Best movies like The Town
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
The story of a family living in a small godforsaken town in Turkey seen through the eyes of children and dealing with the growing complexity when one becomes an adult.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: aesthetic, art house, black and white, slow cinema, independent film
Best tv shows and movies like The Town (1997):
Similar in 81%
Beyond the Hill (2012)
Plot Summary:
In the quiet foothills of Turkey, Faik lives an isolated existence. When his second son brings his boys for a visit, Faik takes the opportunity to pontificate about the law of the land, as he sees it. He shares one unsolicited thought after the next, most particularly focusing on the elusive nomads whom he suspects have been trespassing on his property. The day and night wear on, and each member of the clan takes his turn entrusting the film's audience with his own dark secret.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, Greece
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: serious, psychological, tense, atmospheric, realistic
Similar in 83%
Suzaku (1997)
Plot Summary:
Depicts the life of a family in a remote Japanese timber village. Family head Tahara Kozo lives with his mother Sachiko, wife Yasuyo, nephew Eisuke and young daughter Michiru. Economic recession and failed development plans cause tragedy in the family.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: slow cinema, independent film, aesthetic
Similar in 88%
Amreeka (2009)
Plot Summary:
Eager to provide a better future for her son, Fadi (Melkar Muallem), divorcée Muna Farah (Nisreen Faour) leaves her Palestinian homeland and takes up residence in rural Illinois -- just in time to encounter the domestic repercussions of America's disastrous war in Iraq. Now, the duo must reinvent their lives with some help from Muna's sister, Raghda (Hiam Abbass), and brother-in-law, Nabeel (Yussuf Abu-Warda). Cherien Dabis writes and directs.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Kuwait, Jordan
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: sincere, sentimental, touching, serious, independent film, captivating, realistic, crying
Similar in 85%
Landscape in the Mist (1988)
Plot Summary:
Road movie about two children searching for their father who is supposed to live in Germany. Their obsession for this father figure will take them to the boundaries between childhood and adolescence.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece, France, Italy
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: road movie, touching, serious, rough, realistic, poetic, slow cinema, contemplative, sad, art house
Similar in 81%
About Dry Grasses (2023)
Plot Summary:
A young art teacher hopes to be transfered to Istanbul after completing his mandatory duty in a remote village school in Anatolia. After accusations of innapropriate contact with a student surface, his hopes of escape fade and he descends further into an existential crisis.
IMDB Rating: 8.1
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, France, Germany, Sweden
Duration: 197 min
Plot tags: interesting
Similar in 77%
Charter (2020)
Plot Summary:
After a recent and difficult divorce, Alice hasn't seen her children in two months as she awaits a custody verdict. When her son calls her in the middle of the night, Alice takes action, abducting the children on an illicit charter trip to the Canary Islands.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden, Norway, Denmark
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, captivating, realistic, independent film
Similar in 90%
Take Me to the River (2015)
Plot Summary:
A naive California teen plans to remain above the fray at his Nebraskan family reunion, but a strange encounter places him at the center of a long-buried family secret.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: ambiguous ending, psychological, sincere, suspenseful, touching, suspense, mumblecore, tension, queer cinema, weird
Similar in 88%
Liar, Liar: Between Father and Daughter (1993)
Plot Summary:
An 11 year old girl accuses her father of incest.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 465
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: historical drama, crying, independent film
Similar in 90%
Go Toward the Light (1988)
Plot Summary:
A young couple faces the realities of life with their child who is diagnosed with AIDS.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 572
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 90%
Shiba (1993)
Plot Summary:
A multi-lingual tour guide who owns multiple passports one day drives his wife and daughter to a desolate seashore town and checks in a secluded, spacious, ruins-like hotel. From that moment on, he throws himself into gambling, tossing the dice with local residents all day. Sometimes he wins big, but sometimes he loses all. Feeling neglected and uncomfortable, his wife and daughter soon leave him and return home. He stays and wanders in this fishing village and gradually immerses himself in the surroundings—a place rife with immoral vagabonds, outlaws and weirdoes.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 21
Genere: Drama
Country: Taiwan
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
A Family Upside Down (1978)
Plot Summary:
An elderly married couple find that as their physical and mental health deteriorates, they find themselves dependent more and more upon their grown children.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 156
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 78%
Honey (2010)
Plot Summary:
In the remote and undeveloped eastern Black Sea region, a six-year-old boy (Yusuf) wanders through the woods searching for his lost father, trying to make sense of his life.His father is a beekeeper whose bees have disappeared unexpectedly, threatening his livelihood. A bizarre accident kills the father.There is little dialogue or music in the film. The three main characters (Yusuf and his parents) are all fairly taciturn, and the soundtrack is filled out with the sounds of the forest and the creatures that live there.The environment is a recurring theme.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, Germany, France
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: contemplative, psychological, sentimental, captivating, atmospheric, art house, slow cinema, aesthetic, serious, suspense
Similar in 81%
Climates (2006)
Plot Summary:
Man was made to be happy for simple reasons and unhappy for even simpler ones – just as he is born for simple reasons and dies for even simpler ones... Isa and Bahar are two lonely figures dragged through the ever-changing climate of their inner selves in pursuit of a happiness that no longer belongs to them.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 14000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Turkey, France
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic, contemplative, erotic, philosophical, art house, cerebral, slow cinema, aesthetic
Similar in 84%
Maborosi (1995)
Plot Summary:
A young woman's husband apparently commits suicide without warning or reason, leaving behind his wife and infant. Yumiko remarries and moves from Osaka to a small fishing village, yet continues to search for meaning in a lonely world.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: art house, atmospheric, contemplative, slow cinema, retro, aesthetic, psychological, serious, realistic, light
Similar in 75%
Magnifico (2003)
Plot Summary:
With a daughter who suffers from cerebral palsy and a son who's lost his much-needed scholarship, an impoverished married couple begins to abandon their faith and courage in the face of such misfortune. But when a gifted young boy called Magnifico uses his goodness to magically transform their lives for the better, the family's belief in miracles is restored. Suddenly, living with adversity doesn't seem like such a burden.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 930
Genere: Drama
Country: Philippines
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, emotional, uplifting, serious, realistic, surprise ending, sad, tagalog, contemplative
Similar in 84%
Times and Winds (2006)
Plot Summary:
In a small, poor village leaning over high rocky mountains, the villagers are simple and diligent people who struggle to cope with a harsh nature. They earn their living off the earth and a few animals they feed. Fathers always prefer one of their sons. Mothers command their daughters ruthlessly. Ömer, the son of the imam, wishes hopelessly for the death of his father. When he understands that wishful thinking does not have any concrete results, he begins to search for childish ways to kill his father. Yakup is in love with his teacher, and one day after seeing his father spying on the teacher he dreams too, like Ömer, of killing his father. Yıldız studies and tries to manage the household chores imposed by her mother. She learns with irritation about the secrets of the relationship between men and women.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: psychological, touching, rough, serious, art house, bleak, realistic, neorealism, crying
Similar in 80%
My Only Sunshine (2008)
Plot Summary:
Hayat, her father and bedridden grandfather live in a riverside shack near the dangerously dark but breathtakingly beautiful waters of the Bosphorus. Hayat's father owns a small boat that secures the family's survival through a miscellany of not always lawful ventures. Beyond the motion and romance of the water, Hayat's life is harsh and unrelenting. But Hayat has an instinct for survival. Her capacity for courage, endurance and hope in the face of these trials suggest that there is Life despite the manifold injustices of an unjust world.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, captivating, art house, atmospheric, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 86%
Milk (2008)
Plot Summary:
A high school graduate, Yusuf could not pass the university entrance exam. Writing poetry is his greatest passion and some of his poems are being printed in various obscure literary journals. But neither these poems, nor the rapidly falling price of the milk they sell, are being of any benefit to Yusuf and Zehra's lives. When Yusuf finds out about Zehra's secret affair with the town's stationmaster he gets disconcerted. Will he find the way to cope with his anxiety for the unknown future, the rapid change that he is going through and the pain of taking a step into adulthood and leaving his youth behind.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, France, Germany
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, art house, atmospheric, captivating, contemplative, slow cinema, aesthetic, sincere, serious
Similar in 78%
Osama (2003)
Plot Summary:
Teenage girl Osama cuts her hair and dresses like a boy to get a job and support her widowed mother and grandmother. When Osama is called by the Taliban to join school and military training she embarks on a terrifying and confusing journey as she tries to keep the Taliban from finding out her true identity.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 9000
Genere: Drama
Country: Afghanistan, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, Iran
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, disturbing, sincere, bleak, thought provoking, breathtaking, talky, stylized, captivating
