Best movies like The King Is Alive
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Stranded in the heat of a barren African desert, eleven bus-passengers shelter in the remnants of an abandoned town. As rescue grows more remote by the day and anxiety deepens, an idea emerges: why not stage a play. However the choice of King Lear only manages to plunge this disparate group of travelers into turmoil as they struggle to overcome both nature's wrath and their own morality.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, South Africa, Norway, USA
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: bleak, stylized, melancholic, atmospheric, psychological, independent film, offbeat, serious, realistic, road movie
Best tv shows and movies like The King Is Alive (2000):
Similar in 86%
House of Sand (2005)
Plot Summary:
A woman is taken along with her mother in 1910 to a far-away desert by her husband, and after his passing, is forced to spend the next 59 years of her life hopelessly trying to escape it.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Brazil
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: sentimental, psychological, serious, emotional, inspirational, depressing, family saga, saga, realistic
Similar in 82%
From What Is Before (2014)
Plot Summary:
The Philippines, 1972. Mysterious things are happening in a remote barrio. Wails are heard from the forest, cows are hacked to death, a man is found bleeding to death at the crossroad and houses are burned. Ferdinand E. Marcos announces Proclamation No. 1081 putting the entire country under Martial Law.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 820
Genere: Drama
Country: Philippines
Duration: 338 min
Plot tags: bleak, atmospheric, serious, realistic, stylized, captivating, intense, independent film, black and white, visual
Similar in 90%
Where the Green Ants Dream (1984)
Plot Summary:
Extraordinary images from Werner Herzog. Shot in the Australian Outback the Aborigines (in this film anyway) believe that this is the place where the green ants go to dream, and that if their dreams are disturbed, it will bring down disaster on us all. The Aborigines' belief is not shared by a giant mining company, which wants to tear open the soil and search for uranium.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: bleak, contemplative, political, tense, atmospheric, serious, realistic, disturbing, anthropological
Similar in 88%
Desert Dream (2007)
Plot Summary:
This film takes place in a remote area, a desert region situated somewhere between the Mongolia and Chinese border. The town has become nearly void of all inhabitants except for Hangai, who works obsessively to plant trees in the desert area. Hangai’s own wife has recently left him, as their daughter became increasingly ill. While Hangai wallows in solitude, a North Korean refugee arrives at his doorstep with her son. They ask for shelter and Hanghai obliges. Although the trio can’t even speak a common language, they are able to communicate nonethless and work together to plant trees. It seems Hanghai is attracted to Soon Hee, but she doesn’t feel quite the same way. Then a Mongolian soldier stationed at a nearby camp, befriends the trio and the dynamics of their relationship start to change.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 243
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea, France, Mongolia
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: realistic, captivating, psychological, atmospheric, touching, serious
Similar in 76%
Othello (1965)
Plot Summary:
The 1965 version of the Shakespeare play.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 165 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, clever, serious, emotional, realistic, vintage
Similar in 78%
Last Days in the Desert (2015)
Plot Summary:
On his way out of the wilderness, Jesus struggles with the Devil over the fate of a family in crisis, setting himself up for a dramatic test.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: biblical, atmospheric, serious, contemplative, stylized, independent film, fable
Similar in 88%
Hope (2014)
Plot Summary:
On his clandestine journey from Cameroon to Europe through the Sahara desert, Léonard meets Hope, a Nigerian girl who's following the same dream.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 187
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Morocco
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, captivating
Similar in 87%
Once We Were Dreamers (1987)
Plot Summary:
Set in the Middle East in 1919, a group of European Jews planning on settling in the Sinai Desert are attacked by Bedouin tribesmen. As they fight for their lives they realize that they are beginning a struggle for a new Jewish nation. This film chronicles the beginning of the modern Jewish struggle for a homeland.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 83
Genere: Drama
Country: Israel
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 78%
Hamlet (2000)
Plot Summary:
To be or not to be, etc.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 242
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 178 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, emotional, stylized, serious, captivating, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, reflective
Similar in 75%
King Lear (1983)
Plot Summary:
An aging King invites disaster when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters and rejects his one loving, but honest one.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 853
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 158 min
Plot tags: bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative, talky
Similar in 80%
Dealer (2004)
Plot Summary:
