Best movies like The Lotus Eaters
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Set off the West Coast of Canada in 1965, a hip new teacher with a miniskirt and lots of ideas turns a small town upside down. The soft autumn light of Galiano Island is beautifully rendered in writer/producer Peggy Thompson's The Lotus Eaters, and that's not the only elusive element that this film has captured. In revisiting its particular time and place - the Gulf Islands of the early '60s -Thompson obviously draws on her own family experiences there. For those who share Thompson's love of Gulf Islands magic, the elements she has assembled will feel as familiar as their own childhood blanket. But there are problems at the core of this story about a family's loss of innocence.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 204
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: independent film
Best tv shows and movies like The Lotus Eaters (1993):
Similar in 80%
45 R.P.M. (2008)
Plot Summary:
In the Autumn of 1960, a fluke atmospheric weather condition allows a young teenager, Parry Tender, to receive a radio broadcast from New York City. Nestled in the Northern town of Goose Lake, Saskatchewan, Parry believes the contest the New York radio D.J. is running may be his ticket out of town, and away from a life to which he feels he never belonged. When Debbie Baxter, a young girl from California, arrives in the town by way of her father's position with the military, Parry soon discovers love, loss, and the magic of rock and roll.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 226
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 78%
The Teachers' Lounge (2023)
Plot Summary:
When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 83%
The Man from the Embassy (2006)
Plot Summary:
Herbert is a German embassy official in Georgia. He lives an inane life until he meets twelve-year-old girl Sashka who makes him laugh and feel responsibility. Soon he is in trouble because he is suspected of pedophilia, meets corrupt policemen, burglars and violent people.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 116
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
The Three Madeleines (2000)
Plot Summary:
Three women who share a familial bond but little more come to know each other better in this beautifully-photographed drama. Marie-Madeleine (Sylvie Drapeau) is a photographer in her mid-30s who, for the first time, has come into contact with Mado (France Arbour), her biological mother, who put her up for adoption shortly after she was born. Marie-Madeleine is to take a long road trip for a magazine assignment, and she invites Mado along. Joining the two women is Marie-Madeleine's daughter (Isadora Galwey), who has yet to meet her German father. The three women share their thoughts and ideas as they travel through an idyllic setting to photograph birds. Les Fantomes des Trois Madeleine was shown at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival as part of the Directors Fortnight series.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 78
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
The Tree We Hurt (1986)
Plot Summary:
Shot over a capricious summer, this film reveals a world of innocence shattered for some children in their school by corporal punishment. It moves at its own pace to reveal a world of children and adults with animals, birds, nature and sea. The film bears a strong imprint of Greek identity with old chairs, priests with black robes and old dilapidated houses. Dimos Avdeliodis shows that children are not just made for mischief as they are shown to earn money in the form of coins which they earn by carrying the cross during funerals. As the children's gang grows bigger, there is a marked increase in the intensity of their mischievous behavior.For example : a hilarious scene is about how small children run for cover after having hurled mud cakes smeared with urine on wasps. The entire film is replete with scenes of this kind but in the end getting beaten by elders for waywardness and experiences of first love might be counted by viewers as their favorite moments of this film.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 332
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
Pirates of the Airwaves (2014)
Plot Summary:
In 1966 a group of determined young men defied the New Zealand government and launched a pirate radio station aboard a ship in the Hauraki Gulf.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 9
Genere: Drama
Country: New Zealand
Duration:
Plot tags:
Similar in 84%
Loyalties (1986)
Plot Summary:
Lily and her three youngest children join her husband David Sutton, a doctor in an isolated northern Alberta town. Their eleven-year-old son arrives later from boarding school. David conceals a dark secret which caused the family to leave England without telling anybody. They befriend a neighbor Rosanne, who throws out her boyfriend after he beats her up in a bar. Lily, who is very English and out of place in the town, hires the half-Native Rosanne as a housekeeper, and eventually the two women become good friends, until the secret emerges again.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 128
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, UK
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 87%
The Hidden Child (2021)
Plot Summary:
Gabriele Santoro is a Professor of Pianoforte at the Music Conservatory San Pietro a Majella who lives in a working-class area of the city. One morning, while shaving his beard, the postman buzzes at the intercom to tell him he has a package. Gabriele opens the door and, before greeting him, runs to rinse his face. In that short space of time, a ten-year-old child slips into his apartment and hides away. “The maestro” – as he’s called in his neighbourhood – only notices the stowaway late at night. And when he sees him, he recognises the intruder as Ciro, a child who lives with his parents and siblings on the top floor of his building. When asked why he has fled his home, Ciro refuses to speak. Nevertheless, the maestro instinctively decides to hide him in his home, setting Ciro’s enemies a uniquely difficult challenge.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 330
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 90%
Sitting in Limbo (1986)
Plot Summary:
The National Film Board of Canada was one of the guiding forces behind Sitting in Limbo. Fabian Gibbs plays a black Montreal college student forced to leave school when his girlfriend Pat Dillon becomes pregnant. Gibbs resents this interruption in his plans, but he becomes a very good provider. The responsibilities of parenthood, alas, irreparably damage the boy-girl relationship. Filmed in a quasidocumentary manner, Sitting in Limbo seems predestined to win film festival awards--as indeed it has.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 32
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 80%
School's Out! (1992)
Plot Summary:
The Degrassi kids spend one last summer together.