Similar in 78%
Mouchette (1967)
Plot Summary:
Robert Bresson plumbs great reservoirs of feelings with one of the most searing portraits of human desperation ever put on film.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 13000
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 81 min
Plot tags: art house, black and white, depressing, bleak, emotional, disturbing, contemplative, stylized, spiritual, inspirational
Similar in 82%
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)
Plot Summary:
Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 12000
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran, France
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: philosophical, melancholic, thought provoking, touching, serious, contemplative, art house, cerebral, compassionate, slow cinema
Similar in 81%
Dry Summer (1963)
Plot Summary:
A scheming tobacco farmer sets out to ruin his competition by diverting the local water to his own property.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: educational, art house, black and white, tense, rough, bleak, serious, realistic
Similar in 90%
Egg (2007)
Plot Summary:
Poet Yusuf (35-38) returns to his childhood hometown, which he hadn't visited for years, upon his mother's death. He is faced with a neglected, crumbling house. Ayla, a young girl (17-19) awaits him there. Yusuf has been unaware of the existence of this distant relation who had been living with his mother for five years; He stays by his dead mother's bedside for a while on the morning of his return.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, Greece
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, art house, thought provoking, disturbing, contemplative, slow cinema, aesthetic, offbeat
Similar in 85%
Clouds of May (1999)
Plot Summary:
This is a movie within a movie, about a director, Muzaffer, who goes back to his hometown to make a film using a cast of local people (based on the director Ceylan's first feature, Kasaba). While Muzaffer is around, his mother complains about simple health problems, his father is in a legal fight against the government for his land, his cousin leaves his job to help Muzaffer who promises to find him work in Istanbul, and his little cousin Ali tries to carry an egg in his pocket for forty days so that he'll get the watch of his dreams. In the meantime, they form the cast for Muzaffer's movie as well.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: contemplative, slow cinema, aesthetic, atmospheric, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 84%
The Waiting Room (2003)
Plot Summary:
Zeki Demirkubuz plays the lead character Ahmet who wants to make a film about Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'. He falls into a deep depression, loses interest in the film and life, pushes those who love him away and cannot complete the film.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, suspense, disturbing, art house, slow cinema, aesthetic, independent film
Similar in 85%
The Wild Pear Tree (2018)
Plot Summary:
An aspiring writer returns to his native village in rural Turkey, where he becomes overwhelmed by his father's debts.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 27000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, France, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Sweden, Qatar
Duration: 188 min
Plot tags: captivating, psychological, realistic, contemplative, erotic, philosophical, art house, existential, cerebral, slang
Similar in 85%
Destiny (2006)
Plot Summary:
Bekir is in love with Ugur, who loves Zagor, who loves to commit crimes.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 16000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, Greece
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, art house, captivating, suspense, independent film, slow cinema, aesthetic, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 90%
Winter Sleep (2014)
Plot Summary:
Aydin, a retired actor, owns a small hotel in central Anatolia with his young wife Nihal and his sister Necla, who is coping with her recent divorce. During the winter, snow covers the ground and boredom brings the return of old memories, pushing Aydin to flee….
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 55000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, France, Germany
Duration: 196 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, philosophical, art house, meditative, independent film, lyrical, serious, realistic, cerebral, contemplative
Similar in 88%
Distant (2002)
Plot Summary:
Uzak/Distant chronicles the numbing loneliness, longing, and isolation in the lives of two men who are consumed by their own problems. Istanbul photographer Mahmut reluctantly receives his relative Yusuf, but the mingling of their lives does little to alleviate their detachment.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 22000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: sincere, bleak, art house, stylized, lyrical, psychological, touching, slow cinema, atmospheric, contemplative
Similar in 77%
Three Monkeys (2008)
Plot Summary:
A family battles against the odds to stay together when small lies grow into an extravagant cover-up. In order to avoid hardship and responsibilities that would otherwise be impossible to endure, the family chooses to ignore the truth, not to see, hear or talk about it. But does playing “Three Monkeys” invalidate the truth of its existence?.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, France, Italy
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, disturbing, art house, feel good, philosophical, neo noir, contemplative, cerebral, visual