Best movies like A Wonderful Spell

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like A Wonderful Spell Starring Miou-Miou, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Morgan Marinne, Marilyne Canto, and more. If you liked A Wonderful Spell then you may also like: With a Friend Like Harry..., The Wizard of Loneliness, The Notebook, The Penthouse, Ithaca and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

Set in the summer of 1942 during WWII, the film traces the trajectory of simple people thrown into extraordinary lives, revealing the heart-warming flame of hope and humanity that endures, even in times of war and dispair. As young Julien, his family and a group of friends traverse the French countryside after fleeing the institution they called home, Julien must deal with his father's extreme violence and his mother's rosy fantasies and once again form a family that society tries to forget.

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With a Friend Like Harry...

Harry knew Michel in high school; they meet again by accident, Harry inserts himself in Michel's life... and things take a sinister turn.

The Wizard of Loneliness

After his mother dies and father goes to fight in World War II, a young boy moves in with his aunt and uncle who live in the countryside. Lonely and unhappy, he starts believing he has super powers. Then a "dead" man shows up.

The Notebook

In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.

The Penthouse

A rich young woman fights to save her life when she is held captive by an obsessed former friend in her own penthouse.

Ithaca

In a small town in California's San Joaquin Valley, 14-year-old Homer Macauley is determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger anyone has ever seen. His older brother has gone to war, leaving Homer to look after his widowed mother, his older sister and his 4-year-old brother, Ulysses. And so it is that as spring turns to summer, 1942, Homer Macauley delivers messages of love, hope, pain... and death... to the good people of Ithaca. And Homer Macauley will grapple with one message that will change him forever - from a boy into a man. Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Saroyan's 1943 novel, The Human Comedy, ITHACA is the quintessential wartime tale of the Home Front. It is a coming-of-age story about the exuberance of youth, the sweetness of life, the sting of death and the modesty and sheer goodness that lives in each and every one of us.

Berlin Correspondent

Dana Andrews plays Bill Roberts, an American radio commentator station in Berlin in the months before Pearl Harbor. Having witnessed Nazi brutalities first hand, Roberts hopes to alert his listeners of impending dangers, and does so by sending out coded messages during his broadcasts. The Gestapo begins to suspect something and assigns glamorous secret agent Karen Hauen (Virginia Gilmore) to spy on Roberts. When she discovers that her own father (Erwin Kaiser) is supplying Roberts with vital secrets, she turns her back on the Nazis and joins our hero in his efforts.

Summer of the Monkeys

One summer, Jay finds four chimps on the prairie who have fallen off a circus cart.

Luna Park

Andrei is the head of a gang of antisemitic skinheads clinging to the old communist ideals in post-Communist Moscow. When he learns that his long lost father actually is a Jewish bohemian living in Moscow, rather than an Afghanistan war hero, he traces him down in order to kill him. But the intriguing father and his "reactionary" lifstyle soon fascinates Andrei which leads to a clash with his gang.

Slipstream

Aging screenwriter Felix Bonhoeffer has lived his life in two states of existence: in reality and his own interior world. While working on a murder mystery script, and unaware that his brain is on the verge of implosion, Felix is baffled when his characters start to appear in his life, and vice versa.

Tomorrow Ever After

Shaina lives 600 years in the future. War, greed, prejudice, poverty, pollution, violence, loneliness, depression – these are things that she’s read about in history books. When an accident in a physics experiment sends her on a time-travel journey to our times, she assumes that everyone around her is honest, generous and caring, as she recruits the help that she needs to get back home.

Molière

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin is raised by his father and his grandfather because his mother dies when he's still very little. He works as a handyman, studies the law at a university and travels the country as an actor before he becomes the celebrated playwright Molière who impresses firstly the Duke of Orleans and then even King Louis XIV.

The Land Girls

During World War II, the organisation "The Women's Land Army" recruited women to work on British farms while the men were off to war. Three such "land girls" of different social backgrounds - quiet Stella, young hairdresser Prue, and Cambridge graduate Ag - become best friends in spite of their different backgrounds.

My Mother's Castle

To his chagrin, young Marcel Pagnol and his family move back to their home in Marseilles, France, far from their pastoral holiday cottage in the hills. Determined, Marcel makes the long voyage back to the cottage on foot and lands himself in trouble. One day Marcel's father discovers a shortcut to the cottage, but it requires trespassing. Despite their trepidations, Marcel and his family begin using the secret trail to reach their cottage.

