Best movies like A Present from the Past: 20 September

Myles is divorced in L.A. He wants a love life and a film career. So he decides to go on 20 dates and find true love in front of a camera, making his first feature. His patient agent, Richard, finds a $60,000 investor, the shadowy Elie. Myles starts his search, sometimes telling his date she's being filmed, sometimes not. Elie wants sex and titillation, Myles wants it "real." Myles regularly talks with his old film teacher, Robert McKee, who wonders if love is possible in modern life. Half-way through the 20 dates, Myles meets Elisabeth; she's everything he desires and she likes him. Can he finish the 20 dates, satisfy Elie, and complete his film without losing Elisabeth?

Axl wants to find his long-lost father and rediscover his past. Vera just wants to forget hers as she tries to move on from heartbreak. Their stories come together in the melting-pot of 21st century London.

A Louisiana woman discovers that a trusted neighbor has installed video surveillance equipment in her home to spy on her family. As a result, the real-life Wilson lobbied for a 1999 state law passed in nine other states since making video voyeurism a felony.

Dean and Sal are the portrait of the Beat Generation. Their search for "It" results in a fast paced, energetic roller coaster ride with highs and lows throughout the U.S.

When his young daughter's beloved companion — an android named Yang — malfunctions, Jake searches for a way to repair him. In the process, Jake discovers the life that has been passing in front of him, reconnecting with his wife and daughter across a distance he didn't know was there.

14 years after making a film about his journey across the USA, Borat risks life and limb when he returns to the United States with his young daughter, and reveals more about the culture, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the political elections.

The Stevens think that they've won an all-expenses-paid trip to an island that's halfway around the world. When their house is destroyed, their food stolen, and their bacon eaten, the Stevens family breaks apart in front of all their friends on live national television, while the island itself is only a short distance away from Sacramento!

Liz Gilbert had everything a modern woman is supposed to dream of having – a husband, a house and a successful career – yet like so many others, she found herself lost, confused and searching for what she really wanted in life. Newly divorced and at a crossroads, Gilbert steps out of her comfort zone, risking everything to change her life, embarking on a journey around the world that becomes a quest for self-discovery. In her travels, she discovers the true pleasure of nourishment by eating in Italy, the power of prayer in India and, finally and unexpectedly, the inner peace and balance of true love in Bali.

Overburdened and stuck in a greying marriage, Giovanna takes to caring for a Jewish Holocaust survivor her husband brings home. As she begins to reflect on her life, she turns to the man who lives across from her.

Carrie, Mitzie, and Chicago get in trouble a lot in the women's prison, but are offered early parolement if they agree to become subjects of a study on human aggression and antisocial behavior at a Kansas City college. Dr. Blalock, the professor in charge of the study, is accepting money under the table from a shady government contact to use an experimental drug on the women. The drug induces the same hostile behavior the doctor is supposedly trying to cure, and after a while the women have a hard time conducting themselves in a civil manner.

On the eve of her college graduation, Natalie's life diverges into two parallel realities: one in which she becomes pregnant and must navigate motherhood as a young adult in her Texas hometown, the other in which she moves to LA to pursue her career. In both journeys throughout her twenties, Natalie experiences life-changing love, devastating heartbreak and rediscovers herself.

More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.

As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.

The residents of Ho Chi Minh City face modernization amid widespread poverty. A retired American Marine arrives on a search for his daughter, whom he abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War. Elsewhere, a cyclo driver falls for a troubled prostitute and schemes to raise money so he can spend time with her. Additionally, a young women begins harvesting lotuses for a writer suffering from leprosy, and a child trinket seller loses his traveling case.

This offbeat comedy about love and romance won writer, director and actress Heidi Van Lier top honors a Grand Jury Prize at the 1999 Slamdance Film Festival. Heather Green (Van Lier) is a journalist with an alternative newspaper in Chicago who is obsessed with her ex-boyfriend. Randy (Joe Kraemer) is in turn obsessed with Heather. A would-be documentary filmmaker, Randy constantly films her, sometimes without her knowledge. When Heather takes up a challenge from Randy and announces she can seduce the next man she meets, her desperation makes it clear she's had bad luck with men for a very good reason. When Heather finally does meet the man of her dreams, a good-looking attorney named Cliff

A man coming off a disastrous affair with a married woman has a lyrical, strange and comedic cross-country journey in a modified VW bus.

Nola grew up living on a van with her father, Clint; two nomads against the world. When tragedy strikes, Nola must confront the reality of life on the road alone, learning to own her grief, her past and her new destination.

Sheridan O'Connor and Riccardo Rossi were destined to meet on the set of their first big movie together when barely out of their teens. What they didn't know was that their on-screen chemistry would translate into a hot and heavy off-screen romance destined only for disaster. Now, living continents apart and a lifetime later, expecting their paths never to cross again, they are thrown back together to star in an updated version of their original film. The studio has high hopes that they will be able to attract the same audience who loved them the first time around. But working together again could demand greater acting skills than either ever imagined: long hours filming awkward romantic scenes, reliving the past and coming face to face with what fate has in store for them. Only slightly shaken and gently stirred by family and friends, Sheridan and Riccardo must find a way to make the perfect martini out of life so as not to waste a single drop of happiness.

