Best movies like The King of Havana
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Recently escaped from reformatory, Reinaldo struggles to get by in the streets of Havana in the late 90s, one of the worst decades for Cuban society. Hopes, disillusionment, rum, good humor and above all hunger, accompany him in his wanderings, until he meets Magda and Yunisleidy, survivors like himself. In one or the other's arms, he will try to escape the material and moral misery surrounding him, living love, passion, tenderness and uninhibited sex to the limit.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 618
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain, Dominican Republic
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, captivating, realistic
Best tv shows and movies like The King of Havana (2015):
Similar in 83%
Boy Eating the Bird's Food (2012)
Plot Summary:
The astonishing debut feature from Greek filmmaker Ektoras Lygizos updates Knut Hamsun's classic 1890 novel Hunger to the modern day, as it follows an alienated young man desperately trying to survive on the streets of Athens.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 969
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, stylized, offbeat, realistic, weird
Similar in 78%
Hardkor Disko (2014)
Plot Summary:
A sociopath begins a relationship with the daughter of a couple he intends to murder.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 670
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, captivating, realistic
Similar in 89%
Wild (2007)
Plot Summary:
A young man sometimes acts like a dog.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 55
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: queer cinema
Similar in 77%
Documenteur (1981)
Plot Summary:
After separating from the father of her son, a young French woman tries to find lodging and a fresh start in L.A. for herself and her son.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, USA
Duration: 65 min
Plot tags: independent film, mockumentary
Similar in 82%
Crossway (2008)
Plot Summary:
A very interesting thriller about the coming of age of a troubled young man searching his place in this world. Teenage boy Jonathan (Fabien de Marchi) is having a hard time living with his father and stepmother. On a whim, he steals some money and embarks on a journey of forbidden pleasures. He spends the night in abandoned building and wakes up bound and is held prisoner by Antoine (Johan Libéreau), a young drug dealer wanted by the police. The two boys forge an ambiguous relationship between violence, compassion and fascination. Victim, Jonathan ends up taking a liking to his tormentor.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 168
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 53 min
Plot tags: homoerotic, serious, suspenseful, disturbing, lgbt cinema, gay cinema
Similar in 81%
Wetlands (2011)
Plot Summary:
On a dairy farm in the Eastern Townships, in the middle of a drought and while the land is parching, a drama will disrupt the life of the Santerre family. Confronted to each other they will have to learn to forgive.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 560
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, psychological, captivating, avant garde, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 87%
Even Lovers Get the Blues (2016)
Plot Summary:
After the sudden death of one of them a group of friends grieves trough sexual encounters.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 363
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: sexy, homoerotic, psychological, sincere, unusual plot structure, captivating, contemplative
Similar in 85%
The Night (2016)
Plot Summary:
Martin moves around Buenos Aires at night, picking up guys, going to clubs, scoring drugs and having sex. Sometimes he’s paying and sometimes his trans sex-worker friend or another woman takes him along for a threesome.
IMDB Rating: 3.8
IMDB Votes: 323
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina
Duration: 136 min
Plot tags: sexy, psychological, unusual plot structure, captivating, lgbt cinema, suspenseful, contemplative, gay cinema, hot
Similar in 81%
3 Steps to Heaven (1995)
Plot Summary:
A bereaved woman adopts multiple disguises to track down the last three people to see her boyfriend before he died.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 155
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: psychological, mind bending, serious, realistic, suspenseful, cynical
Similar in 89%
I Am Happiness on Earth (2014)
Plot Summary:
Emiliano looks at his life with the eyes of a film director, mixing the objective reality with the processes of the artistic creation. The story he is filming flounders with his daily life, until his world is trapped in the lens of his camera. Confused, always alone and in front of a screen, now become a transfigured reality, but at the same time a measurable, controllable and manipulable one, he listens in loop to a song: one of those songs you sing or repeat as a prayer and forcing you to remember, believe and convince yourself.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, disturbing, erotic, queer cinema
Similar in 77%
Daydream Obsession 3: Legacy (2008)
Plot Summary:
While visiting his recently-divorced father, Wylie discovers the camera and video diaries of Clayton. With his college friends over, Wylie begins to explore his desires through daydreams and reality. His roommate Greg is the object of his obsession. Can their friendship survive?.
