Best movies like When Father Was Away on Business
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Tito's break-up with Stalin in 1948 marked the beginning of not only confusing, but also very dangerous years for many hard-core Yugoslav communists. A careless remark about the newspaper cartoon is enough for Mesha to join many arrested unfortunates. His family is now forced to cope with the situation and wait for his release from prison.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Drama
Country: Yugoslavia
Duration: 136 min
Plot tags: erotic, manga, independent film, grindhouse, thought provoking, touching, offbeat, humorous, emotional, realistic
Best tv shows and movies like When Father Was Away on Business (1985):
Similar in 85%
Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams (2006)
Plot Summary:
A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Austria, Germany
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, realistic, psychological, serious, emotional, islamic, captivating, social, masterpiece
Similar in 86%
The Elusive Summer of '68 (1984)
Plot Summary:
For the young man who lives in Serbian province town, the maturing coincides with the turbulent political events of the year 1968.
IMDB Rating: 8.5
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Yugoslavia
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: parody, sentimental, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 76%
The Civilization of Maxwell Bright (2005)
Plot Summary:
After a series of bad relationships, a man orders a mail order bride and receives more than he bargained for.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 539
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, realistic, erotic, offbeat, sexual, sexy
Similar in 78%
The Holy Girl (2004)
Plot Summary:
Amalia is an adolescent girl who is caught in the throes of her emerging sexuality and her deeply held passion for her Catholic faith. These two drives mingle when the visiting Dr. Jano takes advantage of a crowd to get inappropriately close to the girl. Repulsed by him but inspired by an inner burning, Amalia decides it is her God-given mission to save the doctor from his behavior, and she begins to stalk Dr. Jano, becoming a most unusual voyeur.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina, Italy, Netherlands, Spain
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, emotional, realistic, artsy, slow cinema, aesthetic, twisted, clever, contemplative
Similar in 75%
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976)
Plot Summary:
The European equivalent of "The Return of the Secaucus 7," this Swiss film looks at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties. Max, a dissatisfied copy editor; Myriam, a redhead into tantric sex; and Marie, a supermarket checker who gives unauthorized discounts to the elderly, search for renewed meaning on a communal farm. The title character, a six-year-old child, is the carrier of their hopes for the future.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Switzerland, France
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: talky, thought provoking, clever, humorous, realistic, experimental, contemplative, semi serious, light, sexy
Similar in 85%
The Big Dream (2009)
Plot Summary:
Italian Revolution, 1968. Police officer, Nicolas, wants to become an actor. He goes out in plain clothes and meets Laura who is among students against the government, Vietnam War and who seek sexual freedom. One day, his identity gets exposed and she leaves him.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 908
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, serious, realistic, tense, suspense, touching, contemplative, hot
Similar in 77%
Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (1981)
Plot Summary:
A young man grows up in Sarajevo in the 1960s, under the shadow of his good, but ailing father, and gets attracted by the world of small-time criminals.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Yugoslavia
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: romantic comedy, cult classic, insightful, sentimental, thought provoking, touching, serious, realistic, contemplative, cult film
Similar in 89%
The Invisible Circus (2001)
Plot Summary:
After learning that her sister, Faith (Cameron Diaz), has committed suicide in Portugal, Phoebe (Jordana Brewster), an 18-year-old hippie, decides to uproot from her San Francisco home to travel to Europe. Phoebe hopes to discover and experience the life that led to her sister's death by retracing her footsteps, which eventually leads to Wolf (Christopher Eccleston) -- Faith's boyfriend. However, as Phoebe's journey continues, a series of visions of Faith pushes her mind to the brink.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: sexy, touching, emotional, romantic, sentimental, erotic, serious, realistic, independent film, road movie
Similar in 90%
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 89%
Son of Babylon (2009)
Plot Summary:
A willful young boy follows his just as obstinate grandmother in a journey across Iraq, determined to discover the fate of her missing son, Ahmed's father, who never returned from war.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Iraq, UK, France, Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Egypt
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, touching, captivating, emotional, independent film, islamic, tense, serious, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 79%
