:
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) is on his deathbed. Looking at photographs brings memories of his childhood, his youth, his lovers, and the way the Great War put an end to a stratum of society. His memories are in no particular order, they move back and forth in time. Marcel at various ages interacts with Odette, with the beautiful Gilberte and her doomed husband, with the pleasure-seeking Baron de Charlus, with Marcel's lover Albertine, and with others; present also in memory are Marcel's beloved mother and grandmother. It seems as if to live is to remember and to capture memories is to create a work of great art. The memories parallel the final volume of Proust's novel.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: France, Italy, Portugal
Duration: 169 min
Plot tags: philosophical, atmospheric, spiritual, psychological, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, crying, intellectual
Similar in 88%
The Pear Tree (1998)
Plot Summary:
A man contemplates life and compares it to a pear tree in his yard which stops producing fruit.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Iran
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: spiritual, islamic, atmospheric, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 89%
Or (My Treasure) (2004)
Plot Summary:
Or shoulders a lot: she's 17 or 18, a student, works evenings at a restaurant, recycles cans and bottles for cash, and tries to keep her mother Ruthie from returning to streetwalking in Tel Aviv. Ruthie calls Or "my treasure," but Ruthie is a burden. She's just out of hospital, weak, and Or has found her a job as a house cleaner. The call of the quick money on the street is tough for Ruthie to ignore. Or's emotions roil further when the mother of the youth she's in love with comes to the flat to warn her off. With love fading and Ruthie perhaps beyond help, Or's choices narrow.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Israel
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, psychological, sincere, bleak, realistic, erotic, depressing, gloomy, crying
Similar in 86%
Zozo (2005)
Plot Summary:
A Lebanese boy gets separated from his family during the civil war and ends up in Sweden.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Family, War
Country: Sweden, Czech Republic, UK, Denmark, Netherlands
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Salt of This Sea (2008)
Plot Summary:
Born in Brooklyn to Palestinian refugee parents, Soraya (Suheir Hammad) decides to journey to the country of her ancestry when she discovers that her grandfather's savings have been frozen in a Jaffa bank account since his 1948 exile. She soon finds, however, that her simple plan is a complicated undertaking -- and one that takes her farther from her comfort zone (both geographically and emotionally) than she'd imagined in this romantic drama.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Belgium, France, Spain, Switzerland
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, sincere, emotional, realistic, political, sad, islamic, contemplative
Similar in 82%
The Blue-Veiled (1995)
Plot Summary:
An elderly owner of a tomato farm and sauce factory, after his wife's death, falls in love with one of the workers of the factory endangering his relationship with his daughters and in-laws. While everybody in the big family persuades the old man to abandon the relationship with the poor girl, the old man makes his final choice of love.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 785
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Iran
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
The Goob (2014)
Plot Summary:
We’re in the middle of a heat-wave in Fenland England. Goob Taylor has spent each of his sixteen summers helping Mum run the transport cafe and harvest the surrounding beet fields. When Mum shacks up with swarthy stock-car supremo and ladies’ man gene Womack, Goob becomes an unwelcome side thought. However Goob’s world turns when exotic beet picker Eva arrives. Fuelled by her flirtatious comments, Goob dreams of better things.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: UK
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: realistic, sentimental, captivating, emotional, sincere, touching, serious
Similar in 84%
For a Lost Soldier (1992)
Plot Summary:
The story of a romantic relationship between a Canadian soldier and a child set in the Netherlands near the end of WWII. Told in flashback from the present day, the child, now a man, is still seeking his lost soldier.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Netherlands
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, realistic, serious, contemplative, crying, queer cinema, gay cinema
Similar in 89%
West Beirut (1998)
Plot Summary:
In April, 1975, civil war breaks out; Beirut is partitioned along a Moslem-Christian line. Tarek is in high school, making Super 8 movies with his friend, Omar. At first the war is a lark: school has closed, the violence is fascinating, getting from West to East is a game. His mother wants to leave; his father refuses. Tarek spends time with May, a Christian, orphaned and living in his building. By accident, Tarek goes to an infamous brothel in the war-torn Olive Quarter, meeting its legendary madam, Oum Walid. He then takes Omar and May there using her underwear as a white flag for safe passage. Family tensions rise. As he comes of age, the war moves inexorably from adventure to tragedy.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance, War
Country: France, Norway, Lebanon, Belgium