In an impressive follow up to his debut film Forest, Benedek Fliegauf tells the uncompromising story of a day in the life of a drug dealer. His clients include the leader of a religious sect, a friend who needs a final fix, a former lover who has had his child, a student, and a black marketeer. Fliegauf's film recreates life in a city that resembles a ghost town, an alienated world with its own priorities and realities. It is, he says '. an imaginary city with a strongly spiritualist atmosphere. This necropolis is the film's real protagonist'.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, serious, stylized, contemplative, experimental, avant garde, cult classic, bleak, realistic
Similar in 85%
Freedom (2000)
Plot Summary:
A few fugitives... And a very, very long way to freedom.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 352
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Portugal, Lithuania
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: serious, contemplative, atmospheric, realistic, slow cinema, aesthetic, stylized, gloomy, avant garde
Similar in 84%
Letter to the King (2014)
Plot Summary:
In Letter to the King we meet a group of refugees, all with their own agendas, on an excursion to Oslo. A young man about to be deported visits his former employers to collect his off-the-books salary, a martial arts expert is looking for work, a young woman is haunted by the past and out for vengeance and an old man named Mirza is busy writing a letter to the king to get his final wish granted. An altogether urgent and nuanced portrait of a motley group of individuals, too often regarded as a homogeneous group.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 255
Genere: Drama
Country: Norway, United Arab Emirates
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, sincere, anthology, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 76%
Watchtower (2012)
Plot Summary:
Haunted by his dark past, a man takes a job as a fire warden in a remote tower in the wilderness, and is inexorably drawn towards a young woman with a terrible secret of her own. (TIFF).
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, France, Germany
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, psychological, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 75%
One Hundred Mornings (2009)
Plot Summary:
Set in a world upended by a complete breakdown of society, two couples hide out in a lakeside cabin hoping to survive this crisis.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 508
Genere: Drama
Country: Ireland
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, serious, bleak, apocalyptic, tense, disturbing
Similar in 88%
Melancholia (2008)
Plot Summary:
A story about victims of summary executions. Three people start a strange therapy to escape their agonies.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 537
Genere: Drama
Country: Philippines
Duration: 450 min
Plot tags: bleak, psychological, serious, stylized, atmospheric, slow cinema, psychedelic, aesthetic, experimental, contemplative
Similar in 88%
Waterborne (2005)
Plot Summary:
Heera Bhatti, an American-Sikh, runs a corner store in Los Angeles with the help of her son, Vikram, and Gulu. She does not approve of Vikram's Caucasian girlfriend, Lillian, and would prefer that Vikram marry a Punjabi girl, but Vikram has made up his mind. Then the lives of all Californians are turned upside down when one morning eight people are dead after drinking contaminated tap water.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 777
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic, suspenseful, bleak, apocalyptic, captivating, intercultural, inter cultural
Similar in 89%
Sounds of Sand (2006)
Plot Summary:
On the one hand, there's the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there's the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality. Rahne and his family travel across hostile lands under a lethal sun, walking endlessly onwards and frequently crossing paths with death. But "Sounds of sand" is also a parable about determination and eternity that takes us in the footsteps of Shasha, a nomad child full of the joys of life, whose tenacity and strength will conquer her father's love.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 553
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium, France
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: sincere, atmospheric, serious, captivating, bleak, realistic
Similar in 77%
Into the Fire (2005)
Plot Summary:
TV Movie Drama - Sean Patrick Flanery, Melina Kanakaredes, JoBeth Williams.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 251
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, emotional, realistic, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 81%
Atlantic. (2014)
Plot Summary:
A Moroccan fisherman sets off on an epic journey towards Europe on his wind surfboard. But the pursuit of dreams does not come without sacrifice.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 575
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Morocco, France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic
Similar in 86%
First Winter (2012)
Plot Summary:
When winter begins, life is serene for a group of new-age Brooklynites living in a remote country farmhouse. Sex, drugs, yoga, and organic cooking absorb their days, safely tucked away from the stresses of urban life. But when a blackout of apocalyptic proportions strands them with no heat and no electricity during the coldest winter on record, their utopian commune is breached by anxiety and their idyllic harmony begins to lose its tune. As time wears on and the food supply dwindles, power struggles, jealousy, and desire threaten the group's ability to work together in order to survive.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 258
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, serious, realistic, mumblecore, gloomy, independent film
Similar in 81%
Thirst (2010)
