Best movies like The First Teacher
Last updated March 2024
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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
Best tv shows and movies like The First Teacher (1965):
Similar in 75%
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1970)
Plot Summary:
Fly-on-the-wall treatment of an ordinary day in the life of a prisoner in Stalin's Gulag. Closely adapted from Solzhenitsyn's classic novel based on his own experiences. Shot entirely on location in northern Norway.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 617
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Norway, USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: depressing, political, independent film
Similar in 86%
Parade of the Planets (1984)
Plot Summary:
In a surreal puzzler, this story of a fantasy lived by a disparate group of four men captures the visual imagination with its images and leaves a large question mark in the meantime. The men first get together when called up for military maneuvers in the equivalent of a civilian reserve corps. Since their training is only periodical, two years go by before they are called up again. During this season's maneuvers, they end up being "killed," and so get some time off before they have to go home, and that is when the strange occurrences start. First the men visit a town of beautiful women and go swimming in the buff, then they land on a deserted island, and later, they find themselves with a group of elderly people, one of whom may - or may not - have a connection to one of the men.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 508
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: neorealism, allegory
Similar in 84%
Le sphinx (1995)
Plot Summary:
A school teacher falls in love with a stripper/singer. He even leaves his wife and children for her. He soon spends a lot of time at the club where he works part-time as the M.C.. But the owner, a mobster, interferes in the relationship which brings fear and violence into the game.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 152
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
The Republic SHKID (1966)
Plot Summary:
The film is based on the eponymous book, written by two former street gangsters - Grigori Belykh and Leonid Panteleyev. Film is set in the 1920s St. Petersburg, Russia. Streets of the city are full of the homeless boys. They are caught to be raised and educated at the correction school named after Dostoevsky. The boys are street smart and difficult. But the faculty stands up to the challenge. The teaches are being devoted and caring, and gradually win the respect of the most difficult kids. The school director Vicknixor is a refined intellectual, who becomes a role model for the boys.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Family
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Byelorussia Station (1971)
Plot Summary:
The heroes of the movie last seen each other on the Belarusian railway station in the summer of 1945. A quarter-century, they meet at the funeral of comrade.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, touching, disturbing, smart
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 88%
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 82%
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 81%
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 84%
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 76%
Farewell (1983)
Plot Summary:
Matyora is a small village on a beautiful island with the same name. The existence of the village is threatened with flooding by the construction of a dam. This is the story of the inhabitants of Matyora and their farewell to their homeland.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 743
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: spiritual
Similar in 82%
Wolf and Sheep (2016)
Plot Summary:
In rural Afghanistan, people are storytellers who make up and tell each other tales of mystery and imagination to explain the world in which they live. The shepherd children own the mountains and, although no adults are around, they know the rules; they know that boys and girls are not allowed to be together. The boys practice with their slings to fight wolves. The girls smoke secretly and play at getting married, dreaming of finding a husband soon. They gossip about Sediqa; she’s eleven years old and an outsider. The girls think she is cursed. Qodrat, also eleven years old, becomes the subject of gossip when his mother remarries an old man with two wives. Qodrat roams alone in the most isolated parts of the mountains, where he meets Sediqa and they become friends.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 340
Genere: Drama
Country: Denmark, France, Sweden, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, USA
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
100 Days Before the Command (1991)
Plot Summary:
Visually astonishing, erotically charged and emotionally jarring. '100 Days Before the Command' is Hussein Erkenov's courageous and stinging indictment of communism. Five young Red Army recruits struggle for survival against the merciless violence that surrounds them on a daily basis. Their only means of saving their dignity is by preserving the humanity and compassion they share for each other.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 465
Genere: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 71 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
Whispering Pages (1994)
Plot Summary:
The pages that whisper through this brooding, beautiful tone poem are from nineteenth-century Russian literature, primarily Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. An anonymous man wanders through decomposing, fog-enshrouded catacombs and encounters a series of “the degraded and the humiliated,” including a holy prostitute and a Kafkaesque bureaucrat. Shot partly in Sokurov’s dreamlike black and white with a dense sound track of eerie, echoing voices and bursts of mournful Mahler.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 630
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia, Germany
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags: spiritual, contemplative, existential, poetic, avant garde
Similar in 79%
Female Teacher : Twice Raped (1983)
Plot Summary:
Science Teacher at high school science, Kojima Miho is a popular among male students this worked bad for her.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 32
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 70 min
Plot tags: pink cinema, sexploitation film
Similar in 87%
The Student (2016)
Plot Summary:
Veniamin, a teenager in the midst of a mystical crisis, has his mother, schoolmates and entire high school turned upside down by his questions. - Can girls go to their swimming classes in bikinis? - Does sex education have a place in school? - Should the theory of evolution be taught as part of the Natural Sciences? The adults are soon overwhelmed by the certitudes of the youngster who swears only by Scripture. No one but Elena, his biology teacher, will alone challenge him on his own ground.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, suspense, political, disturbing, cult classic, crying, complex
Similar in 76%
Child's Play (1992)
Plot Summary:
When Micha's mother leaves his irascible father, he tries to prevent their divorce by any means he can think of, but his attempts to hold the family together lead to a catastrophe.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 199
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: political, social
Similar in 81%
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 79%
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 80%
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 85%
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 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 75%
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 88%
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 82%
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 88%
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 80%
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 83%
The Criminal Shall Not Escape (1965)
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:
Similar in 80%
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