Best movies like The Last Letter
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Locked away in the Jewish ghetto of an occupied Ukrainian town in 1941, a mother revisits her life in a last letter to her son.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 179
Genere: Drama
Country: France, USA
Duration: 61 min
Plot tags: minimal cast
Best tv shows and movies like The Last Letter (2002):
Similar in 89%
Eiszeit (1975)
Plot Summary:
Based on a very successful play of the same name by Tankred Dorst, this film tells a story about Norwegian author Knut Hamsun (here played by O.E. Hasse), a Nobel prizewinner for literature who was notorious for having collaborated with the Nazi regime. After the war, rather than hand him over for prosecution, he was sent to a retirement home. A young man, bitter about the war, tracks him down and begins to harass him in various ways. The author handles everything that comes to him with remarkable dignity, which eventually removes some of the taint from his actions.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 57
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany, Norway
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
After Midnight (1981)
Plot Summary:
The Political drama shows the denunciation and persecution of the 19-year-old Sanne in the Nazi state. After she falls in love with her cousin, Sanne is betrayed by her jealous aunt to the Gestapo.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 55
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: political
Similar in 88%
Martha and I (1990)
Plot Summary:
Emil (Vaclav Chalupa as a teen, Ondrej Vetchy as an adult) has been naughty, and his family is at a loss about what to do with him. He's been dallying with the family maid. They decide to ship him off to spend time with his uncle Ernst Michel Piccoli), who married his family maid. The boy has a good relationship with his uncle, and a touching picture of Czech family life just at the advent of World War II emerges. Since Emil and Ernst are both Jewish, they are eventually carted away by the Nazis.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 82
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Germany, Austria, Italy
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 77%
The Face of Jizo (2004)
Plot Summary:
Based on a play by Hisashi Inoue, it focuses on the sufferings of the survivors of Hiroshima. The film takes place during 4 days in the summer of 1948, as the ghost of her father visits Mitsué (Rié Miyama). He had somehow learned that she has fallen in love, and tries to convince her to start her new life. But Mitsué obstinately refuses his warm and humorous encouragements : « People were killed in my place. I do not have the right to find happiness », she says.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 247
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: minimal cast, retro
Similar in 87%
The Day the Clown Cried (1972)
Plot Summary:
A circus clown is imprisoned by the Nazis and goes with Jewish children to their deaths.
IMDB Rating:
IMDB Votes:
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: emotional, controversial, independent film, weird
Similar in 82%
The Chosen Ones (1983)
Plot Summary:
A man wants to flee wartime Germany and the detested Nazis to Columbia, where his brother lives. In order to achieve his goal he agrees to become an informer for the Reich.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 99
Genere: Drama
Country: Colombia, Soviet Union
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Liten Ida (1981)
Plot Summary:
Little Ida's mother is working for the Germans during WW2, and she is also having a relationship with a German SS-officer. Ida is experiencing the problems of having a mother who is involved with the enemy, without being old enough to understand what is actually going on.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 135
Genere: Drama
Country: Norway, Sweden
Duration: 78 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
Hungarians (1978)
Plot Summary:
A group of landless Hungarian peasants accept work as migrant-laborers on a farm in northern Germany where the wages are good, and the wives and family are allowed to accompany them. Though it is in the midst of World War II, they are relatively well-off. However, they glimpse the treatment accorded to POWs and others who are not so gently treated, and at the conclusion of the year's harvest, they choose to return to Hungary and are quickly swept up in the tides of war. This film is part of a series of films by award-winning, well-respected director Zoltan Fabri who devoted much time and effort chronicling the struggle against fascism.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 353
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 85%
Everyone Dies Alone (1976)
Plot Summary:
When they start losing family members and neighbors due to WWII and the Nazi government's policies, a quiet married couple becomes disillusioned and begins spreading leaflets against the government - a crime punishable by death.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 262
Genere: Drama
Country: West Germany
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Miss Rose White (1992)
Plot Summary:
Rose White (Sedgwick) is a modern young career woman in post-World War II New York City who has largely relegated her Jewish heritage to scrapbooks and memories. Born in Poland but fortunate enough to escape the country before the Nazi occupation and the Holocaust wiped out her family, she is stunned to learn her older sister somehow survived the horror and is coming to America. The sisters' reunion is complicated by Lusia's (Amanda Plummer) memories of her struggles to survive and the revelation of past family secrets.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 269
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, crying
Similar in 87%
The Sea and Poison (1986)
Plot Summary:
Downed American fliers in WW II are vivisected by Japanese surgeons in medical experiments.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 309
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: retro
Similar in 79%
Jonah Who Lived in the Whale (1993)
Plot Summary:
The story of the Holocaust, seen as Jonah, a young jewish boy living in Amsterdam at the onset of WW II, who with his family is taken by the Nazis to a concentration camp. (Based on the book 'Childhood' by Jona Oberski.).
