Best movies like What a Flash!
Last updated March 2024
Looking for movies similar to What a Flash!? Provide your knowledge to guide others to films and tv series you've watched already that may also enthral them. Help expand the group of people raising videos amongst one another. We welcome your participation!
Plot Summary:
The producers of this French film took approximately 100 people, put them on a soundstage and had them improvise this film based on the premise that they are on a spaceship escaping from the dictators of earth and only have a few days to live. Improvisation is a dangerous art-form; unprepared amateurs invariably come up with gross caricatures when challenged to improvise. The actors' choices in this film include an allegorical pageant of the life of Jesus, a marriage, an orgy, and some genuinely affectionate moments. Nonetheless, as an experimental effort in large-group improvisation, the film is instructive. - Clarke Fountain, Rovi.
IMDB Rating: 4.0
IMDB Votes: 144
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: France
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: experimental, avant garde, weird
Best tv shows and movies like What a Flash! (1972):
Similar in 90%
After America (2021)
Plot Summary:
A group of criminal justice de-escalation workers in Minneapolis embark on a collaborative film project that uses radical workshop techniques to explore their real-life struggles to escape the pressures of the American dream.
IMDB Rating: 4.1
IMDB Votes: 20
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
Country: USA
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 80%
New Wave (1990)
Plot Summary:
A hitchiker (Alain Delon) is taken in by a wealthy industrialist (Domiziana Giordano).
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Switzerland
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: avant garde, experimental, art film
Similar in 77%
Guru (1997)
Plot Summary:
Guru is a fantasy film. It is highly symbolic and makes a statement on terrorism by religions and the evils of the world. The story starts in small peaceful village in India. There is peace between the Hindus and the Muslims that live there. They all get along like family. Raghurāman (Mohanlal) is the son of the local Hindu temple's priest. When an ambitious politician's (NF Varghese) goons disguised as Muslims cause trouble at the local temple, tensions break out between the two communities. The tensions soon flame into a religious riot. Muslims and Hindus began killing each other for the sake of their own religions. Raghurāman joins Hindu gang which is about to attack a group of Muslims who have taken refuge in a guru's asram (a place where a holy guru lived and worked). But at a point Raghurāman has an out of the world experience in the asram.
IMDB Rating: 8.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: India
Duration: 136 min
Plot tags: mysterious, experimental, avant garde
Similar in 85%
The Big Departure (1972)
Plot Summary:
An experimental film from the painter and sculptor Martial Raysse.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 50
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 71 min
Plot tags: avant garde, experimental, allegory, weird
Similar in 80%
Death Drive (2014)
Plot Summary:
Death Drive tells the story of a young man, who after emerging from a pool of water scrambles to piece together the previous night before embarking on a series of psychedelic adventures that reveal his darkest internal instinct.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 64
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: USA
Duration: 52 min
Plot tags: experimental, avant garde
Similar in 84%
All the Ways of God (2014)
Plot Summary:
A contemporary evocation of Judas Iscariot trying to escape from his own guilt after betraying his best friend. He wanders into a forest and lost in himself, meets a mysterious young man. The young companion will accompany him on this path of repentance and penance and help him deal with his feelings, understand his guilt and cope with he has done. This is the story of the last three days of a repentant.
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 147
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 70 min
Plot tags: avant garde, experimental, queer cinema
Similar in 84%
Deux fois (1968)
Plot Summary:
Deux fois is a 1968 experimental film by Jackie Raynal. Raynal stars in the film, her first as a director; she had previously worked for several years as a film editor, most notably for films in Éric Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales" series (she was, reportedly, the youngest professional editor in France at the time). The film's title, which literally translates as Twice and is sometimes translated into English as Twice Upon a Time, refers to the occasional repetition of scenes or actions.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 145
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags: experimental, avant garde
Similar in 78%
Salome (1972)
Plot Summary:
A psychedelic re-telling of the biblical story. Salome is the daughter of the second wife of King Herod. The King is infatuated with her and after she fails to seduce the prophet John (The Baptist) she dances for the King in order to ask for his execution. The story is told in a bizarre way of fast cuts, repetitive dialogue and extreme satire.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 431
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 76 min
Plot tags: psychedelic, experimental, avant garde, weird
Similar in 83%
Indecent Desires (1968)
Plot Summary:
Zeb finds a doll and a ring in a garbage can. Then, he sees Ann going to work with her friend Babs. He thinks she looks like the doll. When he gets home, he caresses the doll... Ann feels it! When Zeb finds out about Ann's fiance Tom, he really gets mad, burns the doll, and beats it up, which makes Ann think she's losing her mind.
