Best movies like Despair

The life of a married Munich technical draftsman with a son.

Attorney Henry Strauss grew up in Germany, but left the country with his Jewish family during the rise of the Third Reich. Still wondering about what happened to his boyhood friend Konradin Von Lohenburg, Strauss travels back to Germany for the first time since he was a young man, bringing up some painful memories.

This intricate historical drama tells the story of actor Ferdinand Marian (Tobias Moretti), who is ordered by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to star in the 1940 anti-Semitic film Jew Suss. Despite his cooperation, Ferdinand's actions have unexpected costs. Ferdinand's Jewish wife, Anna (Martina Gedeck), is sent to a concentration camp, and as World War II intensifies, he rebels against the Nazis, leading to the destruction of his career.

Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”

The American architect Kracklite arrives in Italy, supervising an exhibiton for a French architect, Boullée, famous for his oval structures. Tirelessly dedicated to the project, Kracklite's marriage quickly dissolves along with his health.

Richard and Priscilla Parker are an ordinary suburban couple whose lives are invaded and rocked by their hedonistic, secretive new neighbors, Eddy and Kay Otis.

Trevor, an insomniac lathe operator, experiences unusual occurrences at work and home. A strange man follows him everywhere, but no one else seems to notice him.

Repulsed by the hypocrisy of adults and the irresponsibility of society, a boy refuses to grow older after his third birthday.

During World War II, three German soldiers are withdrawn from combat when one of them, Stroszek, is wounded. They are assigned to a small coastal community on the Greek island of Kos while Stroszek recuperates. The men become increasingly stir crazy in their uneventful new assignment. Stroszek eventually goes mad.

Looking to escape her unhappy marriage, villainous femme fatale Bridget Gregory convinces her husband, Clay, to sell cocaine, then steals the profits and runs out on him. She stops in a small town en route to Chicago, where she ensnares her next conquest, insurance man Mike Swale. After getting a job at his insurance company, Bridget convinces Mike to run a scam -- but things take a deadly turn when she recruits him to help get rid of her husband.

A disfigured concentration-camp survivor, unrecognizable after facial reconstruction surgery, searches ravaged postwar Berlin for the husband who might have betrayed her to the Nazis.

Germany 1939. Hans and Lene marry the day before the war breaks out, and Hans is sent to the Eastern front. During a bombing raid their daughter Anna is born. The house is destroyed and Lene and Anna moves in with relatives in Berlin. Hans survives the war but he is not the same person as in 1939, and he and Lene find it difficult to live together again.

Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.

In 1930s Berlin, Dr. Jakob Fabian, who works by day in advertising for a cigarette company and by night wanders the streets of the city, falls in love with an actress. As her career begins to blossom, prospects for his future begin to wane.

A man's story parallels Hitler's rise. Austrian Klaus Schneider, wounded in World War I, recovers in the care of Dr. Emil Bettleheim. Bettleheim discovers that Schneider possesses powers of empathy and of clairvoyance, such that could aid suicidal patients. After the war, with one friend as his manager and another as his lover, Schneider changes his name to Eric Jan Hanussen and goes to Berlin, as a hypnotist and clairvoyant performing in halls and theaters. He always speaks the truth, which brings him to the attention of powerful Nazis. He predicts their rise (good propaganda for them) and their violence (not so good). He's in pain and at risk. What is Hanussen's future?

A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.

Catherine meets Nick by accident and, after a whirlwind romance, the two get married and Catherine moves into Nick's apartment only that's the start of problems when an unseen intruder begins playing strange mind games with Catherine in an apparent attempt to drive her insane.

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

An African-American prison psychiatrist finds the boundaries of his professionalism sorely tested when he must counsel a disturbed inmate with bigoted Nazi tendencies.

Hugo Barrett is a servant in the Chelsea home of indolent aristocrat Tony. All seems to go well until the playboy’s girlfriend Susan takes a dislike to the efficient employee. Then Barrett persuades Tony to hire his sister Vera as a live-in maid, and matters take another turn for the worse…

On a winter morning, a mother goes to waken her son Heinrich; his bed is empty. She leaves her flat to find him. The neighbors' door, with a Star of David painted on it, is ajar, the furnishings in disarray, the family gone. She asks passersby, runs to the police then on to the rail yard. Flashbacks show that Heinrich and the neighbors' son Paul are six years old and best friends. Paul's family's deportation is expected soon; Heinrich's mother tells her son that they're going to Toyland. Heinrich wants to go with them, has a bag packed, and listens for their departure. His mother realizes he's joined them, and her resolve becomes more urgent. Will she arrive in time to save Heinrich?

The story of a German singer named Willie who while working in Switzerland falls in love with a Jewish composer named Robert whose family is helping people to flee from the Nazis. Robert’s family is skeptical of Willie, thinking she could be a Nazi as she becomes famous for singing the song “Lili Marleen”.

Hitler no longer believes in himself, and can barely see himself as an equal to even his sheep dog. But to seize the helm of the war he would have to create one of his famous fiery speeches to mobilize the masses. Goebbels therefore brings a Jewish acting teacher Grünbaum and his family from the camps in order to train the leader in rhetoric. Grünbaum is torn, but starts Hitler in his therapy ...

Wed just as war breaks out, Jeanne hardly gets to know her military husband, Louis, before the debacle of 1940. While waiting for his return from a POW camp, Jeanne journeys through countless affairs with Louis' comrades- in-arms. Hoping to forget these wartime betrayls, Louis takes his wife and the infant twins he didn't father to Berlin, where she falls for Matthais, a sensitive German industrialist. When the Indochinese war sends Louis to Vietnam, Matthais follows Jeanne back to France. A subsequent move to Damascus where Louis is posted as military attache, fails to break their bond.

The lackluster and plodding Bolweiser has the (mis)fortune to be married to the town’s siren; his trusting nature leads him into serious trouble when she beds nearly every available guy.

A married woman has a fling with her husband’s charming, but sociopathic young patient, but when she returns to her husband she finds herself being stalked by her former lover.

When 17-year-old Effi Briest marries the elderly Baron von Instetten, she moves to a small, isolated Baltic town and a house that she fears is haunted. Starved for companionship, Effi begins a friendship with Major Crampas, a charismatic womanizer.

After having her second child, a German housewife suffers from post-partum depression before inexplicably falling into a continually misdiagnosed mental state, befuddling her relatives.

When medical student Marty places an ad for a roommate, her ad is answered by handsome, clean-cut Alec. At first Alec seems to be a wonderful roommate; supportive, considerate and a real friend. However, Alec's affection turns to obsession as he plots to manipulate and control all aspects of Marty's life, imprison her in her own apartment and make her his

The story of the young man Peter, who grew up during the economic miracle, bereft of parental care and love. Learning early on that interpersonal relationships are based on the principles of exchange or purchase, he abides by these rules and gives generous presents to his family and his wife Erika. But when he is unable to keep up this life-style, his story takes a horrendous turn ...

In this action comedy the French boxer Jo Cavalier is charmed on the train to Berlin for the Olympics in Hitler's Germany by the little boy Simon Rosenblum who asks his autograph; when it turns out his adorable young fan is a Jewish orphan in danger of persecution, he risks his one shot at Olympic glory to save Simon and his family, helped only by a German officer-gentleman who became his friend in World War I, by an adventurous escape to Switzerland, Nazi troops on their heals and braving impossible odds in roller coaster-style.

A real time recreation of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which leading SS and Nazi Party officals gathered to discuss the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Led by SS-General Reinhard Heydrich, the Wannsee Conference was the starting point for the Jewish Holcaust which led to the mass murder of six million people.

Ulrich Mühe plays a German businessman who was born completely without scruples. This makes him an eminently suitable candidate for success in the chaotic years after World War I. The shameless man's story is contrasted with that of his polar opposite, a Jewish anarchist.

Berlin 36 is a 2009 German film telling the fate of Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann in the 1936 Summer Olympics. She was replaced by the Nazi regime by an athlete later discovered to be a man. The film is based on a true story and was released in Germany on September 10, 2009. Reporters at Der Spiegel challenged the historical basis for many of the events in the film, pointing to arrest records and medical examinations indicating German authorities did not learn Dora Ratjen was male until 1938.

The mass murder of Jewish people by the Nazi regime is chronicled, with a warning that anti-Semitism is on the rise and the events of the Holocaust could happen again. The history of European Jewish culture and events before and during the Holocaust are seen in newsreels, photographs, and animated segments. The words of the victims of the era are read, and footage from the liberation os a concentration camp is shown.