Best movies like The Violin
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
In an unnamed Latin American country that closely resembles Mexico, the government fights a rural insurgency with torture, assault, rape, and murder. Soldiers descend on a town, cutting off the rebels from their cache of ammunition hidden in a field. A family of grandfather, son, and grandson are among the rebels in the hills. The grandfather, with his violin over his shoulder, tries to pass the checkpoint, ostensibly to tend his corn crop. The commanding officer lets him pass but insists on a daily music lesson.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Mexico
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, captivating, suspenseful, political, black and white, bleak, realistic, contemplative
Best tv shows and movies like The Violin (2005):
Similar in 84%
Singing the Blues in Red (1986)
Plot Summary:
Persona Non Grata in his homeland, protest singer Klaus Drittemann must leave East Berlin, his wife and child and emigrate to West Berlin, where the representatives of an American record company are eagerly waiting for him. They plan to exploit his defection from communism both ideologically and financially. But Klaus, as ill-at-ease in the West as he was in the East, is reluctant to be used as an expendable commodity. Leaving his contract unsigned (or signed in his manner), he leaves for Cambridge to meet his father, a concert player, who -just like him - left East Berlin thirty years ago as Klaus was a little boy. He is accompanied by a young French journalist, Emma, who knows where his father has been living since he disappeared for more than a decade. The young lady is cooperative but might hide things from him.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 562
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: UK, West Germany, France
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, independent film
Similar in 80%
Tony Manero (2008)
Plot Summary:
A man is obsessed with John Travolta's disco dancing character from "Saturday Night Fever".
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: Chile, Brazil
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, bleak, realistic, contemplative, dark comedy, disturbing, political, visual, black comedy
Similar in 76%
Orchestra Class (2017)
Plot Summary:
A violinist looks to inspire his students at a challenging music school.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 831
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: France
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, captivating, entertaining
Similar in 88%
A Long and Happy Life (2013)
Plot Summary:
Sascha lives in a village on the Kola Peninsular in northern Russia and dedicatedly manages what is left of an old collective farm. He gets on well with his farm workers who respect him and also tolerate his more or less clandestine love-affair with Anya, a secretary at the local government office. But then Sascha is suddenly faced with a dilemma: the district’s self-seeking administrators, none of whom could be termed squeamish, offer him a lucrative deal for the farm. In legal terms, Sascha doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on since his lease on the farm was only agreed with a handshake. The pressure mounts, and even more so when his employees convince him to stand firm. Against the backdrop of a landscape exposed to the elements, this unflinching man’s destiny takes its course.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 495
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags: bleak, realistic, tense, serious, stylized, sad, depressing, captivating, suspense, contemplative
Similar in 82%
The Prize (2011)
Plot Summary:
Ceci, a seven year old girl, has to keep a huge secret, but she doesn't completely understand what is the secret about. The life of her family depends on her silence. But what exactly must she keep silent about? Ceci and her mom live hidden from military repression in Argentina. Ceci asks herself: what must she say? What should she really believe and do in order to deserve the love of her mother and others?.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 429
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico, France, Poland, Germany
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, serious, emotional, captivating, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 77%
Distant Lights (2003)
Plot Summary:
Lichter is an episodic tale from Hans-Christian Schmid about the life on the boarder between Germany and Poland. The film sheds light on the everyday stories of escape and desperateness.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: contemplative, serious, captivating, sincere, atmospheric, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 78%
Captive (2003)
Plot Summary:
Cristina's life is thrown into turmoil when she is suddenly escorted from her strict Catholic school in Buenos Aires and told that she is really Sofía Lombardi, the daughter of activists who disappeared in the '70s. Questioning everything she once thought true, Cristina embarks on a journey to find her true identity. Meeting others like herself, the young girl soon discovers the real-life horrors of Argentina's relatively recent past and the nightmare that claimed tens of thousands of lives during the country's "dirty war.".