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 457
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France, Hungary
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 79%
Gruber's Journey (2008)
Plot Summary:
On 22 June 1941, Germany and Romania attack Soviet Russia. Several days later, Curzio Malaparte, the Italian writer who would one day pen the novel « Kaputt », a war correspondent for « Corriere de la Sera », arrives in Iasi, in the north of Moldova, on his way to the front, which is nearby. He is incapacitated by a severe allergy and his only chance of recovery is to find a Jewish doctor, an allergologist who had studied in Florence, called Josef Gruber. All his attempts to find him are unsuccessful. While looking for him, Curzio discovers that in Iasi, several days prior to his arrival, a violent anti-Semitic pogrom took place and that a large number of the Jewish citizens of Iasi were deported by train and that Dr Gruber may be among them. In order to find him, Curzio, aided by Guido Sartori, the Italian consul in Iasi, tries to obtain an official warrant to bring Josef Gruber back. He confronts indifference, rudeness and the desire by the Romanian authorities to hide something.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 200
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary, Romania
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Hidden in Silence (1996)
Plot Summary:
Poland 1939, shortly before invasion of the German troops. To save their belongings from the Nazis, the Jewish family Diamant transfers them to their 17-year-old catholic maid Fusia. In return Fusia provides them with food until the ghetto is dissolved, and then hides 13 people in her loft for over two years. However, as the front approaches and two German nurses take quarter in Fusias apartment everything seems to be in vain.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 531
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
Miriam (2006)
Plot Summary:
Heart-wrenching story of a woman who takes another's identity to survive the most horrible time of the 20th Century. Miriam is the triumphant story of one woman's survival and success, which takes place in Lithuania over a period of forty years, from the German occupation of World War II through the Soviet era, and is based upon the true story of Miriam Shafer.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 47
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: captivating, suspense, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 80%
And the Violins Stopped Playing (1988)
Plot Summary:
No overview found.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 192
Genere: Biography, Drama, War
Country: Poland, USA
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 77%
Valiant Hearts (2021)
Plot Summary:
In August 1942, during the Second World War, Six Jewish children are trying to escape the Nazis. They are hidden by the resistance in the Chambord Castle, where paintings from Le Louvre are being stored as well. The Nazis are looking for paintings from private collections that would be hidden there as well.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 83
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
'38 - Vienna Before the Fall (1986)
Plot Summary:
The film presents the political events surrounding the Anschluss in March of 1938 through the lives of Carola Hell, a popular young actress at the prestigious Theater in der Josefstadt, and Martin Hofmann, the Jewish journalist she plans to marry. When we encounter the couple in the lovely springtime weather their future is full of promise. They are determined to stay clear of politics. Yet in the climate of the time, nobody of her prominence or his religion can remain apolitical. Although Martin's journalist friend, Drechsler, calls to inform them that the Nazis plan to take over Austria soon, they concentrate on their work and their private happiness and dismiss the warnings.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 184
Genere: Drama
Country: Austria, West Germany
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
The Incident (1990)
Plot Summary:
Small town lawyer, Harmon Cobb, defends a Nazi prisoner of war against murder charges. Set during World War II, Cobb has to contend with the difficulties of defending the devil when the town's only doctor (Barnard Hughes) dies while at "Camp Bremen" in the fictitious town of Bremen, Colorado.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 580
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: tense, thought provoking, serious, emotional, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, talky
Similar in 87%
The Execution (1985)
Plot Summary:
The members of a San Diego Wednesday night womens' mah jongg club are five survivors of a Nazi concentration camp. They recognize the owner of a local restaurant, Walter Grossman, as a doctor from the camp who performed experiments on them as young girls. To their horror they learn that he has already been tried as a war criminal and has served but a few years for his crimes. They decide that they will "execute" him, drawing lots to determine which one will perform the act, without letting the others know who it is.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 183