IMDB Rating: 8.2
IMDB Votes: 960
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 82%
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 80%
Pit Pony (1997)
Plot Summary:
Glace Bay, Nova Scotia Canada, 1901. Willie MacLean is a 10-year-old boy with a love for horses and liking to school to cape the difficult times his family has. Willie's stern, but benevolent father is a coal miner in a local mine along with his older brother John. But when Willie's father is injured and John is killed in an accident at the mine, Willie is forced to step into his brother's shoes to support his older sister Nelle, and two younger sisters until their father recovers. Willie soon finds work at the mine lonely (aka: the pit) and unfriendly in which he forms a bond with a pit pony horse in order to make it though each day.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 295
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: epic, realistic, semi serious, social
Similar in 79%
One War (2009)
Plot Summary:
May, 8, 1945. Maxim Prokhorov, major of People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, arrives at a small northern island. There live eleven people: five young women, five children from one to three years, and the captain Karp Nichiporuk. The young mothers were exiled to the island from the territories occupied by fascists, and their children are the children of the German occupier. Arrival of the major upsets the casual life on the island. The major has to "clean up" the island and the nearest settlements. The military man authorizes a plan to organize a training camp in the region for saboteurs. The night of May, 9, the women are told about the German capitulation, their hopes for forgiveness and return home become a certainty. They are even allowed to celebrate the Victory.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 165
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: sincere, captivating, disturbing
Similar in 84%
Family of Strangers (1993)
Plot Summary:
Julie must disclose her family's medical history before undergoing major surgery: when she questions her family, she discovers that she was adopted and, later, that her conception was the product of a rape.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 300
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 75%
The Plouffe Family (1981)
Plot Summary:
The lives of the average Quebecois Plouffe family during the final years of the depression and through World War II.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 476
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 227 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 87%
You Lucky Dog (2010)
Plot Summary:
After her mother's death, New York City fashion designer Lisa Rayborn (Natasha Henstridge) returns to her hometown and family farm. Due to a weak economy, her brother Jim (Harry Hamlin) has converted the family business from a cattle farm into a sheep farm, despite their father's (Lawrence Dane) objections. To help out, Lisa decides she will stay to help on the farm. She adopts a border collie from the local animal shelter and trains it as a sheepdog, naming the dog Lucky. Jim and Lisa decide to enter Lucky into a sheep herding contest, but when a severe thunderstorm sparks a forest fire, Lucky helps rescue trapped children and bring them to safety. While doing so, Lucky gets her leg burned, and it looks as if she will not be able to compete.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 475
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, psychological, captivating, touching, serious, realistic
Similar in 81%
Falling Angels (2003)
Plot Summary:
The wickedly funny story of three sisters' coming of age in a wildly dysfunctional family, set against the backdrop of the 60's, free love, the Cold War, LSD and the dawn of feminism. Affectionately dubbed "Little Women on acid", this is a story about the destructive effects of secrecy and the bonds of duty between parents and their children.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada, France
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: clever, touching, realistic, serious
Similar in 81%
Crackie (2009)
Plot Summary:
Life on the Rock never seemed easy, but for Mitsy it is especially rough. The teenager has been abandoned by her mother, a particularly unfit parent prone to both the bottle and the sex trade. She is left to be brought up by her mercurial grandmother Bride, who is well-meaning but oppressively suffocating. Mitsy's dreams for the future hinge on her desire to be a hairdresser, but her current emotional well-being revolves around a wee dog named Sparky, an unwanted canine misfit to whom she becomes hopelessly attached. After Bride agrees to let Mitsy take the dog in as a pet, the teen tries desperately to create a happy, safe place for Sparky to thrive.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 175
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 85%
The Auction (2013)
Plot Summary:
Gaby owns a farm on which he raises lambs: Bouchard & Sons Farm. But he has no sons. Rather, he has two daughters that he raised like princesses and who live far away, in the big city. One day, the oldest asks him for some financial support so she doesn't end up losing her house.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 759
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, sentimental, serious, contemplative, psychological, captivating
Similar in 81%
The Green Chain (2007)
Plot Summary:
The battle between loggers and environmentalists is defining, dividing and destroying communities in Canada and around the world. The Green Chain is a powerful, funny and thought-provoking film about the people who love trees.