IMDB Rating: 5.0
IMDB Votes: 483
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags: grindhouse, independent film, weird
Similar in 77%
New old (1979)
Plot Summary:
Experimental film.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 103
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 67 min
Plot tags: experimental, avant garde
Similar in 81%
Chelsea Girls (1966)
Plot Summary:
Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's art house classic follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City, presented in a split screen with a single audio track in conjunction with one side of screen.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 210 min
Plot tags: underground film, experimental, avant garde, psychedelic, art house, art film, cult classic, independent film, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 81%
The Tempest (1979)
Plot Summary:
Prospero, a potent magician, lives on a desolate isle with his virginal daughter, Miranda. He's in exile, banished from his duchy by his usurping brother and the King of Naples. Providence brings these enemies near; aided by his vassal the spirit Ariel, Prospero conjures a tempest to wreck the Italian ship. The king's son, thinking all others lost, becomes Prospero's prisoner, falling in love with Miranda and she with him. Prospero's brother and the king wander the island, as do a drunken cook and sailor, who conspire with Caliban, Prospero's beastly slave, to murder Prospero. Prospero wants reason to triumph, Ariel wants his freedom, Miranda a husband; the sailors want to dance.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: UK
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: avant garde, independent film, atmospheric, offbeat, serious, experimental, surreal, stylized, sexual, sexy
Similar in 85%
Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (2006)
Plot Summary:
Big Bang Love tells the story of two young prisoners from different backgrounds whose bond transcends their pasts. This stunning, imaginative film has been adapted from Masaki Ato's homoerotic graphic novel. Two beautiful young men become lovers in jail until one kills again. As they open their hearts to each other, life around them dissolves between the real world with a murder mystery and a surreal journey filled with images of a primitive past and an ambiguous future.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Japan
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, disturbing, realistic, suspenseful, psychological, surreal, art house, suspense thriller, avant garde
Similar in 87%
William, the New Judo Master (2016)
Plot Summary:
Portrays the universe of an eternal being that exists within a lifecycle filled with disappointments and hopelessness. It's the chronicle about the search for love and the fight against oblivion.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 42
Genere: Drama
Country: Mexico
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: experimental, avant garde
Similar in 76%
Central Bazaar (1976)
Plot Summary:
For this remarkable experimental film, the provocative avant-garde legend Stephen Dwoskin gathered together a group of strangers and filmed them as they explored their fantasies over a period of five days: a project that now sounds a little like TV's Big Brother. The ceremonial gowns and make-up here not only evoke the eroticism of European horror movies but also highlight the film's interplay between performance and intimacy. Jonas Mekas called it 'theatre of life'.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 118
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 156 min
Plot tags: avant garde, erotic, experimental, independent film, weird
Similar in 80%
In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal (1986)
Plot Summary:
300 kilos of heroin have disappeared in Necrocity, a city of terror—city of night—where Captain Speed has a gang, and the government hides the dead. Pierre Clémenti’s In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal (À l’ombre de la canaille bleue) is an experimental crime film considered to be a landmark of Parisian underground cinema.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 121
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: France
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: experimental, avant garde
Similar in 85%
The Inner Scar (1972)
Plot Summary:
A collage of dreams. Garrel made a name for himself with this film as a new Jean Vigo. With Nico (Velvet Underground). A poetic and painterly film that has been described as 'a collage of dreams'. The film was shot without a script, but Garrel had already thought up the eventual title ('the scar inside'). This title was an obsession for him, every shot had to be an expression of 'the scar inside'. Apart from Garrel himself and actor Pierre Clementi, Garrel's former partner Nico, member of the legendary Velvet Underground, played a role in the film. Another important role was for the landscape. Garrel, 23 when he made the film, was compared with Jean Vigo because of his age and talent. La cicatrice intérieure even led Claude Mauriac to call him the Rimbaud of film. (from https://www.iffr.com/en/films/la-cicatrice-int-rieure/).