Close to Eden

A farmer and his wife live in a rural part of Inner Mongolia with their three children. Chinese population control policies prevent them from having any more. The farmer sets out for the nearest town to obtain birth control. He comes upon a Russian truck driver who has ended up in a lake. The farmer takes the man back to his farm, and after initially being appalled, the Russian becomes enchanted with the peaceful life of the countryside and decides to stay. But his presence presages big changes for the peasants.

Call Me Elisabeth

A 10-year-old girl lives in post WWII rural France with her parents, who are about to divorce. Her older sister leaves home to finish school, and the young girl is left with a mysterious, almost silent housekeeper. Being afraid of the dark, and of other "phenomenoms" including a haunted château nearby, she curiously accepts a stranger she finds in her mansion's barn. This fact contradicts her fearful nature, but fulfills her loneliness. The stranger has run away from a nearby psychiatric clinic, where her father was treating the stranger. She hides the stranger, protects him, and he becomes her best friend. Is this girl searching for true companionship, coming of age, or is she asserting her independence for the first time in her short life?

Jacquot

Jacquot Demy is a little boy at the end of the thirties. His father owns a garage and his mother is a hairdresser. The whole family lives happily and likes to sing and to go to the movies. Jacquot is fascinated by every kind of show (theatre, cinema, puppets). He buys a camera to shoot his first amateur film... An evocation of French cineast Jacques Demy's childhood and vocation for the cinema and the musicals.

Je suis vivante et je vous aime

During World War II, a woman aboard a railroad car full of deportees slips French railway worker Julien a note with an address and a simple message: "I am alive, and I love you," and he decides to track down the intended recipients. When he finds the woman's Jewish family, he is inspired to do what he can to protect them from the Nazi atrocities.

The Devil's Arithmetic

An American-born Jewish adolescent, Hannah Stern, is uninterested in the culture, faith and customs of her relatives. However, she begins to revaluate her heritage when she has a supernatural experience that transports her back to a Nazi death camp in 1941. There she meets a young girl named Rivkah, a fellow captive in the camp. As Rivkah and Hannah struggle to survive in the face of daily atrocities, they form an unbreakable bond.

The 11th Commandment

A murderous psycho breaks out of a mental hospital and goes after his rich uncle who killed his father and raped his mother.

Escapee

While on a class observation trip at a local mental hospital, young psychology major Abby Jones, has a chilling encounter with high-risk patient, Harmon Porter. She returns home for an evening of normal study with her two roommates unaware of the darkness she’s awakened within him.

The Escapees

Marie and Michelle are escaping from a lunatic asylum. Michelle is a tough girl who knows how to survive on the road, but the extremely shy Marie desperately clings to her.

Le Canal des secrets

Marseillette in the Aude: stuck in a lock, a woman's corpse. Following the first findings against her husband, who's a judge, a Parisian police commissioner is mandated to investigate. She will have to work with a gendarme from the region.

The Guardians

In this ensemble drama set in rural France, the women of the Paridier farm are left to run it by themselves while their men are off fighting in World War I. But things become complicated with the arrival of American troops.

A Butterfly Kiss

Billie and Louis have the good fortune of loving each other passionately and of having a family. But then one day terrible news turns their existence and that of their friends' upside down. Marie, a famous actress who is Billie's friend and confidant, redoubles her determination to give life, while Alice, her nurse, fighting for freedom, maintains that life 'is here and now and in the moment.' A film about love, hope, and the conviction that the force of life, despite the toughest tests, will always gain the upper hand.

Low Tide

A 12-year-old boy and his single mother live separate lives. The boy spends his days alone while his mother works and goes out with her friends. The boy’s solitude is both a source of freedom and a cause for grief. His explorations slowly bring to light the dark contrast between the rules of society and the laws of nature. And before long, the delicate balance of his inner world becomes shattered by unforeseen events.

Free Men

In Paris during WWII, an Algerian immigrant is inspired to join the resistance by his unexpected friendship with a Jewish man. Based on not very known facts about the Muslim community in Paris during WWII, when the Paris Mosque and its dynamic leader played a pivotal role in supporting the resistance and rescuing Jews.

Giorgino

October 1918: After returning to the civil life, the young Doctor Giorgino Volli searches for a group of children, which he had been the care-taker of before the first world war began. However, soon the searching becomes a part of hide-and-seek with death. Giorgino finds a village bordered with a treacherous marsh and rumours of wolves. There he also meets the mysterious Catherine....

