Best movies like The Illumination
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Krzysztof Zanussi's groundbreaking film chronicles a decade in the life of a young physics student whose absolute faith in the primacy of rationality and science is shaken by tragedy and affairs of the heart.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: philosophical, existential, poetic
Best tv shows and movies like The Illumination (1973):
Similar in 81%
How to Be Loved (1963)
Plot Summary:
An actress travels from Warsaw to Paris and during the trip reflects on the last few years of her life. It goes back to the German occupation and her hiding of a fellow actor who has supposedly killed a collaborator. He is weak and a bit cowardly, but suffers most from not having any audience for his vanity, ego and supposed bravery. After the war he leaves her but finds out that he has been accused of cowardice. He finally commits suicide and she clears herself of a collaboration charge and eventually becomes a popular actress.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 720
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: road movie
Similar in 75%
Fucha (1984)
Plot Summary:
International Critics’ Week - Cannes Festival 1985.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 78
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 63 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
The Pad (1980)
Plot Summary:
Two former classmates (one an honest working man with a wife and children, the other a conman) meet at a train station. The conman comes to stay with his old friend and slowly begins to assume the role of master of the house, taking the place of the father and husband. Made for television with a screenplay by Marek Nowakowski. The film sat on a shelf for 9 years, and was shown only on the wave of solidarity in 1980. Awards: 1981 - 8 Polish Film Festival, Gdańsk, special jury prize.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 29
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 65 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
Time to Die (2007)
Plot Summary:
An impressionistic, black-and-white portrait of the day-to-day of a nonagenarian woman as she experiences the final act of her life. Danuta Szaflarska stars as Aniela, who lives in a massive yet rapidly-deteriorating wooden house, filled with souvenirs and treasures of eras gone by. Aniela runs into conflict in her dealings with others, particularly a nasty neighbor who sees her property as an eyesore and wants to do everything in his reach to buy it up and tear it down, and her married adult son, who - though kindly - triggers paranoia within Aniela (she cannot help but believe that he is scheming and planning to wheedle the property away from her). Driven aback by these individuals, Aniela finds one of her only sources of comfort and reassurance in her daily talks with her dog, Fila - and develops a great affinity for spying on the neighbors' doings whenever boredom creeps in.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 85%
The Structure of Crystal (1969)
Plot Summary:
Physicist John worked as a meteorologist. He lives in a small village with his wife, a teacher. Meanwhile, his friend from university, Mark, is doing a research career. Trying to get John to return to academic work in the capital. Mark is not convinced by the arguments of John. Clash of two attitudes, characters, ideas about the meaning of life.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 74 min
Plot tags: poetic, intellectual, masterpiece
Similar in 83%
The Weather Forecast (1983)
Plot Summary:
The setting is an old age home run by an aging director with an authoritarian hand. In the evening many of the residents huddle in a living room, penetrated by the October cold, to listen to the news. The announcement is giving the number of expected deaths due too the coming harsh winter. In the middle of the night a truckload of coffins arrives to be stored. Dicovering the coffins the elderly assume they are marked for liquidation and they flee en masse. The next day their exodus is dicovered and the director calls the authorities. It turned out that the coffins were the overproduction from a coffin factory and were brought only for temporary storage. The panic search for the pensioners begins, including helicopters. In the meantime the group gets transported to another part of the country by a truck. They take over by a near-empty restaurant, where after mistreatment by a waiter, they tie him up and move on. A lone fisherman invites them into his house where, after initial.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 123
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
Behind The Wall (1971)
Plot Summary:
Jan is a young assistant professor in chemistry and a workaholic, Anna is an unsuccessful science writer who turns to Jan for advice and human compassion, but Jan, absorbed with his career, remains immune to Anna's clumsy efforts to pierce his defenses.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 150
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 56 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Life As a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease (2000)
Plot Summary:
The story of a doctor named Tomasz who questions his beliefs, faith and morality as his end is near, so he makes all efforts to find dignity in his imminent death.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland, France
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, tricky, clever, intellectual, existential
Similar in 86%
30 Door Key (1991)
Plot Summary:
A young writer in 1939 Warsaw faces the conflict of acting his age or relapsing into childhood during the brink of World War II. Based on the famous novel Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 396