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 719
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: serious, emotional, realistic, suspenseful, political, bleak
Similar in 84%
Adanggaman (2000)
Plot Summary:
In West Africa during the late 17th century, King Adanggaman leads a war against his neighboring tribes, ordering his soldiers to torch enemy villages, kill the elderly and capture the healthy tribesmen to sell to the European slave traders. When his village falls prey to one of Adanggaman's attacks, Ossei manages to escape, but his family is murdered except for his captured mother. Chasing after the soldiers in an effort to free her, Ossei is befriended by a fierce warrior named Naka.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 197
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Switzerland, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Italy
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: disturbing, thought provoking, serious, suspenseful, tense, atmospheric, captivating, realistic, contemplative, baroque
Similar in 80%
California Solo (2012)
Plot Summary:
Lachlan MacAldonich is a self-described “lazy Scotsman” and former guitar player for a once-popular 1990s rock band. No longer famous, he now lives a comfortably numb existence working on an organic farm outside Los Angeles. He drinks himself into a stupor every night and retires to his shabby apartment to record his podcast, recounting the tragic deaths of great musicians. After a particularly heavy night of drowning his sorrows at a local watering hole, he is arrested for driving under the influence. This snag, coupled with a long-ago conviction for a drug offense, means Lachlan faces possible deportation. His only hope of remaining stateside is proving that his absence would cause extreme hardship for a spouse or relative – forcing him to confront relationships he thought were buried forever.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: realistic, serious, psychological, captivating, sincere, touching, gloomy, independent film
Similar in 89%
The Hidden Half (2001)
Plot Summary:
An official is sent from his home in Tehran to hear the final appeal of a woman sentenced to death, a political prisoner. The official's wife of nearly 20 years, Fereshteh Samimi, writes him a letter to read when he reaches the hotel - the story of her student days during the revolution of 1978. We see the story in flashbacks as he reads: she leaves her province on scholarship, joins a Communist youth group, avoids arrest, and comes under the sway of a suave older man, Roozbeh Javid, a literary-magazine editor. As she tells her husband about the hidden half of her life, Fereshteh asks that he listen to the woman facing execution, a woman and therefore one of Iran's hidden half.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 866
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, serious, captivating, islamic, realistic, contemplative, intellectual
Similar in 75%
Tar Angel (2001)
Plot Summary:
Newly-arrived Ahmed tries to integrate his family to the canadian society, while attempting to control his son's life orientation.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 276
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: tense, captivating, suspenseful, disturbing, thought provoking, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, road movie
Similar in 85%
The Taqwacores (2010)
Plot Summary:
Three years in the making, this feature documentary follows the progression of the Muslim Punk scene: from its imaginary inception in a novel written by a white-convert named Michael Muhammad Knight to a full-blown, real-life scene of Muslim punk bands and their fans.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 584
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, thought provoking, uplifting, contemplative, independent film
Similar in 81%
Dance Town (2010)
Plot Summary:
A North Korean refugee, Jung-Nim, is trying to find a new life in South Korea, with people suspecting that she is a spy.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 83
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, touching, sincere, thought provoking, bleak, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 79%
Orange Honey (2012)
Plot Summary:
Andalusia in the fifties. Enrique and Carmen just meet and fall deeply in love. Carmen gets him to stay in military service in a court of the city. Enrique, in view of the injustices he witnesses every day, realizes that to change the course of things he has to act. Soon he will be involved in risky actions that endanger their lives and those of their peers.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 351
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain, Portugal
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing
Similar in 79%
Phoenix 11·23 (2012)
Plot Summary:
In the fall of 2004, Eric Bertrand, a 14 years , created a website inspired by "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" to defend the Catalan language. One night, thirty civil guards of anti-terrorist squad Madrid, burst into his home and accused of terrorist computer. His crime: send a mail asking about supermarkets labeling in Catalan.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 313
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, captivating, realistic
Similar in 88%
Goodbye (2011)
Plot Summary:
Without her husband and without her lawyer’s licence, which has been withdrawn, Noora is left pregnant and alone in her apartment. Her attempt to leave Iran turns into a fight with male chauvinism. A personal, nerve-wracking and infuriating film by Rasoulof, who was himself convicted for his films in Iran. Goodbye is a sober, frightening portrait of a society that is stooping under the continual control and threats of its religious regime. Noora, a young, pregnant lawyer in Tehran whose husband has been sent to work in the desert because of his critical journalistic activities, continually faces opposition from the regime and decides to leave the country. That turns out to be very difficult. Because Rasoulof was already banned from making films, Goodbye was shot partly in secret in the winter of 2010/2011. The result is a disquieting film that makes impotence and the desire for freedom painfully tangible in all its simplicity.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 814
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, realistic, thought provoking, contemplative, islamic, bleak, interesting
Similar in 89%
Sub terra (2003)
Plot Summary:
In 1897, in Lota, Chile, in the face of long days, low pay, debts to the company store, unsafe and deadly working conditions, and widespread child labor, men try to establish a miners' association at one of the largest coal mines in the world. They must face Davis, an iron-fisted and murderous supervisor; there's at least one turncoat, willing to inform on their fellow workers; and, there are passions on all sides, including one between Fernando, a leader of the miners, and Virginia, the godchild of the mine's owners. Can the miners win a victory, and at what cost? Baldomero Lillo, a grocery clerk, records it all.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 373
Genere: Drama
Country: Chile, Spain
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic, captivating, epic, contemplative
Similar in 83%
The Invisible Eye (2010)
Plot Summary:
Spying on her students, a teacher finds an exciting hobby.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 841
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina, France, Spain
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: realistic, tense, serious, psychological, captivating, sincere, bleak, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 76%
Kamchatka (2002)
Plot Summary:
The movie show us how life was in Argentina for dissident people, in the seventies, under the military government.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina, Spain, Italy
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, serious, realistic, political, touching
Similar in 77%
Swing Kids (1993)
Plot Summary:
The story of a close-knit group of young kids in Nazi Germany who listen to banned swing music from the US. Soon dancing and fun leads to more difficult choices as the Nazi's begin tightening the grip on Germany. Each member of the group is forced to face some tough choices about right, wrong, and survival.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 17000
Genere: Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: emotional, serious, realistic, sentimental, touching, political, retro, depressing, breathtaking, sad
Similar in 88%
The Black Tulip (2010)
Plot Summary:
The Mansouri family opens up a new restaurant after the fall of the Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan only to be subsequently targeted by factional Taliban elements.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 112
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: USA
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: sentimental, serious, emotional, realistic, islamic, contemplative, independent film
Similar in 78%
Afterburn (1992)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true story, one woman takes on the U.S. military and General Dynamics; maker of the F-16, thought to be the very best tactical fighter in the world. Air Force Captain Theodore T. Harduvel was one of the best F-16 pilots the U.S. had to offer. After much digging, Janet Harduvel discovers a joint military and General Dynamic cover-up. She proves to be unwavering in her search for the truth to clear his name.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 670
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: captivating, disturbing, thought provoking, serious, suspenseful, realistic
Similar in 82%
I Am Cuba (1964)
Plot Summary:
An unabashed exercise in cinema stylistics, I Am Cuba is pro-Castro/anti-Batista rhetoric dressed up in the finest clothes. The film's four dramatic stories take place in the final days of the Batista regime; the first two illustrate the ills that led to the revolution, the third and fourth the call to arms which cut across social and economic lines.