Plot Summary:
After wrecking their car in the middle of the desert, two couples find themselves stranded with few supplies. When the heat intensifies and their precious water supply dwindles, the frantic friends begin betraying each other in the hopes of survival. Their civility rapidly deteriorates as they begin to experience overwhelming fear and desperation in this tense drama starring Lacey Chabert, Tygh Runyan, Brandon Quinn and Mercedes McNab.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 851
Genere: Drama, Horror
Country: Canada
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: serious, tense, psychological, realistic, suspenseful, suspense, independent film
Similar in 86%
Twentynine Palms (2003)
Plot Summary:
David, an independent photographer, and Katia, an unemployed woman, leave Los Angeles, en route to the southern California desert, where they search a natural set to use as a backdrop for a magazine photo shoot. They find a motel in the town of Twentynine Palms and spend their days in their sport-utility vehicle, discovering the Joshua Tree Desert, and losing themselves on nameless roads and trails. Frantically making love all the time and almost everywhere, they regularly fight, then kiss and make up, with little else going on in their empty relationship and quite ordinary daily life--until something horrible and hideous brutally puts an end to their trip.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Horror
Country: France, Germany, USA
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: disturbing, road movie, psychological, sexy, harsh, erotic, controversial, sexual, philosophical, dark
Similar in 76%
Delta (2008)
Plot Summary:
A man comes home to meet his mother and sister after many years away. He finds his mother living with a new boyfriend, and his sister to be grown-up. He begins to settle down in this new place by building a new home for himself on the delta. But when his sister moves in with him and the two begin a romance, there are tragic consequences.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary, Germany
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, emotional, realistic, erotic, bleak, stylized, gloomy, sexual, independent film
Similar in 79%
Jew-Boy Levi (1999)
Plot Summary:
Benjamin Levi (Bruno Cathomas) is a Bavarian cattle dealer traveling to pre-World War II Germany on his annual trip to a remote farming village. Levi hopes to do some business and, more importantly, win the hand of the lovely Lisbeth (Caroline Ebner). But Nazi propaganda has gripped the small community and poisoned it forever. Now, Levi and Lisbeth are targets of hate in this provocative and shocking drama.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 199
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, Switzerland, Austria
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, touching, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, disturbing, biting, suspense
Similar in 89%
Journey from the Fall (2006)
Plot Summary:
Thirteen years after the end of the Vietnam War, a family who was tragically affected by the war are forced to emigrate to America.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 937
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 135 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, bleak, inspirational, political, informative, realistic
Similar in 85%
Hamlet (1990)
Plot Summary:
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, finds out that his uncle Claudius killed his father to obtain the throne, and plans revenge.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, UK, France
Duration: 135 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, realistic, compassionate, bleak, psychological, serious, disturbing, costume drama, fairy tale, stylized
Similar in 77%
Zero Kelvin (1995)
Plot Summary:
Larsen, an aspiring poet in '20s Oslo, leaves his girlfriend to spend a year as a trapper in East Greenland. There he is teamed with a seemingly rough old sailor/trapper, Randbæk, and a scientist, Holm. Trapped in a tiny hut together as the Arctic winter sets in, a complex and intense love/hate relationship develops between Randbæk and Larsen, who are more similar than either would like to admit. A powerful psychological and physical drama set against stunningly bleak Arctic scenery.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Norway, Sweden
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: psychological, philosophical, atmospheric, neurotic, tense, bleak, serious, realistic, suspenseful, erotic
Similar in 88%
The Donner Party (2009)
Plot Summary:
Based on the real events of The Donner Party tragedy. The Donner Party was a group of California-bound American settlers caught up in the western expansion of the 1840s. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846-1847, a number of the trapped settlers joined together in a final effort to reach California and organize a rescue party.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: psychological, disturbing, serious, realistic, mysterious, suspenseful, bleak, wild
Similar in 84%
Courage (2009)
Plot Summary:
Jason Priestley (TV's "Beverly Hills, 90210") and Andrea Roth star in this inspirational adventure story about courage, love and the power of family. Aspiring author Robert (Priestly) organizes a quick getaway with his wife and daughter designed to rebuild their estranged relationship with his daughter, but when a powerful storm hits they are forced to make a crash landing on the ominously named Bear Island. With Robert seriously injured and no way to reach the mainland, the three castaways find that they must rely on their faith -- and each other -- to survive the ordeal.
IMDB Rating: 4.7
IMDB Votes: 284
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: serious, psychological, realistic, captivating, suspenseful