IMDB Rating: 4.8
IMDB Votes: 137
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, captivating, suspenseful, independent film, exciting, fake documentary, cult film
Similar in 83%
A Night for Dying Tigers (2010)
Plot Summary:
The night before Jack (Gil Bellows) is slated to begin a five-year prison sentence for murder, his wife, Melanie (Jennifer Beals), and assorted siblings gather for a dinner to bid Jack farewell and good luck on his trip up the river. But the party slides into a bitter fight over the bad behavior of Jack's brothers (John Pyper-Ferguson and Tygh Runyan) and sister Karen (Lauren Lee Smith). Terry Miles directs this dark comic drama.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 443
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: realistic, emotional, psychological, captivating, serious, gloomy
Similar in 86%
Dancing in the Dark (1986)
Plot Summary:
Via the New York Times: "To all outward appearances, Edna Cormick (Martha Henry) is the perfect housewife.... She's married to a man who'll stand up in public and say, "This is my wife," so that there'll be no confusion as to who she is. Edna has no identity without Harry, an ambitious, successful salesman who seems to love and care for Edna long after other men might become worried about her housewifely obsessions... Edna is reviewing her life - in neatly chronological flashbacks - from the room in the psychiatric hospital where she's been confined ever since Harry's sudden death.".
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 100
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: independent film, psychological, serious, realistic, suspenseful, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 81%
Webdultery (2010)
Plot Summary:
A couple in a failing marriage begin to cheat on each other using the power of the internet.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 111
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: sexy, emotional, realistic, psychological, captivating, sincere, touching, serious, gloomy
Similar in 78%
Twelve Mile Road (2003)
Plot Summary:
A divorced farmer takes in his troubled teenage daughter for the summer, a summer which changes the lives of the two of them, and their friends and family.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 78%
1st Love (2013)
Plot Summary:
Antoine, 13, spends the summer vacation with his parents in a rented cottage on an island in the middle of the Saint-Lawrence River. His neighbour, 17-year-old Anna, is an enigmatic and lively young woman. Antoine begins to experience the first stirrings of love-which soon yield a troubling brew of anxiety, desire and obsession. He eventually comes across a terrible secret that will forever change his life.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 253
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, captivating
Similar in 84%
Mommy Is at the Hairdresser's (2008)
Plot Summary:
Summer 1966. It's time to enjoy the summer holiday, total freedom. Teenage Élise discovers that the sudden departure of her mother completely disrupts the family. Her brother Coco seeks solace in the garage, building a super racing car. Her youngest brother Benoît throws himself into his own inner world. The father seems absolutely knocked out by the situation. Élise decides to take control of her family, in an eloquent attempt to save them. With the assistance of flourishing nature around her, she stands on the threshold of an incomparable summer.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 922
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: emotional, sentimental, touching, serious, realistic, disturbing, sexy, sincere, captivating, sexual
Similar in 89%
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
Similar in 87%
An Eye for Beauty (2014)
Plot Summary:
An architect and his wife see their relationship challenged.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: sexy, captivating, serious, realistic, erotic, touching, spiritual, stylized, sexual
Similar in 80%
The Man Without a Face (1993)
Plot Summary:
The story of a relationship between a teacher and his troubled pupil. Justin McLeod is a former teacher who lives as a recluse on the edge of town. His face is disfigured from an automobile accident and fire ten years before in which a boy was incinerated and for which he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He is also suspected of being a pedophile. He is befriended by Chuck, causing the town's suspicion and hostility to be ignited. McLeod inculcates in his protege a love of justice and freedom from prejudice which sustains him beyond the end of the film.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 31000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: touching, inspirational, sincere, realistic, melancholic, serious, sentimental, scary, psychological, philosophical
Similar in 77%
Conrack (1974)
Plot Summary:
A young, white teacher is assigned to an isolated island off the coast of South Carolina populated mostly by poor black families. He finds that the basically illiterate, neglected children there know so little of the world outside their island.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: deep, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, touching, feel good, serious, realistic