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland, UK, France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: mindfuck
Similar in 80%
Hospital of the Transfiguration (1979)
Plot Summary:
The film is set in 1943 in a mental asylum in the country. But this is an unusual hospital: there are several incurable schizophrenic cases, staff is bit strange and a writer has voluntarily entered the clinic because he is "peculiar" and a drug addict. Then the German Gestapo arrives. The commandant asks for the list of patients, sorts out the "Aryan" doctors from the others on a return trip, and herds everyone into trucks for evacuation to the extermination camps. A young doctor momentarily escapes by covering himself under a pile of laundry in the basement, and then escapes to the woods just as the Nazi soldiers appear.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 426
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Gra (1969)
Plot Summary:
About an existentialist alienation drama between a bourgeois couple caught in a stationary environment. Between a man and a woman lost in themselves.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 67
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Short Working Day (1995)
Plot Summary:
Kieślowski’s study of a political strike, controversially told from the viewpoint of a Communist functionary trying to keep order.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 402
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 73 min
Plot tags: political drama
Similar in 88%
The Constant Factor (1980)
Plot Summary:
The main character in this effective, convincing drama is Witold (Tadeusz Bradecki) who is high in what later would be termed the "emotional quotient" or the ability to bounce back from adverse, tragic circumstances. Witold has been nursing both his sick mother and a deeply rooted desire to climb the Himalayas. His father had died climbing in those mountains, and they have an allure for Witold as well. But his dreams begin to crumble when his mother succumbs to her illness and trouble brews at work. The situation becomes bad enough to scramble Witold's life with no indication of future improvement.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: intellectual
Similar in 81%
Spiral (1978)
Plot Summary:
In what appears to be an inexplicable incident, a man drives up to a resort hotel in midwinter, throws away his car keys, enters, and proceeds to agitate everyone he meets with his urgency -- a message he is somehow unable to communicate. Then he leaves, disappearing in the snow. Later, the people he appeared to have upset have gathered to search for him and find him frostbitten, but alive. Visiting him at the sanatorium to which he has been taken, they gradually discover what was really happening.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 515
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: intellectual
Similar in 81%
A Lonely Woman (1987)
Plot Summary:
The first motion picture film by Agnieszka Holland about loneliness, longing for affection, and misfortune. Irena, a postal delivery worker, is struggling with a inadequate housing, a drunk neighbor who wants to take her place, and a heartless boss, knowing that the whole day at work, she is leaving her young son. But the worst is the loneliness, exacerbated by her single mother status. She meets a crippled pensioner Jacek, who appears to be the key to her happiness, but tragedy continues to strike.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 501
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
The Wedding (1973)
Plot Summary:
Set at the turn of the century, the story concerns a Polish poet living in Cracow who has decided to marry a peasant girl. The wedding is attended by a heterogenous group of people from all strata of Polish society, who dance, get drunk and lament Poland's 100-year-long division under Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The bridegroom, a painter friend, and a journalist each in turn is confronted with spectres of Polish past. In the end a call to arms is called but turns out to be a hoax.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: clever, offbeat, humorous, realistic, witty, stylized, semi serious, sexual, intellectual, sexy
Similar in 81%
Weekend Stories: A Woman's Business (1996)
Plot Summary:
A woman whose passport was denied under the previous Communist regime by a vindictive party secretary is given a chance to confront the woman and take revenge.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 53
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 56 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Everything for Sale (1969)
Plot Summary:
Wajda's homage to Zbigniew Cybulski, the "Polish James Dean" who starred in the director's ASHES AND DIAMONDS and died young. The movie follows the tribulations of a director attempting to make a movie with a Cybulski-like star who never shows up.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 846
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: semi autobiographical
Similar in 80%
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 76%
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 82%
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 88%
The Story of Sin (1975)
Plot Summary:
A beautiful Polish girl whose lover has gone to Rome to seek a divorce from his previous wife travels around Europe in search of him and suffers a variety of tragic adventures as the men around her try to fit her into their own selfish schemes.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 859
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: erotic, disturbing, controversial, beautiful