Love, Math and Sex (1997)
Plot Summary:
A highly intelligent teenage girl has an affair with a 40-year-old man.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 270
Genere: Drama
Country: Switzerland, France, Belgium
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: sincere, humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 75%
The Whore's Son (2004)
Plot Summary:
Ozren is raised in Vienna by his mother Silvija, who works as a prostitute, and his aunt and uncle. The film shows the demimonde of Vienna in the early 1990ies and deals with Ozren's finding out that his mother is not a waitress (as he was initially told) and with the way he copes with it.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 321
Genere: Drama
Country: Austria, Luxembourg
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, emotional, stylized, erotic, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 87%
Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (1998)
Plot Summary:
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: China, USA
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: depressing, emotional, disturbing, erotic, sincere, atmospheric, touching, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 83%
Carry Me Home (2004)
Plot Summary:
A widow named Harriet and her two children Carrie and Brian are living in rural New York in 1947 and are still recovering from the death of Harriet's husband killed in World War II. Carrie is a tomboy and hangs around with boys and they have their own clubhouse. Carrie and her friends make mischief and taunt their mentally challenged neighbor Charlie by stealing one of his puppies. Harriet meets a man named Bernard and begin a courtship, but Carrie is furious that her mother is dating Bernard and wants it to stop. The jealousy and anger of Carrie raises to a fever pitch when Carrie and her friends destroy their neighbor Mr. Grizzle's garden and pour sugar into his tractor. Grizzle then takes Charlie's other puppies away from him and then Grizzle's barn is destroyed by fire. Carrie learns it's time for her to grow up and make amends with her mother and her neighbors for the grief and pain she caused them.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 229
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 82%
My Uncle Antoine (1971)
Plot Summary:
Set in cold rural Quebec at Christmas time, we follow the coming of age of a young boy and the life of his family which owns the town's general store and undertaking business. Mon Oncle Antoine is Director Claude Jutra's masterpiece: A poignant, starkly honest, but humane film, shot through with authenticity from beginning to end. Realized with an unflagging artistic vision, Mon Oncle Antoine poetically portrays a young boy's coming of age, vividly capturing the Quebec mining town in which he lives.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: social, art house, sentimental, touching, humorous, emotional, realistic, contemplative, semi serious
Similar in 80%
Virgin (2003)
Plot Summary:
When a teenager finds herself pregnant, with no memory of having had sex, she determines that she is carrying the child of God.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 601
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: realistic, touching, psychological, captivating, erotic, sincere, serious, contemplative, independent film
Similar in 84%
Falkenberg Farewell (2006)
Plot Summary:
It's the last summer in Falkenberg for five childhood friends. David yearns to be a child again and Holger never wants to move away. Jesper constantly returns home without anybody really noticing that he’s been gone. Jörgen finances his catering company by burglarizing houses. John believes that bacon makes him happy. The future looms at the horizon but not all of them won't be there to see it.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden, Denmark
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, captivating, emotional, touching, humorous, semi serious, sexual, sexy
Similar in 81%
The Dust of Time (2008)
Plot Summary:
A, an American film director of Greek ancestry, is making a film that tells his story and the story of his parents. It is a tale that unfolds in Italy, Germany, Russia, Kazakhstan, Canada and the USA. The main character is Eleni, who is claimed and claims the absoluteness of love. At the same time the film is a long journey into the vast history and the events of the last fifty years that left their mark on the 20th century. The characters in the film move as though in a dream. The dust of time confuses memories. A searches for them and experiences them in the present.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Greece, Italy, Germany, Russia, France
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, atmospheric, touching, serious, postmodern, slow cinema, aesthetic, epic, realistic
Similar in 83%
The Blue Kite (1993)
Plot Summary:
The lives of a Beijing family throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as they experience the impact of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: China, Hong Kong
Duration: 140 min
Plot tags: depressing, political, realistic, controversial, sincere, thought provoking, serious, contemplative, gloomy, tense
Similar in 87%
Simon & the Oaks (2011)
Plot Summary:
Epic story about two families and their friendship and common destiny in Sweden's Gothenburg in the 1940s and 1950s. Told from the perspective of young Simon Larsson, who learns that he's an adopted child who has a Jewish father from Germany. After WWII Simon travels to explore his roots - a journey that leads to the basic mysteries of the human life. After the bestselling novel by Marianne Fredriksson.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Norway
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: realistic, tense, touching, psychological, captivating, contemplative, bleak, serious, romantic drama
Similar in 78%
My Family (1995)
Plot Summary:
Traces over three generations an immigrant family's trials, tribulations, tragedies, and triumphs. Maria and Jose, the first generation, come to Los Angeles, meet, marry, face deportation all in the 1930's. They establish their family in East L.A., and their children Chucho, Paco, Memo, Irene, Toni, and Jimmy deal with youth culture and the L.A. police in the 50's. As the second generation become adults in the 60's, the focus shifts to Jimmy, his marriage to Isabel (a Salvadorian refugee), their son, and Jimmy's journey to becoming a responsible parent.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: touching, thought provoking, sad, independent film, serious, captivating, realistic, hispanic, hood, sentimental
Similar in 84%
I Travel Alone (2011)
Plot Summary:
Jarle Klepp is a 25-year-old student of literature with a passion for Adorno, Proust and grown-up women - and definitely not Tamagochi's, Lady Di and small kids. The news that he is the father of a seven year old girl - and that she will come visiting next week - enters his life like a nuclear bomb. Jarle Klepp has to become an adult.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Norway
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: realistic, emotional, contemplative, captivating, psychological, sincere, touching, serious
Similar in 75%
Blame it on Fidel (2006)
Plot Summary:
A 9-year-old girl weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, political, epic, historical drama, sincere, crying
Similar in 89%
Rambling Rose (1991)
Plot Summary:
Rose, is taken in by the Hillyer family to serve as a 1930s housemaid so that she can avoid falling into a life of prostitution. Rose's appearence and personality is such that all men fall for her, and Rose knows it. She can't help herself from getting into trouble with men.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: erotic, touching, emotional, sexy, sentimental, serious, realistic, romantic, independent film, sexual
Similar in 77%
Face (2002)
Plot Summary:
Genie, a Chinese-American teenager, develops feelings for a charming African-American DJ, but her grandmother forbids their romance forcing Genie to choose between family and love.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 350
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, emotional, sentimental, serious, realistic, contemplative
Similar in 86%
Along the Ridge (2006)
Plot Summary:
A young father and his two children struggle to find harmony after his wife leaves them for another man.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: serious, touching, emotional, realistic
Similar in 90%
Me Without You (2001)
Plot Summary:
During a long, hot summer in seventies London, young neighbors Holly and Marina make a childhood pact to be friends forever. For Marina, troubled, fiercely independent, determined to try everything, Holly stays the only constant in a life of divorcing parents, experimental drugs and fashionable self-destruction. But for Holly, a friendship that has never been equal gradually starts to feel like a trap.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Germany
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: humorous, sentimental, sincere, touching, teen, realistic, romantic, offbeat, contemplative, semi serious
Similar in 76%
The Best Day of My Life (2002)
Plot Summary:
The Best Day of My Life is the story of a dysfunctional family as seen through the eyes of young Chiara (Maria Luisa De Crescenzo) who is about to receive her first communion. The family includes matriarch Irene (Virna Lisi) and her three grown up children.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy, UK
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, realistic, sentimental, captivating, serious, emotional, gloomy, sexual, sexy
Similar in 87%
Grandview, U.S.A. (1984)
Plot Summary:
Life in the small town of Grandview, Illinois is one that is just like any other city or town. Tim Pearson, soon to be graduating high school wants to go to Florida to study oceanography. He meets Michelle "Mike" Cody and is attracted to her. She runs the local Demolition Derby place. Ernie "Slam" Webster is on of the drivers in the derby who's wife is cheating on him and wants to later on be with Mike. Tim falls for Mike and a big love triangle is about to happen.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, humorous, captivating, independent film, retro, offbeat, realistic, semi serious, feel good
Similar in 79%
Swimming (2000)
Plot Summary:
Two girl friends in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina find their relationship changing as they encounter new arrivals to the town.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 943
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious, independent film