IMDB Rating: 8.2
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Drama
Country: Cuba, Soviet Union
Duration: 141 min
Plot tags: political, surreal, captivating, experimental, breathtaking, black and white, visual, atmospheric, contemplative, stylized
Similar in 81%
For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000)
Plot Summary:
In the early 1970s, Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval (Andy Garcia) is torn between his own musical dreams and the dreams of his wife, Marianela (Mía Maestro), a fervent supporter of the ideals of the Castro revolution. Also starring Charles S. Dutton as Dizzy Gillespie and José Zúñiga as Paquito D'Rivera, this gripping jazz biopic is at once a detailed portrait of a musician and a stinging critique.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: touching, emotional, realistic, sincere, serious, independent film
Similar in 75%
The Overture (2004)
Plot Summary:
Based on the life of Luang Pradit Pairoh (Sorn Silapabanleng) the most revered traditional Thai music master who lived during the reigns of Kings Rama V to VIII, the movie traces the life of Sorn, who picked up the ra-nad ek (Thai xylophone) mallets as a small child and played all his life. The backdrop to Sorn's life tale is the story of Thailand's classical music from its golden age during the reign of King Rama V to near extinction after the end of the absolute monarchy when the government banned it as uncivilised in the 1930s -- a time when Field Marshall Plaek Pibulsongkram tried to push the Kingdom into the modern era.
IMDB Rating: 7.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History, Music
Country: Thailand
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, captivating, emotional, serious, realistic, stylized
Similar in 83%
The Kautokeino Rebellion (2008)
Plot Summary:
Religious and cultural reawakening inspires rebellion in a 19th century Norwegian village.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, History
Country: Denmark, Norway, Sweden
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: epic, serious, captivating, realistic, esoteric, bleak
Similar in 82%
The Black Pimpernel (2007)
Plot Summary:
The story about Swedish ambassador in Chile - Harald Edelstam - and his heroic actions to protect the innocent people from the execution during and after the military coup on September 11th 1973.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 826
Genere: Drama, History, Romance, Thriller
Country: Sweden, Mexico, Denmark
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, captivating, suspenseful, emotional, realistic
Similar in 79%
Zuzu Angel (2006)
Plot Summary:
"Zuzu Angel" covers the last years of the famous Brazilian fashion designer in her doomed quest for justice in the case of her activist son Stuart's arrest, torture, murder and subsequent corpse disposal by the military forces in early 1970s Rio de Janeiro, during the darkest era of Brazilian military regime and media censorship. Not even the fact that she was a widely known public figure saved her from being killed in a car crash in 1976, in one of the regime's favorite elimination techniques (many other similar "car crashes" still have to be re-investigated).
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Brazil
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: disturbing, psychological, serious, suspenseful, thought provoking, captivating, realistic
Similar in 76%
Freedom Song (2000)
Plot Summary:
Freedom Song (2000) is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan. In the midst of the Freedom Summer, a group of high school students in the small town are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community. The young activists meet resistance not only from white southerners, but from their parents, who have experienced firsthand the violence that can result from speaking out.[1] As high school students band together with the support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they make strides in registering African-American voters and gaining awareness for their cause.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 891
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, captivating, emotional, political, tense, serious, realistic
Similar in 75%
Mandela and de Klerk (1997)
Plot Summary:
Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine both received Emmy nominations for their performances in this made-for-TV movie. The plot follows Nelson Mandela's 27-year struggle to end apartheid.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 667
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: tense, sincere, uplifting, thought provoking, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, disturbing, contemplative