Best movies like Watchtower
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Haunted by his dark past, a man takes a job as a fire warden in a remote tower in the wilderness, and is inexorably drawn towards a young woman with a terrible secret of her own. (TIFF).
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, France, Germany
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, psychological, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Best tv shows and movies like Watchtower (2012):
Similar in 77%
Helen (2008)
Plot Summary:
An 18 year old girl called Joy has gone missing. Another girl called Helen is a few weeks away from leaving her care home. Helen is asked to 'play' Joy in a police reconstruction that will retrace Joy's last known movements. Joy had everything. A loving family, a boyfriend, a bright future. Helen, parent-less, has lived in institutions all her life and has never been close to anyone. Gradually Helen begins to immerse herself into the role, visiting the people and places that Joy knew; quietly and carefully insinuating her way into the lost girl's life. But is Helen trying to find out what happened to Joy that day, or is she searching for her own identity?.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 456
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Ireland
Duration: 79 min
Plot tags: psychological, realistic, atmospheric, touching, bleak, serious
Similar in 90%
10 to 11 (2009)
Plot Summary:
10 to 11 is the story of a passionate collector Mithat and the concierge of the building, Ali. For Mithat Istanbul is as vast as his collections and for Ali is nothing more than a few blocks around the building. When the neighbors decide to have the building rebuilt with the fear of earthquake and the wish for a more valuable house, Mithat's most challenging struggle to save his collections begins. The building becomes the common destiny of these two men living alone. Their relationship that begins with the collaboration to save the continuity of the collections changes track with Mithat's handing Istanbul over to Ali and ends when they involuntarily change each other's fate.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, France, Germany
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: sentimental, realistic, contemplative, psychological, captivating, sad, touching, serious
Similar in 82%
Houston (2013)
Plot Summary:
A German corporate headhunter travels to Houston, Texas, in pursuit of a renowned oil company CEO, only to have his life fall apart.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 309
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, USA
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, psychological, suspenseful, disturbing, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 81%
The Sea Is Behind (2014)
Plot Summary:
Tarik lives in a land without colour, a land where water is contaminated by a strange phenomenon of “water bugs”. Tarik wears make-up and dresses up as a woman. He dances on a cart that is drawn by a dying horse and his father has practically abandoned him. One day, Tarik’s horse Larbi stops in the middle of a procession and refuses to take another step forward. Tarik will have to learn to live again and surrender to the colours of his life, which is the only way to escape the dullness of the world around him.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 45
Genere: Drama
Country: Morocco, France, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic, disturbing, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Bashing (2005)
Plot Summary:
Yuko is a Japanese girl who was taken hostage in Iraq while volunteering there as an aid worker. Finally released and back in her hometown, Yuko finds herself ostracized as a national disgrace by society that sees her helping a country other than Japan, and the embarrassment of getting captured but not killed, as things of which to be brutally ashamed.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 506
Genere: Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: psychological, realistic, bleak, serious, gloomy
Similar in 88%
Phobidilia (2009)
Plot Summary:
After suffering an emotional breakdown in a public place, a young man vows to quit the chaotic city life and never leave his apartment. He quickly discovers that in todays world all his needs can be easily met: sexual satisfaction via the internet, food by telephone delivery and entertainment by television.Four years later, his idyllic existence comes under attack when Daniella, a free spirited girl comes into his life while Grumps, the buildings real estate agent , informs him that the apartment is about to be sold.Both Grumps, an elderly holocaust survivor with a troubled past and Daniella a cheerful young woman with a disastrous love history, are the first people in a long while to care about our hero. Both think the only way out is OUT.However, our hero refuses to leave his kingdom and decides to fight till the bitter end.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 259
Genere: Drama
Country: Israel
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, emotional, realistic, offbeat, gloomy, surprise ending, psychotronic
Similar in 88%
Cold Water of the Sea (2010)
Plot Summary:
On New Year's holidays, Mariana (21) and Rodrigo (30) drive to the coast where he has to sell a property. There, they find Karina (7), late at night and in the middle of nowhere. She tells then she ran away from home.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 193
Genere: Drama
Country: Costa Rica, France, Spain, Netherlands, Mexico
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 83%
Closed Curtain (2013)
Plot Summary:
A man, his dog, a young woman and a filmmaker in a house by the Caspian Sea. All three are wanted, but they are also in search of each other. Thus begins an absurd game in which reality and fiction merge.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic, surreal, disturbing, islamic, mind bending, offbeat, postmodern
Similar in 88%
Nothing Personal (2009)
Plot Summary:
Alone in her empty flat, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: Netherlands, Ireland
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, realistic, contemplative, captivating, sexy, offbeat, art house, intelligent, sincere
Similar in 76%
Singing Women (2013)
Plot Summary:
An island off the coast of Turkey is about to be evacuated due to a possible earthquake but its inhabitants have been stricken with a mysterious illness, consigning them to an uncertain fate.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 740