Similar in 88%
Kontrakt (1980)
Plot Summary:
Bearing traces of the old Anton Chekhov play The Wedding, The Contract is set during an "arranged" ceremony. The bride and groom barely know each other, but this matters not at all to their tradition-bound families. At the last minute, the bride balks. Only slightly nonplused, the groom's father, a status-seeking doctor, decides to go ahead with the expensive reception anyway. Polish director Krzysz Zanussi uses this scenario to stick it to capitalist corruption, and to society's destruction of the individual spirit. Leslie Caron, the one recognizable member of the cast, is outstanding as a wealthy, over-the-hill ballerina who happens to be a kleptomaniac.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 226
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Camouflage (1977)
Plot Summary:
A group of students are spending the summer vacation at a university camp studying the science of linguistics. One of the camp directors, Jaroslaw, is a young professor who prefers the straightforward, intimate approach to students. He is opposed in his liberal views by Jakub, who likes to manipulate people. There is a confrontation from the beginning when Jaroslaw allows to attend the seminar a student who presents the views not according to the official line. In the end, a jury prize is given to mediocre paper, while the suspected school of thought still draws a recommendation. Finally the deputy rector arrives for the closing ceremonies, and since he disfavors the line of thought awarded by the recommendation the tensions rise. They climax when student in question bites the rector in the ear while receiving recommendation. The confrontation results in a scandal and the police is called in.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: intellectual, thought provoking, clever, humorous, realistic, talky, cynical, semi serious, biting, crying
Similar in 75%
The Birch Wood (1970)
Plot Summary:
Takes place in a prewar Poland. A tubercular young man comes to stay with his brother on a farm. He is in love with life and constantly plays 1930's music on a piano. He gets involved with his brother's problems and also becomes the lover of a simpleminded farm girl. The brother's dead wife may have had an affair with the hired man who is to marry the farm girl. His daughter will not confirm his suspicions. But the brother's death leads to his acceptance of the past, forgiving his wife's memory and making up with his little daughter.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 937
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: psychological, thought provoking, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, sexual, sexy
Similar in 90%
Moonlighting (1982)
Plot Summary:
A Polish contractor, Nowak, leads a group of workmen to London so they can provide cheap labor for a government official based there. Nowak (Irons) has to manage the project and the men as they encounter the tempations of the West and loneliness and separation from their families. Nowak is the only one of the group who speaks English, and he uses this as a tool over his team. When the unrest in Poland leads to a military takeover, Nowak is faced with a much more difficult situation than he expected.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: political, tense, bleak, realistic, dark comedy, allegory, independent film, sincere, thought provoking, serious
Similar in 82%
Peace to Us in Our Dreams (2015)
Plot Summary:
On a summer day, a man, his daughter and his companion arrive at their country house to spend the weekend. The daughter has just moved in with her father, whose attention she desires. The man is tired of his life, and does not know where to find the strength to carry on living. The woman, a violinist, is confused in her priorities - music, love or career. Despite the fact that the man and the woman love each other, their tense relationship is on the brink of collapse.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 464
Genere: Drama
Country: Lithuania, France, Russia
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: psychological, philosophical, captivating, existential, weird
Similar in 83%
The Man Who Sleeps (1974)
Plot Summary:
In this French tour-de-force a young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him. His inner musings as he wanders the luminous streets of Paris are narrated in the form of an unwritten diary by Ludmila Mikael.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Tunisia
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags: art house, experimental, existential, surreal, contemplative, depressing, poetic, philosophical, artsy, anthology
Similar in 79%
Winter Light (1963)
Plot Summary:
A Swedish pastor fails a loving woman, a suicidal fisherman and God.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 27000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags: philosophical, psychological, depressing, art house, emotional, black and white, cerebral, christian film, spiritual, existential
Similar in 89%
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Plot Summary:
Karin hopes to recover from her recent stay at a mental hospital by spending the summer at her family's cottage on a tiny island. Her husband, Martin, cares for her but is frustrated by her physical withdrawal. Her younger bother, Minus, is confused by Karin's vulnerability and his own budding sexuality. Their father, David, cannot overcome his haughty remoteness. Beset by visions, Karin descends further into madness.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 27000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, philosophical, art house, black and white, serious, surreal, cerebral, spiritual, existential, atmospheric