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: surprise ending
Similar in 77%
Never Forget (1991)
Plot Summary:
Mr. Mermelstein (Leonard Nimoy) and Mrs. Mermelstein (Blythe Danner) a true-life California couple, thrown into the spotlight of judicial history in the 1980s. He is a Hungarian-born Jew, sole-survivor of his family's extermination at Auschwitz, and she is a Southern Baptist from Tennessee. Their four children are good kids, typical Americans, with just enough orneriness to irritate each other, but enough love and class to pull together when it counts. When challenged by a hate group to prove that Jews were actually gassed at Auschwitz, Mel Mermelstein rises to the occasion with the support of his wife and children, in spite of the dangers to himself, his business, and his family. William John Cox (Dabney Coleman) provides legal help (pro bono) as a lawyer, originally a Roman Catholic from Texas.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 300
Genere: Drama, History
Country: USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: political
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 86%
Hotel Meina (2007)
Plot Summary:
How will the Germans react to the armistice of the 8th of September 1943, due to which Italy betrays them and sides with the allied forces? This is the distressing questions that a group of 16 Italian - Greek Jews evacuated at The Meina Hotel ask themselves.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 124
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Italy, France, Serbia
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
The Pawnbroker (1964)
Plot Summary:
A Jewish pawnbroker, a victim of Nazi persecution, loses all faith in his fellow man until he realizes too late the tragedy of his actions.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: depressing, emotional, realistic, bleak, heartbreaking, atmospheric, compassionate, psychological, serious, suspenseful
Similar in 83%
The Man in the Glass Booth (1975)
Plot Summary:
Arthur Goldman is a rich Jewish industrialist, living in luxury in a Manhattan high-rise. He banters with his assistant Charlie, often shocking Charlie with his outrageousness and irreverence about aspects of Jewish life. Nonetheless, Charlie is astonished when, one day, Israeli secret agents burst in and arrest Goldman for being not a Jewish businessman but a Nazi war criminal. Whisked to Israel for trial, Goldman forces his accusers to face not only his presumed guilt--but their own.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: sad, independent film, tense, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, talky
Similar in 79%
The Wall (1982)
Plot Summary:
A dramatic re-enactment of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish uprising in April 1943 were 650 armed members of the Jewish Fighting Organization of Poland held off a 3,000 strong Nazi force in which only a handful of Jews survived. Tom Conti plays Dolek Berson, a Jewish smuggler who joins the resistance movement and is aided on the Aryan side of the wall by a former teacher named Regina Kowalski played by Rachel Roberts in her final role.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 222
Genere: Action, War, Drama
Country: Poland, USA
Duration: 135 min
Plot tags: tense, sincere, thought provoking, bleak, serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 80%
The Island on Bird Street (1997)
Plot Summary:
Alex is an 11-year old boy who, during WWII, hides in the Jewish ghetto from Nazis after all the relatives have been sent to the concentration camp. The movie portrays the ghetto through his eyes.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: Denmark, UK, Germany, France
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: tense, bleak, serious, realistic, suspense, independent film, period piece
Similar in 87%
Reunion (1989)
Plot Summary:
Two young boys from very different backgrounds become friends in 1933 Stuttgart. However, they don't realize how different they are until much later as one is the son of a well-to-do Jewish doctor and the other the son of a German aristocrat. After that summer and the election of Hitler, things change as antisemitism gains fervor. After the core of the film deals with that era, the film flashes to the present and the Jewish man now returns to his boyhood home and seeks his old friend with some surprises.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 557
Genere: Drama, History
Country: France, West Germany, UK
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: independent film, thought provoking, serious, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 88%
Out of the Ashes (2003)
Plot Summary:
The real-life story of Gisella Perl, a Jewish Hungarian doctor imprisoned in the notorious Auschwitz death camp of World War II.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: realistic, touching, serious, bleak, captivating, emotional, contemplative, uplifting
Similar in 86%
Jakob the Liar (1999)
Plot Summary:
In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being caught out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Drama, War
Country: USA, France, Germany
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: sad, cult classic, sincere, uplifting, humorous, emotional, realistic, gloomy, semi serious, sentimental