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, Germany, France
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic, surreal, suspense, offbeat, biting
Similar in 82%
A Good Baby (1999)
Plot Summary:
A young loner wandering the back roads of North Carolina comes across an abandoned baby. He immediately starts seeking the baby's parents, but starts developing a bond with the child that explores his own isolated roots.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 342
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, serious, realistic, independent film, gloomy
Similar in 90%
Sworn Virgin (2015)
Plot Summary:
Years after declaring her eternal virginity and opting to live life as a man in the mountains of Albania, Hana looks to return to living as a woman as she settles into a new existence in modern-day Milan.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Albania, Kosovo, France
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, touching, psychological, serious, realistic, contemplative, gloomy, lgbt cinema, queer cinema, moody
Similar in 86%
A Doll's House (1973)
Plot Summary:
Nora Helmer has years earlier committed a forgery in order to save the life of her authoritarian husband Torvald. Now she is being blackmailed lives in fear of her husband's finding out and of the shame such a revelation would bring to his career. But when the truth comes out, Nora is shocked to learn where she really stands in her husband's esteem.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic, talky, sincere, clever, independent film, period drama
Similar in 79%
Dealer (2004)
Plot Summary:
In an impressive follow up to his debut film Forest, Benedek Fliegauf tells the uncompromising story of a day in the life of a drug dealer. His clients include the leader of a religious sect, a friend who needs a final fix, a former lover who has had his child, a student, and a black marketeer. Fliegauf's film recreates life in a city that resembles a ghost town, an alienated world with its own priorities and realities. It is, he says '. an imaginary city with a strongly spiritualist atmosphere. This necropolis is the film's real protagonist'.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 130 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, serious, stylized, contemplative, experimental, avant garde, cult classic, bleak, realistic
Similar in 84%
Freedom (2000)
Plot Summary:
A few fugitives... And a very, very long way to freedom.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 352
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Portugal, Lithuania
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: serious, contemplative, atmospheric, realistic, slow cinema, aesthetic, stylized, gloomy, avant garde
Similar in 85%
Iron Island (2005)
Plot Summary:
Squatters live on a mothballed oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. The children attend a school on board; men harvest scrap metal and old oil in the hull; women keep house and raise children and Captain Nemat runs it all with an iron hand. We follow a lad who rescues fish trapped in the hull, an old man who stares at the sun, the idealistic teacher, and Ahmad, the Captain's assistant who has fallen in love with a young woman whose father wants to marry her to someone of means. What future has this sinking city?.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 980
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: sincere, thought provoking, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative, atmospheric, offbeat, gloomy
Similar in 76%
Horse Money (2014)
Plot Summary:
While the young captains lead the revolution in the streets, the people of Fontainhas search for Ventura, lost in the woods.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Portugal
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, touching, emotional, postmodern, contemplative, experimental, art house, independent film, visual
Similar in 90%
Inside (2012)
Plot Summary:
A man's life, thoughts, feelings and his very own darkness... Adapted from Dostoevsky's novel "Notes from Undergroud", Demirkubuz follows Muharrem as he gets himself invited to a party where he is not welcome, just to find himself disgusted.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: psychological, realistic, serious, contemplative, art house, captivating, existential
Similar in 90%
Future Lasts Forever (2011)
Plot Summary:
A woman struggles with love and personal loss against the backdrop of a land torn by civil war in this drama from filmmaker Ozcan Alper. Sumru (Gaye Gursel) is a Turkish woman who studies ethnic music at a college in Istanbul and frequently makes field recordings of artists who practice rare and unusual forms. Sumru is struggling with loneliness after the disappearance of her Kurdish boyfriend, and for her latest project, she sets out on a lengthy road trip recording the stories of Kurdish women who have survived the murder of their Turkish husbands or lovers, hoping she might track down her man in her travels. After making her first stop in the city of Diyarbaki, Sumru meets Ahmet, who makes a living selling black market goods and shares her love of music and history. The two become fast friends, and as Ahmet joins Sumru on her travels, their relationship grows deeper, though she also becomes more aware of the tragedy that has gripped her country and the consequences of the civil war.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, France, Turkey
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, emotional, realistic, contemplative, captivating, art house, sincere, bleak, serious, gloomy
Similar in 75%
The Reunion (2013)
Plot Summary:
A film between fiction and reality, highlighting questions about group dynamics and established hierarchies. A group of people meet for their high school reunion 20 years later. One of them talks about her being bullied and outcast and soon the former classmates fall back to the roles they used to have back in school. But this is just half of the film.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, serious, realistic, thought provoking, disturbing, independent film
Similar in 79%
Violent Blue (2011)
Plot Summary:
Katarina is a music teacher obsessed with an unfinished symphony. She worries about her brother, Ondrej an introverted inventor whose financiers are reputedly shady and dangerous. Then one day, her ex-husband Pietro shows up in her house and locks her in a cage.