Jade Li is a feisty, 20-something Chinese Canadian, trying to achieve that happy medium between giving in to her parent's wishes and fulfilling her own needs and desires - double happiness. Naturally, something's got to give and when love beckons in the shape of Mark, a white university student, the facade of the perfect Chinese daughter begins to slip.

The slimy underbelly of psychiatry is revealed in this nasty exploitation drama that centers on a female psychiatrist who talks about her tawdriest cases, examples of which, including incest, masochism, impotency and prostitution, are illustrated. When not talking, the doctor and her daughter get involved in a few wild adventures of their own including an orgy and a campus riot.

Daniel Moulin goes to New York on a business trip and decides to take advantage of his time in the Big Apple to try and locate the father he never knew. The only thing he has to go on however is an address in the Bronx that is 25 years old.

Twenty-three-year old Peter Foster is an only child who lives at home, where he constantly hears his parents arguing. Because Peter does nothing all day, the family goes to a clinic where a therapist videotapes them. After Peter watches his tape, he views the tape of a troubled Armenian family, who gave their only son away for adoption when they arrived in Canada. Peter decides to visit this family, and he pretends to be their son, Bedros Deryan. The Deryan family welcomes him with open arms, and Peter tries to patch up the poor relationship between George Deryan and his daughter Azah.

Almost 19-year-old Marius feels himself in a rut in Marseille, his life planned for him by his cafe'-owning father, and he longs for the sea. The night before he is to leave on a 5-year voyage, Fanny, a girl he grew up with, reveals that she is in love with him, and he discovers that he is in love with her. He must choose between an exciting life at sea, and a boring life with the woman he loves. And Fanny must choose between keeping the man she loves, and letting him live the life he seems to want.

Craving that girl she was never able to replace and seeking inspiration in her presence, or absence, or rather fantasy, a troubled writer embarks on a stormy journey of love, passion and potentially perdition.

Two couples on an oceanside getaway grow suspicious that the host of their seemingly perfect rental house may be spying on them. Before long, what should have been a celebratory weekend trip turns into something far more sinister.

Ambitious young woman wants to get into TV news. She borrows a small camera from a friend and obtains incriminating pictures that two former East German spies are after.

A woman leaves her seaside hometown to search for her long-lost brother, experiencing hallucinations brought on by her epilepsy during her trip.

Bored farmer's daughter sets out to make it in the big city. She gets mixed up with freaks, perverts and degenerates and winds up a stripper in New Orleans.

Based on the novel Winterkill, by William Judson, Cold River is the story of an Adirondack guide who takes his young daughter and step-son on a long camping trip in the fall of 1932. When winter strikes unexpectedly early (a natural phenomenon known as a 'winterkill' - so named because the animals are totally unprepared for a sudden, early winter, and many freeze or starve to death), a disastrous turn of events leaves the two children to find their own way home without food, or protection from the elements.

A bubbly bride-to-be’s Christmas plans take an unexpected turn when her holiday flight to New York is detoured and she encounters a cynical bar manager who has lost his faith in love. As she scrambles to make it back east for Christmas—and plan her upcoming wedding—she begins wondering if she’s marrying the right man, and learns a surprising lesson about love.

Fearing forced eviction, a struggling actor in his early twenties takes a sketchy door-to-door job on Melrose Avenue - where he meets a mysterious coworker and discovers firsthand the dark reality of living in transition.

Co-director Robert Margolis stars as Robert, an actor who may or may not be himself in this intense and often hilarious film about acting, aging and the dark side of ambition. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, The Definition of Insanity was filmed over the course of 18 months, as a documentary crew follows Robert Margolis obsessively from one failed audition to another, recording in raw detail his every humiliation and small triumph as he searches for that elusive perfect role that will catapult his career into the next level. Just when it seems that he will be forced by family and financial pressures to give up everything he has worked for, he meets legendary filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich («The Last Picture Show», «Papermoon»). That encounter changes his life profoundly, but in a very different way than he had anticipated.

Taylor is a successful woman whose job is her life. Her thirtieth birthday arrives, where it turns out that her previously deceased mother has placed various tasks for her in a time capsule. They are the basis for stepping out of your comfort zone and gaining new experiences.

During the Christmas season, Megan and her father-figure Frank head out on a road trip to find his long-lost love. Along the way, Megan finds the love of her own life.

Judy, Alex and Nick are three friends in their early twenties who haven't quite figured things out. Judy is stuck at a dead-end job and is about to make a big move in her life when her boyfriend unexpectedly proposes to her via voicemail. The engagement ring is coming via express mail and she goes to her best friends to help her decide what to do. Alex is a spendthrift who lives way above his means. Nick, secretly in love with Judy, is a writer who can never quite finish his novel. MIXED SIGNALS is a story about love, friendship, loyalty and the choices we all face.