A Bag of Marbles

Set in Paris 1941, two Jewish boys cling to their lives by doing all sorts of odd jobs, stealing and black-marketeering.

An Intimate History of Occupation

June 14, 1940. The German Army marches into Paris. France is an occupied country. Through exclusive amateur footage, personal stories, and popular songs from the time, this fi lm recounts life with the enemy during the occupation, as seen by the French... and the Germans! Despite the Nazis and the troubled war times, day-to-day life in occupied France went on. People learnt to live with the rationing, the cues, the curfew... Many try to forget the hard times, mainly thanks to the movies in which big stars provide a little dream and lead a privileged life. These stars don't actually collaborate, butadapt and give the impression of normal life during the war. After all, is it necessarily shameful to shake the hand of an enemy?

Delphine Seyrig, portrait d'une comète

Delphine Seyrig, an extraordinary woman and actress, died on October 15, 1990. From "Last Year at Marienbad" by Alain Resnais to "India Song" by Marguerite Duras, she played in 34 films for cinema, 13 films for television and 33 plays. Jacqueline Veuve, filmmaker and friend of Delphine Seyrig, wanted to break the silence that has fallen on her memory by making a documentary that traces with emotion and subjectivity the life of the mythical actress, the fierce feminist but also the simple friend.

Surviving with Wolves

In 1942, the young Jewish girl Misha, her Russian mother Gerusha and her German father Reuven hide from the Germans in a small house in Ardennes, Belgium. Misha is very connected to her mother that advises her that if one day a person comes to her saying "love of my life", she would follow him or her without any question. When her parents are captured by the Nazis, Misha is delivered to a German family and the abusive matriarch gives a bad treatment to the girl. However, she finds support in the family of Ernest and his deranged wife Marthe that supplies groceries to foster family. Misha loves Ernest's dogs and the old man gives a compass to her and tells that her parents have been sent to East to forced labor. When the old couple is denounced for sheltering the girl and arrested by the Germans, Misha flees through the woods heading east. Along her journey seeking out her parents...

At Five in the Afternoon

Nogreh is a young Afghani woman living with her father and her sister-in-law, Leylomah, whose husband, Akhtar, is missing. Beyond the issue of Akhtar, Leylomah is most concerned with how to feed her baby. She cannot provide milk for her baby as her own hunger is preventing her from lactating. Nogreh, however, aspires toward a life in a western styled democracy. Although the Taliban are no longer in power in Afghanistan, traditional forces are still active in the country. Nogreh often displays signs of rebellion, such as wearing a pair of white pumps instead of the traditional slipper beneath her burqa. But mostly, Nogreh wants to be educated. Without her father's knowledge, Nogreh is attending a secular girls school. Ultimately, she wants to become President of Afghanistan. With the help of a Pakistani refugee who likes her as a woman, Nogreh tries to understand exactly what forces led to current world leaders being elected, those forces which she wants to emulate.

Freedom

A Gypsy family travels the French roads during the Second World War, followed by Little Claude, a young boy seeking a new family after his parents "left and never returned". Upon reaching a town where they traditionally stop for a few months and work in vineyards, they learn that a new law forbids them from being nomadic. Theodore, the town's mayor, and Miss Lundi, the schoolteacher, protect and help the Gypsies. Despite this, They are arrested and placed in an internment camp. Theodore manages to rescue them and gives them a piece of property where they must settle. But the Gypsies' deeply ingrained thirst for freedom makes this sedentary lifestyle difficult to bear. After Theodore and Miss Lundi are arrested for resistance, the Gypsies decide they must get back on the move in order to remain free.

Bye Bye Blues

Story about a WWII wife & mother who joins a local dance band to provide for family while husband at war. Romantic involvement with one of the band members make her decisions difficult when husband returns from war. Story watches the progression of the band as it grows into a popular, successful recording and touring group. Excellent music and soundtrack.

A Simple Heart

Unable to forget her first love, Félicité, a simple and kind maid, devotes herself completely to her new master, Mathilde Aubain. As the passing of time doesn't heal her wounds, she gives love to all those who surround her: Mathilde's children, her nephew Victor. But fate seems to always deny her from any love in return. Still she tries to find someone who'll accept her unconditional love.

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