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: touching, melancholic, compassionate, emotional, sad, islamic, sincere, serious, realistic, sexy
Similar in 82%
Killer Kid (1994)
Plot Summary:
Eleven-year-old Laïd lives in war-torn Lebanon. Chosen and trained by an extremist organisation, he has been forced to enter the adult world far too early. He has been transformed into a fanatical and programmed machine, whose life could be summed up in the words "kill without hesitation".Because of his intellect and his commitment to the holy war he is handpicked for a deadly assignment in Paris. But in order to get access to the target he has to learn how to merge in, to become an ordinary eleven-year-old. Karim becomes his role model. Karim is the same age as Laïd and grew up in one of the Paris suburbs. He is carefree and "hip" and becomes the perfect teacher in a world of skateboards, rap music and video games.Despite the cultural differences, despite the fact that one of them is an indoctrinated machine and the other one a perfectly ordinary carefree boy, a friendship begins to grow between the two.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 237
Genere: Drama, War
Country: France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, realistic, disturbing, crying
Similar in 75%
JJ+E (2021)
Plot Summary:
Elisabeth and John-John live in the same city, but they inhabit different worlds.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Sweden
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, captivating, disturbing, teen
Similar in 87%
Bashu, the Little Stranger (1989)
Plot Summary:
During the Iran-Iraq War, Bashu, a young boy loses his house and all his family. Scared, he sneaks into a truck that is leaving the area. He gets off the truck in the Northern part of the country, where everything from landscape to language is different. He meets Naii, who is trying to raise her two young children on a farm, while her husband is away. Despite cultural differences, and the fact that they do not speak the same language, Bashu and Naii slowly form a strong bond Written by Sam Tabibnia.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Iran
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: inspirational, islamic, serious, realistic
Similar in 82%
A Time for Drunken Horses (2000)
Plot Summary:
After their father dies, a family of five are forced to survive on their own in a Kurdish village on the border of Iran and Iraq. Matters are made worse when 12 year old Ayoub, the new head of the family, is told that his handicapped brother, Madi, needs an immediate operation in order to remain alive. This heartbreaking tale shows the lengths to which a family will go in order to survive in the harshest of conditions, where even the horses are fed liquor in order to work.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Iran, France
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: realistic, bleak, meditative, emotional, harsh, sincere, rough, serious, inspirational, political
Similar in 84%
Lover's Prayer (2001)
Plot Summary:
A younger boy falls in love with a tragic girl who flirts with, and manipulates, her older suitors in 1800s Russia.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 849
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA, UK
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: captivating, sentimental, serious, realistic, period piece, costume drama, independent film, period drama
Similar in 90%
Divine Intervention (2002)
Plot Summary:
Santa Claus tries to outrun a gang of knife-wielding youth. It's one of several vignettes of Palestinian life in Israel - in a neighborhood in Nazareth and at Al-Ram checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Most of the stories are droll, some absurd, one is mythic and fanciful; few words are spoken. A man who goes through his mail methodically each morning has a heart attack. His son visits him in hospital. The son regularly meets a woman at Al-Ram; they sit in a car, hands caressing. Once, she defies Israeli guards at the checkpoint; later, Ninja-like, she takes on soldiers at a target range. A red balloon floats free overhead. Neighbors toss garbage over walls. Life goes on until it doesn't.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War, Comedy
Country: France, Morocco, Germany
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: surreal, meditative, stylized, thought provoking, touching, semi serious, clever, humorous, offbeat, realistic
Similar in 75%
Turtles Can Fly (2004)
Plot Summary:
Turtles can fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iran border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 21000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Iran, France, Iraq
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: sincere, bleak, emotional, atmospheric, stylized, rough, heartbreaking, political, dramatic, realistic
Similar in 75%
Dear John (2010)
Plot Summary:
Sergeant John Tyree is home on a 2 week leave from Germany. He meets Savannah after he dives into the ocean to retrieve Savannah's purse that had fallen off the pier. John falls in love with Savannah who is a student on spring break helping build a house for Habitat for Humanity. A romance occurs and Savannah falls deeply in love with John. She promises to write John overseas until he returns.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 156000
Genere: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: romantic, sentimental, sweet, touching, emotional, romantic drama, teen, tear jerker, sad, realistic