IMDB Rating: 4.2
IMDB Votes: 40
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, suspense, disturbing
Similar in 77%
Uncertain Glory (2017)
Plot Summary:
Front of Aragon, 1937. Lluís (Marcel Borràs), a young republican officer destined for a temporarily dormant position, meets an enigmatic widow of whom she falls in love, Carlana (Núria Prims), who manages to fool him to falsify a Document that makes it the lady of the region. The best friend of Lluís, the Soleràs (Oriol Pla), a degraded officer, discovers the fraud and, in exchange for not exposing him, he demands that he move away from the bombings of Barcelona his son and his wife, from whom he is Secretly in love When Trini (Bruna Cusí) arrives at the town, it does not take long to discover the betrayal of Lluís and establishes between them two a "state of war" that will make all moral bases stagger.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: tense, sincere, captivating, disturbing
Similar in 85%
Love in the Time of Civil War (2014)
Plot Summary:
Lauded Quebec filmmaker Rodrigue Jean (Lost Song) takes a fearless, unflinching look at the reality of addiction in this tough-minded docudrama set in the bleak milieu of hustlers and junkies in Montreal.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 498
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: touching, bleak, realistic, disturbing, serious
Similar in 85%
Voyeur Confessions (2001)
Plot Summary:
It doesn't hurt to look... or does it? Lisa Morrison is a beautiful researcher studying voyeurism. Why are some people compelled to spy on the erotic moments of others for their own sexual pleasure? Why does this compulsion threaten to overtake their lives? As her subjects reveal their stories, Lisa is increasingly turned on by this dark obsession. But when fantasy turns into a search for her own erotic voyeuristic opportunities, the line between her professional curiosity and private desire is crossed.
IMDB Rating: 4.5
IMDB Votes: 174
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: erotic, psychological, disturbing, sexy, sexploitation film
Similar in 89%
The Dark Side of Love (2012)
Plot Summary:
Two brothers on different life paths, a gay waiter with a crush on an eligible bachelor and a drug addict in a twisted dependent relationships with his girlfriend, reunite to mourn the death of their mother.
IMDB Rating: 3.9
IMDB Votes: 178
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: psychological, realistic, sentimental, serious, captivating, touching, contemplative, gloomy, crying
Similar in 90%
Touch Me Not (2018)
Plot Summary:
Together, a filmmaker and her characters venture into a personal research project about intimacy. On the fluid border between reality and fiction, Touch Me Not follows the emotional journeys of Laura, Tómas and Christian, offering a deeply empathic insight into their lives. Craving for intimacy yet also deeply afraid of it, they work to overcome old patterns, defense mechanisms and taboos, to cut the cord and finally be free. Touch Me Not looks at how we can find intimacy in the most unexpected ways, at how to love another without losing ourselves.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Romania, Germany, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, France
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: erotic, sensual, explicit, aesthetic, transgressive, experimental, touching, avant garde
Similar in 87%
José (2018)
Plot Summary:
José (19 years old) lives with his mother (50s) in Guatemala: a tough life in one of the world's most dangerous, religious, and impoverished countries. José is her youngest and favorite child, and her life is going to church and selling sandwiches. Jose spends his days on crowded buses and in the streets delivering food. Resigned and aloof, in free moments he plays with his phone and looks for random sex. When he meets Luis, Jose is thrust into a dimension of passion and pain and self-reflection that was previously unimaginable.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 820
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Guatemala
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, queer cinema
Similar in 86%
Sexual Tension: Volatile (2012)
Plot Summary:
Have you ever met someone who made your body heat up, get a little nervous and sweaty, and made your crotch stir a bit? Sexual Tension: Volatile will reignite those lustful feelings as it weaves six scintillating experiences of men in various stages of nudity and many forms of erotic male bonding. A pulsating, sexually-charged thrill ride.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina, USA, France
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: homoerotic, erotic, anthology, touching, captivating, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 78%
Pals (1982)
Plot Summary:
The plot follows the misadventures of two young friends who are forced into street hustling and ever-expanding life of crime when one impregnates the sister of the other and they need to get the money to pay for her to have an abortion.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 669
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, independent film, gay cinema
Similar in 86%
Overdose (1983)
Plot Summary:
Bilbao. The commander of the Guardia Civil, Evaristo Torrecuadrada discovers that his son Paco of 17 years old is a heroin addict. His hope was to see him in the Military Academy. Paco, by differences with his father, runs away from home with a pistol. The commander begins his quest aided by co-Body, using the means at its disposal to achieve its objective. Lt. Alcantara, an expert on drugs, will be one of the most prominent in this quest. The Civil Guard Commander begins to discover a world that knew nothing. Urko's father, nationalist leader with a heroin adict son, helps in some way to find out. His principles, his life, his struggle, fall into a deep crisis, exacerbated by the developments.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: social, hood, rough, bleak, serious, realistic, independent film, gay cinema
Similar in 77%
Man at Bath (2010)
Plot Summary:
Omar and Emmanuel go to great lengths to prove they are not in love.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, contemplative, psychological, captivating, erotic, sincere, serious, sexual, independent film
Similar in 89%
Santa & Andres (2016)
Plot Summary:
Santa, a peasant woman loyal to the Revolution, is sent to guard Andrés, a gay writer who is under house arrest, considered “ untrustworthy” for his ideas and sexuality by the Cuban authorities. Set in a small village in eastern Cuba during the early 1980s, this poignant political drama depicts an encounter between two deeply thoughtful souls on opposite sides of a profound cultural divide. Both have experienced deep loss, and both know the damaging effects of isolation and oppression. Even so, the cavernous ideological divide separating them — the same one that has separated Cuban friends and kin for over 50 years — has until now seemed insurmountable.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 223
Genere: Drama
Country: Cuba, Colombia, France
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, crying, homoerotic
Similar in 82%
Teenage Kicks (2016)
Plot Summary:
Miklós is at the age when everything feels high-stakes. He is coming to terms with his own sexuality, and when his best friend Dan reveals that he has a new girlfriend, this puts an end to their plans to run away together.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Australia
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: lgbt cinema, homoerotic, captivating, suspenseful, psychological, unusual plot structure, suspense, contemplative, independent film, queer cinema
Similar in 76%
Moritz, Dear Moritz (1978)
Plot Summary:
15-year-old Moritz lives in a posh area of Hamburg, but his parents did not care about it. The teenager suffers from ridicule of his classmates and finds refuge in his dreams and playing the saxophone. Only when he joins a band and began performing there Moritz pulled out of the vicious circle, and finds love with new friends.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 188
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Cosmic Sex (2015)
Plot Summary:
Cosmic Sex is a 2014 art-house Independent Bengali Film written and directed by Amitabh Chakraborty and produced by Putul Mahmood. The film deals with the connection between Sex and Spirituality.Cosmic Sex is the story of a young man Kripa who is on the run from sex and violence one night in Kolkata when he meets a woman Sadhavi who strangely resembles his dead mother. She gives him shelter and teaches him to travel inwards through sex. The film deals with Dehotatva (worshipping through one’s own body) and explores the connection between Sex and Spirituality. The film stars Rii Sen who won the best actress award at Osian's Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema for her bold act in the movie.[.
