Best movies like The Criminal Shall Not Escape
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Plot Summary:
Mukhtar comes to live and work at the police kennels through rather unusual circumstances. Together with his handler, Glazychev, Mukhtar helps to solve large and small crimes.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 622
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like The Criminal Shall Not Escape (1965):
Similar in 77%
A Long Goodbye (1971)
Plot Summary:
A single woman has put all her efforts into raising her only son, Sasha. When Sasha grows up to become a teenager, she thinks that she can have some time for herself, so she responds to the courtship of Nikolai Sergeyevich. One summer, Sasha goes to visit his real father in Novosibirsk, on the other side of the country. When he returns, his mother notices that Sasha has changed. She secretly reads a letter sent to Sasha from his father and finds out that Sasha doesn’t want to live with her any longer. She doesn’t have enough wisdom to understand this desire on someone else’s part. Sasha is shown to have a more delicate and understanding nature than his mother, for when he realizes that she is suffering because of his wish to leave, even though he is tired of her nagging, he decides to stay.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 948
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Private Life (1982)
Plot Summary:
Mikhail Ulyanov is the Bergmanesque protagonist of the Russian Private Life. A government-appointed factory executive, Ulyanov is reduced to quivering confusion when he is dismissed. Recovering from this blow, he decides to review and realign his life. In so doing, he discovers that there's plenty left in the world to make life worth living. Private Life was nominated for the "best foreign picture" Academy Award in 1983.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 253
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
The Red Snowball Tree (1974)
Plot Summary:
A former thief is released from a prison. He tries to start a new life with his penfriend - a good village woman, but his past doesn't let him go.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: ironic, sentimental, thought provoking, touching, disturbing, sad, cynical
Similar in 82%
Monologue (1973)
Plot Summary:
Professor Sretenski is a scientist and director of a research center in Russia. He is separated from his wife and lives alone. His daughter, who lives with the mother, comes to his home and stays with him for a period, leaving her daughter with him. He raises his granddaughter, feeling a great affection for her.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 387
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
Those People of the Nile (1972)
Plot Summary:
The construction of the Aswan dam as seen by those who took part in it: engineers and workers, Egyptians and Soviets. Beginning with the day the waters of the Nile were diverted, Chahine shows how individual concerns sometimes outweigh the myth surrounding a collective undertaking. The first Egyptian-Soviet co-production was shown to its two sponsor governments in 1968, inspiring considerable displeasure. Re-editing was demanded; along with newly shot sequences using actors. Consequently, the film was not shown until 1972.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 101
Genere: Drama
Country: Egypt, Soviet Union
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 75%
Gulag Barashevo (2015)
Plot Summary:
Artists, Poets, Writers, Musicians, and Dissidents, Husbands and Wives, in the Marxist USSR GULAG camps of Barashevo and Vorkuta, suffer in and survive their Gulag death camps. It is a ultimately a spiritual struggle.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 58
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 168 min
Plot tags: spiritual
Similar in 77%
Night Over Chile (1977)
Plot Summary:
A Soviet docudrama chronicling the events surrounding the military coup which toppled the leftists Chilean government of Salvador Allende. This film confines its efforts to the main events themselves and is based on interviews with eyewitnesses, including many who resisted the takeover.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 81
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
The Burglar (1987)
Plot Summary:
With a brother dedicated to punk rock stardom at any cost and a drunken father who chases skirt between robotic dancing lessons from the TV, young Senka stands as much chance of nurture as the hero of Truffaut's 400 Blows. The amazing thing about Ogorodnikov's film is that it was made in Russia. Clearly, plenty of Soviet teenies share the nihilistic feelings of their Western counterparts, and the extensive footage of safety-pin chic at concerts perhaps points to a sound export instinct on the director's part. Senka's brother Kostya is under pressure from Howmuch, a very heavy rocker, to steal a synthesiser from the Community Centre, so to protect him Senka steals it himself. The story occupies little more space than the music, but the performances are splendid enough to lodge Senka's predicament in the heart.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 145
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Good Bye, Southern City (2006)
Plot Summary:
The film takes place in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku at the end of the 1980s. At this time, the Soviet Union was starting to fall apart, and with this came the start of a number of ethnic conflicts. Fariz and his family move into a Baku apartment block from war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh. Fariz's relations with his new neighbors are strained by his accusations that it was people like them who failed to support the Azeris in their conflict with ethnic Armenians. The only one who stands up to him is Alik, who acts as peacemaker between him and the older inhabitants of the building. Alik has no reservations about brandishing his gun in order to keep the peace. One day, the apartment managers want to evict a number of musicians who have been squatting in the basement. Alik gets involved, but soon discovers the situation is more complicated that he first believed.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 71