IMDB Rating: 3.6
IMDB Votes: 434
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, surreal, cynical, psychological, tense, captivating, gloomy, independent film, psychological thriller
Similar in 80%
The Cruel Embrace (1987)
Plot Summary:
Nicole (Marianne Basler) gives birth to a mentally challenged boy after she is gang-raped by American soldiers at the close of World War II in this grim dramatic tragedy. Young Ludo is hidden in the attic of the family home and continues to yearn for his mother's affection. Nicole enters into a loveless marriage with an older man who agrees to adopt Ludo, but her deteriorating mental health leads her to sloth and alcoholism. Ludo is sent off to an asylum, but escapes and takes up residence on a deserted beach in an old tanker that has run aground. This feature won the grand prize at the 1987 Barcelona Film Festival.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 181
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium, France
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: psychological, touching, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 77%
A Lake (2008)
Plot Summary:
The story takes place in a country about which we know nothing: a country of snow and dense forests somewhere in the North. A family lives in an isolated house near a lake. Alexi, the brother, is a young man with pure heart. A woodcutter. An ecstatic, prey to epileptic fits, he is entirely opened to the nature that surrounds him. Alexi is terribly close to his younger sister, Hege. Their blind mother, their father and their little brother are the silent witnesses to their overwhelming love. A stranger arrives, a young man barely older that Alexi.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 812
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, emotional, stylized, contemplative, disturbing, controversial, art house, bleak, serious
Similar in 78%
Choking Man (2006)
Plot Summary:
The social anxiety of a morbidly shy Ecuadorian dishwasher working in a Queens diner provides the psychological engine that powers this blend of drama and magical realism.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 597
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: realistic, atmospheric, touching, captivating, psychological, sentimental, serious, gloomy
Similar in 87%
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 86%
First Winter (2012)
Plot Summary:
When winter begins, life is serene for a group of new-age Brooklynites living in a remote country farmhouse. Sex, drugs, yoga, and organic cooking absorb their days, safely tucked away from the stresses of urban life. But when a blackout of apocalyptic proportions strands them with no heat and no electricity during the coldest winter on record, their utopian commune is breached by anxiety and their idyllic harmony begins to lose its tune. As time wears on and the food supply dwindles, power struggles, jealousy, and desire threaten the group's ability to work together in order to survive.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 258
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, serious, realistic, mumblecore, gloomy, independent film
Similar in 77%
Small World (2010)
Plot Summary:
Conrad Lang, a handyman in a rich family - he has been raised like a brother with Thomas, who has the same age -, accidentally puts fire to the big holiday house he keeps. He returns to the town he grew up in, to the family home, where Philippe, Thomas's son, and Simone are getting married. Conrad's frequent memory loss and behavioural problems rapidly reveal a neurological disease (Alzheimer's is suggested by doctor Cohen when he examens Elvira) which leads Elvira, Thomas's stepmother, to install Conrad in a guesthouse on the property, with the help of a nurse. When Conrad looses more and more his landmarks in present and past, memories of his youth come back to surface. They intrigue Simone, since these memories do not entirely fit together with the official family history.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 636
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Germany
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: psychological, realistic, serious, captivating, suspenseful, gloomy
Similar in 88%
Ward No. 6 (2009)
Plot Summary:
Simultaneously nihilistic and heartening, Ward No. 6 is based on a story by Chekov, in which a psychiatric doctor becomes a patient in his own asylum. Updated to contemporary Russia, the film is a cocktail of anxieties and riddles, showcasing how easy it is to become what we fear most.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 791
Genere: Drama
Country: Russia
Duration: 83 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, touching, serious, philosophical, intellectual, smart, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 76%
The Quiet Roar (2014)
Plot Summary:
MARIANNE (Evabritt Strandberg) is a 68-year old woman diagnosed with a terminal disease. Left with angst, she seeks therapy at a clinic where she is treated with Psilocybin (LSD) and meditation by a counselor, Eva (Hanna Schygulla). Through this she is transferred to her subconscious, where she meets and confronts her 25-year old self and her former husband.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 221
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden, Norway
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags: serious, contemplative, psychological, sincere, atmospheric, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 83%
Hut in the Woods (2011)
Plot Summary:
Two misfit males, one man-child, one boy, find each other, building a small cabin in the woods to create a new life. Their daily struggle for survival creates a strong bond between them until the hut is destroyed and one of the boys carted off. The former psychiatric patient is told that his friend was just a figment of his imagination, but this provokes him to fight back and prove the boy's existence.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, touching, realistic, gloomy