IMDB Rating: 3.9
IMDB Votes: 835
Genere: Drama
Country: India
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: erotic, psychological, thought provoking, captivating, sexy, art house
Similar in 86%
The God of Wood (2010)
Plot Summary:
Yao (Madi Diocou) and Moroccan Rachid (Soufiane Ouaarab) arrive illegally in Valencia, Spain, and separate. Yao sells pirated DVDs in the street and wanders disconsolately around the barrio until he glimpses divorcee Maria Luisa (Marisa Paredes) working in her boutique. High-strung and irritable, Maria lives with her gay son, Rober (Nao Albet), who, like many other things in life, is a disappointment to her. Rachid, meanwhile, is doing just fine working as a hairstylist in a beauty salon; Rober is hopelessly in love with him. When Yao starts sleeping in Rober's flat, a confrontation between him and Maria suddenly becomes inevitable, and when it comes, what could have been an embarrassment is actually handled with grace.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 152
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: realistic, emotional, sentimental, psychological, captivating, touching, serious, sexual, sexy
Similar in 86%
Tattoo (2013)
Plot Summary:
Brazil, 1978. The military dictatorship that resulted from a coup in 1964 begins to stumble. In a cabaret-like theater located on the periphery between two cities in the northeast of Brazil, a group of artists challenges power and conventional morality with theater plays and public interferences. Led by Clécio Wanderley, the troupe Chão de Estrelas, strongly supported by its homosexual audience, along with intellectuals and other artists, practices political resistance through anarchy and mockery.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Brazil
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, disturbing, captivating, realistic, period piece, queer cinema, gay cinema
Similar in 80%
Cal (2013)
Plot Summary:
Twenty-year-old Cal returns from France to Britain after receiving news that his mother is ill. His finds his home city of Bristol facing hard economic times brought on by the global economic crisis, with poverty and crime on the rise and rioting and looting almost a nightly occurrence. It is not a warm homecoming as his sick mother remains stubbornly homophobic and wants nothing to do with the now openingly gay Cal while his battered Auntie Jane, now living in a run down council house, dulls her stagnation with welfare funded booze and disturbing attempts to sexually seduce her nephew. Navigating his way across this new landscape he meets a young student who needs his help. However his act of kindness brings him into contact with a lawless drug dealing pimp and a race against time to make peace with his mother and get out of town as quickly as possible. An intense tale of a family mired in poverty, angry and lost but still searching for love, respect and acceptance.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 474
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, erotic, tense, gloomy, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 87%
Little Lips (1978)
Plot Summary:
A writer returns home to his estate after service in World War I. He has developed a very bad case of depression due to a war wound concerning his genitalia. He contemplates suicide, but recovers after becoming interested in his caretaker's 12 year-old war orphan niece, who now lives in the manor.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 870
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain, Italy
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: disturbing, atmospheric, serious, melancholic, romantic, sexy, sexual, erotic, art house
Similar in 88%
The Ages of Lulu (1990)
Plot Summary:
The Ages of Lulu is a gruelling sensual odyssey from Spanish director Bigas Luna, made immediately prior to his popular trilogy Jamón, jamón (1992), Golden Balls (1993) and The Tit and the Moon (1994). Starting as the somewhat queasy story of the young Lulu's affair with the manipulative Pablo (Oscar Ladoire), the movie takes a much darker turn once they are wed. It is conventional cinematic wisdom that there's no such thing as sex after marriage, but here Lulu's husband incomprehensibly leads her into blindfolded relationships with others, then is heartbroken when she reacts with disgust.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: erotic, sexy, emotional, sensual, disturbing, sexual, serious, eros, psychological, controversial