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia, Azerbaijan
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
Don't Grieve (1968)
Plot Summary:
Benjamin, the local doctor is a soul of a local society, the educated, friendly, democratic person who often treats the poor for free. It makes him very popular with the locals but most certainly does not help with his bank account. He is in love with a beautiful Manette who is also crazy about him but is being watched closely by her father who called his daughter "his small capital" and is determined to protect her virginity until the moment the marriage contract has been signed.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
The Detached Mission (1986)
Plot Summary:
CIA appointed US Army major Jack Hessalt to be in charge of a secret missile base in the Atlantic Ocean. Jack is still troubled by memories of Vietnam, and soon goes berserk, taking control of the base and killing some crew members. Jack and his cronies commandeer a powerful missile and proceed to perform terrorism, but they haven't counted on a rough-n-ready squad of Russian Marines.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 244
Genere: Action, Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 88%
The First Teacher (1965)
Plot Summary:
Dyuishen is assigned to the mountainous Kirghiz region of Central Asia by the Young Communist League after he is discharged from the Red Army. It is 1923 and the Civil war has ended. The former soldier becomes a teacher, bringing the Leninist doctrine to the remote Moslem area where elders did not allow children to go to school. He falls in love with one of his students, but the young woman is sold by her father to a wealthy chieftain. When the school is burned down, the majestic poplar trees that are a source of local pride are cut down to rebuild the new structure.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 601
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: political
Similar in 83%
War and Peace: Part I (1965)
Plot Summary:
The first film of a four-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 novel . In St. Petersburg of 1805, Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a rich nobleman, is introduced to high society. His friend, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, joins the Imperial Russian Army as aide-de-camp of General Mikhail Kutuzov in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon.
IMDB Rating: 8.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 147 min
Plot tags: historical drama, period drama
Similar in 80%
Dog × Police: The K-9 Force (2011)
Plot Summary:
Yusaku Hayakawa dreams of becoming a detective, but works as a trainer for police dogs. When Yusaku gets an albino shepherd named Shiro, he forms a special bond with him. Everyone says that Shiro does not have the abilities to become a police dog, but Yusaku believes in him and trains him. When a terrorist act occurs, Shiro gets the chance to show what he has learned.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 130
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, disturbing
Similar in 80%
Scarecrow (1984)
Plot Summary:
A twelve years old girl Lena who has come to live with her grandfather in a small Russian town is being bullied by her classmates. She took the rap of being a class traitor because she was in love with the boy who had betrayed his classmates when they were bunking off and going to cinema instead of a literature lesson. The class is penalized for that, not being allowed to go to Moscow for fall holidays with the rest of the school. Lena is being ostracized, "boycotted" however not telling the truth, waiting that the boy himself would confess to be guilty.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: bleak, suspenseful, sincere, touching, spiritual, serious, realistic, disturbing, gloomy, biting
Similar in 81%
Flights in Dreams and in Reality (1983)
Plot Summary:
On the eve of his fortieth anniversary Sergei Makarov looks back at his life and learns that he has achieved nothing. He was not able to be happy and to bring happiness to the closest people in his life, neither to his long-suffering wife nor young mistress nor friends nor work... It is about the men who never grew up and could not find themselves in the time of stagnation – gifted, charming, but infantile and lost, they never were able to realize themselves.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Days of Eclipse (1988)
Plot Summary:
This bleak late soviet-era drama follows the career of Malyanov, a young medical school graduate who has been sent to work in Turkmenia. Here he runs into a hodge-podge of people of differing ethnicities, all of them victims of the government's earlier mania for relocating and eliminating whole ethnic groups and classes of people. These desperately unhappy people are unable to find any pleasure in this diverse companionship, but instead are antagonistic to it, and often resort to desperate measures in their doomed attempts to ease their pain.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 139 min
Plot tags: spiritual, poetic, avant garde
Similar in 75%
You and Me (1971)
Plot Summary:
A neurosurgeon returns back to the USSR from Sweden and has to deal with rejection - both at work and at home.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 431
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Heat (1963)
Plot Summary:
Larisa Shepitko's diploma film. An idealistic high school graduate goes to work on a state farm on the Kazakh steppe, only to clash with its authoritarian leader.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 223
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Wild Pigeon (1986)
Plot Summary:
In a poor provincial town, the ragamuffin boys are frenziedly drilled for combat, and at nights the local elite, gathered in a pool room, boasts of fictitious biographies, while bands of boys amuse themselves with bloody fights on trashy vacant plots… One of the most vivid staples of the postwar childhood were pigeons. They could be bought, sold or stolen. One day a beautiful white dove appeared over the town. Risking his life, Ivan caught the White. And immediately became the target of the “pigeon” mafia….