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 738
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Music
Country: France
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: experimental, surreal, avant garde, weird
Similar in 89%
Mandorla (2015)
Plot Summary:
The only journey is the one within. Mandorla explores a man's search for a meaningful life despite conflicts between his inner and outer worlds. Ernesto is a visual artist and seeker stuck in a corporate job, who is drawn by dark magical visions to a medieval French city. There he seeks an elusive banker to help him unlock an obscure dream that threatens his job, family, and sanity.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 42
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: France, USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: spiritual, experimental
Similar in 75%
Field of Dogs (2014)
Plot Summary:
A visionary romance based on a contemporary reading of Dante.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 416
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Poland, Italy, Sweden
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: allegory, bleak, serious, suspense, suspenseful, disturbing, surreal, avant garde, weird
Similar in 88%
Heroic Purgatory (1970)
Plot Summary:
Rikiya Shoda is an engineer working for the Atomic Agency in Japan. One day, his wife Nanako returns home with a lost teenager called Ayu. A man, pretending to be the father, comes to get her back; Ayu keeps telling him that Rikiya and Nanako are her parents. Through this disruption, Rikiya suddenly starts remembering his youth as a revolutionary.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 817
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Japan
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: avant garde, weird
Similar in 80%
Eggshells (1969)
Plot Summary:
Experimental allegorical story about a group of hippie students in Austin, Texas, who move into an old big house in the woods. However, something else is there and it's influencing them.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 480
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: psychedelic, mind bending, surreal, experimental, allegory, independent film, art film, weird
Similar in 78%
Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Brokenhearted (1992)
Plot Summary:
After her boyfriend ends their relationship, the dreamself of a heartbroken woman floats through the air over an industrial wasteland singing ballads of love.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Music
Country: USA
Duration: 50 min
Plot tags: surreal, cult classic, experimental, atmospheric, offbeat, serious, stylized, gloomy, avant garde, weird
Similar in 87%
Prospero's Books (1991)
Plot Summary:
An exiled magician finds an opportunity for revenge against his enemies muted when his daughter and the son of his chief enemy fall in love in this uniquely structured retelling of the 'The Tempest'.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: UK, Netherlands, France, Italy, Japan
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: experimental, surreal, psychedelic, epic, art house, non-linear, psychotronic, postmodern, cult classic, atmospheric
Similar in 80%
Pastoral Hide and Seek (1974)
Plot Summary:
A young boys' coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Japan
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: surreal, experimental, psychedelic, mind bending, disturbing, avant garde, weird, cult film
Similar in 87%
Goodbye to Language (2014)
Plot Summary:
About a man who’s angry at his wife because she’s met another man on a park bench and they no longer even speak the same language.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Switzerland, France
Duration: 70 min
Plot tags: surreal, experimental, atmospheric, thought provoking, serious, stylized, avant garde, psychedelic, art house, erotic
Similar in 81%
City of Women (1980)
Plot Summary:
A businessman finds himself trapped at a hotel and threatened by women en masse.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 139 min
Plot tags: surreal, satirical, art house, cerebral, atmospheric, mind bending, psychedelic, cult classic, clever, offbeat
Similar in 86%
Cremaster 3 (2002)
Plot Summary:
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
Duration: 182 min
Plot tags: surreal, mind bending, atmospheric, stylized, serious, thought provoking, psychedelic, disturbing, independent film, avant garde
Similar in 77%
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Plot Summary:
Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave - the birthplace of his first life.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 17000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Thailand, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: surreal, atmospheric, disturbing, art house, philosophical, meditative, visually appealing, cerebral, slow cinema, contemplative
Similar in 77%
Fellini Satyricon (1969)
Plot Summary:
A series of disjointed mythical tales set in first century Rome.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 17000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 129 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychedelic, art house, sexual, cult classic, erotic, philosophical, absurd, disturbing, controversial
Similar in 80%
Holy Motors (2012)
Plot Summary:
We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 48000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: France, Germany, Belgium
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: surreal, art house, psychedelic, cerebral, mindfuck, enigmatic, disturbing, atmospheric, experimental, artsy