Best movies like Diary for My Loves

One of the doyennes of Hungarian film deals with a dark period of national history: the Soviet regime in Hungary. She portrays it through the fate of the former prime minister and national hero, Imre Nagy. The script is based on the diary written by Imre Nagy, and the memories of his daughter, Erzsébet Nagy, as well as authentic documents and records.

This story follows a young student, who is orphaned as she grows to adulthood in the shadow of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Coming from the Communist intelligentsia, she sees her friends and family react differently. Her lover, a married factory manager, supports the patriots and later assists fellow workers in staging a strike. Meanwhile her sister and others express anger at being forced from their homes during the revolution and continue to express a hatred for the rebels afterwards. But in the end they realize that for all people, real life is not possible after the revolt and its brutal suppression by the Soviets and their collaborators.

Linda and George live in a small town. He is the school principal. They are about to celebrate their 16th anniversary. She catches him with her daughter's young teacher, and has to deal with the kids, the town and her love to him.

A Communist officer falls hard for a married woman trying to escape from Hungary.

A Hungarian family forced to flee the Communist country for the United States, must leave a young daughter behind. Six years later the family arranges to bring the absent daughter to the United States where she has trouble adjusting. The daughter then decides to travel to Budapest to discover her identity.

A successful farmyard revolution by the resident animals vs. the farmer goes horribly wrong when corrupt pigs hijack it for their personal gain. Based on the socialist George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm”, a critique of Stalinist authoritarianism.

Spanning several decades, this powerful biopic offers a glimpse into the life of famed Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas, an artist who was vilified for his homosexuality in Fidel Castro's Cuba.

Paralleling the dramatic student protests and riots that were exploding across the world in the 1960s at the time the film was made, The Confrontation is a story of protest and rebellion in 1947 Hungary when the Communist Party have just taken power. Jancsó's first colour film is another virtuoso display by a director at the peak of his powers, and eloquently explores the complex issues and inherent problems of revolutionary democracy.

Andras Vayda grows up in a turbulent, war-torn Hungary, where he procures local girls for the occupying G.I.'s during World War II. Disappointed by girls of his age, he meets Maya, a married women in her thirties, who tutors him in the lessons of love and romance. Maya is only the first of many mature women that Andras will meet through his teenage and young adult life.

The career of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo is halted by a witch hunt in the late 1940s when he defies the anti-communist HUAC committee and is blacklisted.

When dictator Joseph Stalin dies, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle to become the next Soviet leader. As they bumble, brawl and back-stab their way to the top, the question remains — just who is running the government?

New York, 1961. Alexander Ivanov, a high-ranked Soviet bureaucrat, reluctantly defects to the West while is part of a diplomatic mission, feeling the grief of being unable to know the fate of his wife Katya, whom he has had to leave behind in Moscow. Only many years later, in 1991, he will finally find out the truth when his niece Lauren travels to Moscow to participate in a painting exhibition.

After having lost her parents, young Juli returns from the Soviet Union to her native Budapest. Scarred by the wounds of the past, the ghost of Stalin’s oppression haunts her as she reunites with her aunt and adoptive mother Magda.

Budapest, Hungary, Christmas 1957. The state, insecure after the defeated revolution of 1956 and increasingly put under the influence of a renewed Stalinist atmosphere, has decreed that all security officials must pass an exam to verify their loyalty. But to be actually effective in a shadowy world where suspicion and secrets reign, the subjects must be unaware that they are being tested.

'68 covers exactly one year (January 1st through December 31st) in the lives of Zoltan Szabo and his family, Hungarian immigrants, working hard to make a life in San Francisco in 1968. The Szabos tries to adjust to the new country, changing times and each other. The year covered was one of particular cultural change in the US and this interplays with the cultural changes occurring around Zoltan, his wife and his two college-age sons. The younger of his two sons is gay and struggling with coming out. His dad disowns him when he finally does.

Vienna, 1956. After Soviet tanks crush the Hungarian uprising, soldier-of-fortune Michael Reynolds is hired to help a threatened Hungarian scientist escape from Budapest.

During the rising of nazism, Sylvia, a rich but sterile woman, needs an heir to inherit her father's money. So she bribes Irene, a Jewish girl, to have a child by her husband.

A dramatic history of Puyi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

Documentary by lifelong friend that supports the innocence of Alger Hiss (convicted in January 1950 on two counts of espionage-related perjury)

1958. In the cell of the condemned, seven men await the signs of an approaching execution. All of them recall their pasts and envision their wish-dreams.

On his return from America, András simply cannot find his place: he has lost his wife, friends and job, and he cannot even find his way back to his former great love. Eventually, as a surrogate father, he takes in a wild young girl (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi) and a particularly strong bond is formed between these two rootless people. Márta Mészáros’s remarkable movie starring Jan Nowicki and Anna Karina is about displacement, loneliness and attachment.

Having been imprisoned for his part in the Watergate scandal, Charles Colson undergoes a religious conversion.

Fly-on-the-wall treatment of an ordinary day in the life of a prisoner in Stalin's Gulag. Closely adapted from Solzhenitsyn's classic novel based on his own experiences. Shot entirely on location in northern Norway

When Jamie's maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated - Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.

Documentary about a group of Americans who go to Nicaragua to learn about the conflict between the Contras and the Sandinistas.

Political and sexual repression in Hungary, just after the revolution of 1956. In 1958, the body of Eva Szalanczky, a political journalist, is discovered near the border. Her friend Livia is in hospital with a broken neck; Livia's husband, Donci, is under arrest. In a flashback to the year before, we see what leads up to the tragedy. Eva gets a job as a writer. She meets Livia and is attracted to her. Livia feels much the same, but as a married woman, has doubts and hesitations. In their work, they (and Eva in particular) bang up against the limits of telling political truths; in private, they confront the limits of living out sexual and emotional truth.

The autobiography of a Somalian nomad who was sold in marriage at 13, fled from Africa a while later to become finally an American supermodel and is now at the age of 38, the UN spokeswoman against female genital mutilation.

The story of 10-year-old boy and his family against the backdrop of the bloody events of 1956, in Budapest. Children do not yet understand what is going on, but they're happy because the schools are closed. But gradually, to adults and children comes the understanding that something terrible is happening. Disappearing relatives, friends, and even killed some. Tips sent an army to put down the counterrevolutionary rebellion.

Children of Glory will commemorate Hungary's heroic Revolution of 1956, and takes place in Budapest and at the Melbourne Olympic Games in October and November of that year. While Soviet tanks were destroying Hungary, the Hungarian water polo team was winning over the Soviets in the Olympic pool in Melbourne, in what has been described as the bloodiest water polo match in history.

The changing and turbulent history of Hungary is seen through the eyes of three men over a 30-year period in this somber drama. The three recall the highlights of their lives in flashbacks as they reminisce in the mid 1960s. The venerable trio begin their story in the 1930s, through World War II, and the decade beyond the communist invasion of 1956.

The film, taking place in 1950, presents the story of Father Leopold and the monks of his order struggling to once again revive Christianity in a country trying to scrape itself together after the war. Initially, the communist powers do not hinder their work, and the Church was even able to regain possession of holy objects hidden during the war. This "peaceful" state does not last long. Father Leopold is arrested on trumped up charges, and in order to break him, he is subjected to cruel torture. His former student, Lieutenant Keller, who turned his back on religion and now believes in the socialist system, is appointed - upon the command of Major Fyodorov - to extract a confession of guilt. But the Father's perseverance and resistance changes everything.

Archival footage combined with new footage re-creates the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. It is also a love story between a devout communist woman and the liberal son of a prominent professor. Because of their political differences, the two can never be together.

Juli works in a factory while pursuing a course in agrarian science. Her manager falls in love with her and an affair develops. She wants a sincere relationship, but still hides the fact that she has a child born out of wedlock. When her secret is revealed, he is not prepared to acknowledge her son.

Some of the most symbolic moments of the 1956 Revolution in Hungary were the tooth-and-nail battles fought by the so-called 'Pest Lads' who dared to defy odds by taking on the panzers of one of the world's superpowers. The story begins on October 23rd, 1956 and ends on November 4th of the same year. Juli is Totya's girlfriend but also loves Gábor. Their love triangle will have to endure the trials and tribulations of these stirring times. A group of boys living in the outskirts of the capital are playing football in abandoned lot when Juli, a ticket inspector, brings news of protests breaking out in the city. Only Gábor accompanies her into town and together they become part of this historical event. At dawn, when the boys too come under fire from Soviet forces, they decide to join in the fight.

Set in a mining town, it records the development of two shy people falling in love but finding it difficult to express their true feelings. Tamas a young coal miner has an eye for the girls but is too bashful to ask for a date. Juli is a teacher in charge of a kindergarten. She too has yearnings for love but fears showing the feelings bubbling within her. The quiet and tender moments the lovers spend together are contrasted with the overpowering gigantic and noisy coal mine with its dirty metal trucks and endless rubber conveyor belts. There is an atmosphere of impending danger within the mine.