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 183
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
War and Peace: Part II (1965)
Plot Summary:
In the end of 1809, Natasha attends her first ball. Andrei falls in love with her and intends to marry her, but her father demands they wait. The prince travels abroad, and Natasha desperately longs for him. But she then meets Anatol Kuragin and forgets of Andrei. At the last minute, she regrets and abandons her plans to elope with Anatol. Bolkonsky hears of this and declares their betrothal is over. Pierre, trying to calm her down, suddenly announces he loves her.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: historical drama, period drama
Similar in 85%
My Friend Ivan Lapshin (1985)
Plot Summary:
Russian provincial town in the middle of the 1930s Stalin's Great Purge. Ivan Lapshin, the head of the local police, does what he has to do. And he does it well.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: slow cinema, spiritual, aesthetic
Similar in 82%
The Lonely Voice of Man (1987)
Plot Summary:
The film is Sokurov's feature film debut and is based on the novel The River Potudan by Andrei Platonov. It's a story about the lives of people in the Russian countryside in the beginning of the 20th century. The film was completed in 1979 as a graduation film, but was banned by the Soviet state and didn't premiere until 1987.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 716
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: poetic, spiritual, contemplative, avant garde
Similar in 86%
The Second Circle (1990)
Plot Summary:
A man tries to come to terms with his father's death and to deal with the mundane details of his burial in a society cut off from spirituality.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 767
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: spiritual, avant garde
Similar in 76%
The Asthenic Syndrome (1989)
Plot Summary:
In the old days it was called hypochrondria, or black melancholia. Now, apparently, it's termed the Asthenic Syndrome. Whatever it is, Nikolai, a teacher of epicly indifferent pupils, has got it, and it's not much fun.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 153 min
Plot tags: spiritual
Similar in 90%
The Wishing Tree (1976)
Plot Summary:
This poetic parable is part of Tenghiz Abuladze’s cinematic triptych: “The Supplication” – “The Wishing Tree” – “Repentance”. The place is Georgia at the beginning of the 20th century. That’s how director Tenghiz Abuladze described his film: “’The Wishing Tree’ is a film about the people lit up by a dream. Every character has its own ideal. One is worshipping the skies, another the earth, some idolize the body, others elevate the spirit. Some destroy the body, others the soul…” Marita, the film’s heroine, arrived here to live with her aunt. She meets a poor young lad, Gedia, and falls in love with him. But her relatives are determined to marry the girl off to a local rich man….
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
War and Peace: Part IV (1967)
Plot Summary:
As Moscow is set ablaze by the retreating Russians, the Rostovs flee their estate, taking wounded soldiers with them, and unbeknownst to them, also Andrei. Pierre, dressed as a peasant, tries to assassinate Napoleon but is taken prisoner. As the French are forced to retreat, he is marched for months with the Grande Armée, until being freed by a raiding party. The French are defeated by Kutuzov in the Battle of Krasnoi. Andrei is recognized and is brought to his estate. He forgives Natasha on his deathbed. She reunites with Pierre and they marry as Moscow is being rebuilt.
IMDB Rating: 8.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: period drama
Similar in 79%
Nine Days of One Year (1962)
Plot Summary:
Two young scientists are exploring new fields of nuclear physics. Dmitry Gusev and Ilya Kulikov are good friends, but rivals in love. Dmitry marries Lyolya and they live happily together. Luck has it that he makes an important discovery. Unfortunately he exposes himself to radioactivity during the experiments. As a result he falls seriously ill. However Dmitry has a strong spirit. His will to live, the deep passion for his work and his strong love for mankind makes it possible for him to recover.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: spiritual
Similar in 87%
The Steamroller and the Violin (1961)
Plot Summary:
Seven year old Sasha practices violin every day to satisfy the ambition of his parents. Already withdrawn as a result of his routines, Sasha quickly regains confidence when he accidentally meets and befriends worker Sergei, who works on a steamroller in their upscale Moscow neighborhood.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 46 min
Plot tags: art house, serious, realistic, spiritual, uplifting, touching, feel good, stylized, slow cinema, weird
Similar in 84%
Collapse (1990)
Plot Summary:
1986, Chernobyl disaster. Couples, friends, and a risk-taking journalist are woven into the larger framework of the disaster. Panic follows.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 253
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Soviet Union
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: