Best movies like Drifting Clouds

Yann, a cook, and Nadia, a waitress and mother of 9-year-old child, decide to risk everything on the purchase of a restaurant. With plenty of talent, energy, love and dreams, but no finance of their own, they find themselves forced into a jungle of financing and bank loans that quickly overwhelms them. To bail them out, Nadia has to take a job in Canada, while Yann is forced to stay behind to save the restaurant. Together, he and the child confront a relentless avalanche of creditors, an uncaring system and the daily grind from which there is no respite… Yann finally understands that his only chance of salvation lies in joining his lover – as well as reuniting mother and child – by following Nadia to Canada and a better life.

In a working-class quarter of Dublin, 'Bimbo' Reeves gets laid off from his job and, with his redundancy payout, buys a van and sells fish and chips with his buddy, Larry. Due to Ireland's surprising success at the 1990 FIFA World Cup, their business starts off well, but the relationship between the two friends soon becomes strained as Bimbo behaves more like a typical boss.

Jenna is a pregnant, unhappily married waitress in the deep south. She meets a newcomer to her town and falls into an unlikely relationship as a last attempt at happiness.

A down-and-out restaurateur and his neighbor hatch a plan to lure luminaries to their small Newfoundland town.

Young, impulsive Rosetta lives a hard and stressful life as she struggles to support herself and her alcoholic mother. Refusing all charity, she is desperate to maintain a dignified job.

On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her, and meets Masako, a formal and ethereal middle-aged woman whose luggage has gone missing. The three women work in the diner, interact, and serve customers. A somewhat brusque man teaches Sachie to make delicious coffee, then he returns under other circumstances. Three neighborhood women inspect the empty diner every day; will anything bring them inside? We learn why Sachie serves rice balls; but why Finland?

Marithé works in a training center for adults. Her mission: to help other people to change direction in their work and to find their vocation. Carole, who lives and works in the shadow cast by her husband, Sam, an energetic and talented Michelin-starred chef, arrives in the center one day. It's not so much a change in job that Carole seems to need, as a change in husband. Marithé does everything she can to help Carole set out down a new path. But what are the real motives behind this devotion? After all, Marithé doesn't seem to be impervious to Sam's charms, or to his cooking.

After escaping from prison, Joe and Terry go on a crime spree, robbing banks through Oregon and California in order to finance their scheme for a new life south of the border. Unfortunately, things get more complicated when they meet Kate, who runs into them with her car. She joins the bandits on their cross-country spree, and eventually she steals something, too: their hearts.

A small boy squashing an insect sets in motion a series of events, large and small, that include a lost restaurant reservation, a drunken fender-bender, disruption of basic cable television service, and more than one relationship falling apart. One person's disaster becomes another's boon, and vice versa--because a man loses his job, a young girl becomes the lead ballerina in the school play, which in turn causes the death of a pet pig. These characters weave around Los Angeles and each other as seemingly mundane events fall into place, putting them on a collision course with a common fate and one heroic act of competence.

Bobby Walker lives the proverbial American dream: great job, beautiful family, shiny Porsche in the garage. When corporate downsizing leaves him and two co-workers jobless, the three men are forced to re-define their lives as men, husbands and fathers.

An upper middle-class French family celebrates a birthday in a restaurant. In one evening and during one meal, family history, tensions, collective and separate grudges, delights, and memories both clash and coalesce.

John Gage offers a down-on-his-luck yuppie husband $1 million for the opportunity to spend the night with the man's wife.

Tommy Wilhelm (Robin Williams) is a salesman. An honest, hard-working guy who has lost his job, his girlfriend, and left part of his sanity behind as he heads to New York to pick up the pieces of his life. He's always been able to sell, but caught in a downward spiral, he must, in addition, face the father who never really understood him, while trying to balance his newly precarious existence.

An evening at an Italian restaurant. Hosted by tolerant and relaxed Flora, various parties of middle-class people come in -- large and small, young and old, regulars and tourists, married and single -- to dine, converse, argue, celebrate, make confessions; to overhear other people's discussions, to interrupt them, to sing, listen to music, and enjoy life. The camera, just like the people, moves constantly from table to table, into the kitchen and the back room to observe the staff's petty jealousies and frustrations -- until two hours later it's time for everybody to go home.

An American dream in Finland - a brand new car and a monthly income of 150,000 Euros. The worst recession period of Finnish history is over but unemployment is decreasing slowly. The spectacular financial growth gained by the Finnish Nokia doesn't reach everyone. Viljo and Kaisu Mikkonen together with 30,000 other Finnish small entrepreneurs lost everything they owned during the downswing, and return to working-life is not easy.

When a schoolteacher is sacked, he projects his bad mood at his troubled teenage son. The son, in turn, buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This starts a chain reaction of misery as every victim projects his problems on to another person.

A middle aged carpenter, who requires state welfare after injuring himself, is joined by a single mother in a similar scenario.

A chemist loses his job to outsourcing. Two years later and still jobless, he hits on a solution: to genuinely eliminate his competition.

In the style of a documentary this tragic comedy tells the story of a relationship crisis between two married couples and their longing to break out of their miserable daily lives. In this East German post-wall movie Andreas Dresen introduces the sad everyday life of two couples from Frankfurt an der Oder in a honest and tolerable manner.

Taisto Kasurinen is a Finnish coal miner whose father has just committed suicide and who is framed for a crime he did not commit. In jail, he starts to dream about leaving the country and starting a new life. He escapes from prison but things don't go as planned...

Arriving in Helsinki, a nameless man is beaten within an inch of his life by thugs, miraculously recovering only to find that he has completely lost his memory. Back on the streets, he attempts to begin again from zero, befriending a moody dog and becoming besotted with a Salvation Army volunteer.

A young woman with nothing to look forward to in life discovers that she has been impregnated by a man who wants nothing to do with it.

Two thirtysomethings, unemployed former alcoholic Joe and community health worker Sarah, start a romantic relationship in the one of the toughest Glasgow neighbourhoods.

Pakistani taxi-driver Parvez and prostitute Bettina find themselves trapped in the middle when Islamic fundamentalists decide to clean up their local town.

A convict is released from prison in a small town in New Mexico. 18 years ago he killed a deputy. The then-and-now sheriff seeks revenge.

Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate dies. One evening, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her luck cashier in a local supermarket—and, falteringly, a bond begins to develop between them.

After being thrown away from home, pregnant high school dropout Maria meets Matthew, a highly educated and extremely moody electronics repairman. The two begin an unusual romance built on their sense of mutual admiration and trust.

A sort of "Divorce Finnish Style," Mika Kaurismäki's rambunctious comedy, The House of Branching Love , recounts the breakup of a thirty-something professional couple - Juhani, a family therapist, and his wife, Tuula, a successful business trainer.

Proud, though poor, Bob wants his little girl to have a beautiful (and costly) brand-new dress for her First Communion. His stubbornness and determination get him into trouble as he turns to more and more questionable measures, in his desperation to raise the needed money. This tragic flaw leads him to risk all that he loves and values, his beloved family, indeed even his immortal soul and salvation, in blind pursuit of that goal.

A down-on-his-luck divorced father struggles to get his life and family back together before it's too late.

The Way Out tells a story of a young Romani couple, Zaneta and David, the parents of little Janicka. Their efforts to live a decent and dignified life run up against the "Romani social trap," which is racism, the society's prejudices, exclusion from opportunities to obtain legal work, the lack of necessary qualifications, difficult communication with officials, debts and the miserable life conditions connected with the environment, lifestyle and traditional values of their ethnicity. David wants to protect his family, even at the expense of committing a crime. But Zaneta finds inner strength to defy the unfavorable situation in a different way. Will they overcome the existential problems that start to take apart their relationship? Is it worthwhile for them to continue to Honor their own values and family traditions? And will their "way out" be only another "escape" for them, or a promise to change their lives?

When her parents announce their divorce, Beth begins to uncover the hidden truths behind all of the rest of her families lives. Seeing that so many people struggle with keeping things in order, she seeks to take a more active role in her own life, making important changes for a better future.

A recent college graduate and his friends are forced to lower life expectations when they leave school for the real world. Life after college graduation is not exactly going as planned for Will and Jillian who find themselves lost in a sea of increasingly strange jobs. But with help from their family, friends and coworkers they soon discover that the most important (and hilarious) adventures are the ones that we don't see coming.

After 17 years of marriage in American suburbia, Richard and Barbara Harmon step into the new world of divorce.

France, a factory worker, lives with her three daughters in Dunkirk. The factory where she worked has been closed, leaving France and all of her workmates without a job. She decides to go to Paris to look for work. There she finds a cleaning job at the home of a rich man, Steve, whose world is radically different from her own. As their paths keep crossing, she discovers that her employer played a part in closing the factory in Dunkirk...

Saigon, early 2000s. Photography student Vu has just arrived from Vietnam's backwaters and is immediately attracted to his handsome roommate Thang, who works odd jobs as a bouncer and low-level drug dealer. Entranced by the nocturnal rhythms of Thang's world, Vu follows him around the city where he meets Van, a ballet-cum-exotic dancer and Thang's sometimes-girlfriend.

A restaurateur befriends a Syrian refugee who has recently arrived in Finland.

A manager hires Ray, off the books, to paint all the power towers in a 15-mile stretch of high-tension wires outside Sheffield. Ray's crew of men are friends, especially Ray with Steve, a young Romeo. Into the mix comes Gerry, an Australian with a spirit of adventure and mountain climbing skills. She wants a job, and against the others' advice, who don't want a woman on the job, Ray hires her. Then she and Ray fall in love. He asks her to marry him, gives her a ring. Steve's jealous; Ray's ex-wife complains that he spends on Gerry, not his own kids, and she predicts that Gerry won't stay around. Plus, there's pressure to finish the job fast. Economics, romance, and wanderlust spark the end.

The closing of a local restaurant concerns a number of employees who've dedicated their lives to the eatery

Antero Rousku is a storeman in a paint store. His job requires raw muscle power, mixing paints and carrying house repair materials around to earn his daily bread. But the basic salary is not enough for Rousku. He also sells a lot of stuff on the side from the storeroom directly to Jylhäkorpi, a frequent visitor, bypassing company bookkeeping. Rousku's colleague in the cellar storeroom is Raninen whose life consists of work, quarreling with his wife, and lottery. Raninen wants to win the main prize but he wants to have the right numbers in exactly the order in which they appear from the lottery machine. Raninen is not the sharpest pencil in the pencil box. Rousku's freedom is threatened by his relationship to the saleswoman Karita. Rousku wants to keep a distance to the woman except in bed. Karita has decided otherwise.

A cleaning woman decides to sue the state for illegal discharge.

A head chef balances multiple personal and professional crises at a popular restaurant in London.

In Hamburg, German-Greek chef Zinos unknowingly disturbs the peace in his locals-only restaurant by hiring a more talented chef.

After he's fired from his job -- by his mother, no less -- Bob Funk agrees to quit drinking, see a therapist, and eventually report to a new boss, who might just be the woman of his dreams.

Juha Berg is a 30-year-old hopeless drunk in the Kallio neighborhood of Helsinki. Juha doesn't have the first intention of changing his way of life - just the opposite. He really enjoys sundry sexual relationships, adrenalin-inducing violence and, of course, alcohol for which he gets money even if by collecting bottles. But the hilarity in a drunken haze soon gets a run for its money as the passionate Juha falls in love with his AA group leader. The relationship with Tiina progresses quickly to dating and Juha has to make pivotal decisions. Juha has to begin balancing between maintaining a functional intimate relationship and his old lifestyle. Juha's best friend Kristian does his best to sabotage the relationship, and Juha's shaky decision to stay sober is further hindered by Mikael, an expert on German erotica. But how far can you go before there is only one solution left?

After losing his restaurant, chef CLAY MAGUIRE must start his career all over--at the bottom. Pushing forty with no "corporate skill-set", Clay enters the strange world of the Unemployable Interviewees of America. Clay and his fellow job-seekers strive for dignity, success, or at least a job taking customer service calls from prison inmates for minimum wage. A hilarious, insightful look at job interviews, finding the courage to start all over, and life at the ENTRY LEVEL.

Sixpack is a positive story on the outskirts of society. The story takes place in Helsinki on rock and following the advent of exclusion of the story regarding one of summer days. The film's protagonist, Marshal, is stuck in a shabby home. Lihi and Henninen attract the Marshal out and tired of opposition after the Marshal finds them to spend a hot summer day in the park in the world with amazement. The trio crash -day pass to the young, rutjakkeisiin sense of humor to the police. Day lasts from early morning until the evening the rain to bring sorrow alhoon. Eventually, however, the sun began to rise again it's time to become sensitized and look deep into the eyes of friendship.

At the age of 51 and after 20 months on unemployment, Thierry starts a new job that soon brings him face to face with a moral dilemma. How much is he willing to accept to keep his job?