Best movies like Hawaii

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Hawaii Starring Dragos Bucur, Andi Vasluianu, Rodica Lazăr, Cristina Flutur, and more. If you liked Hawaii then you may also like: Kumu Hina, Closer to the Moon, Half a Sixpence, Two Lottery Tickets, Silk 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.

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Hawaii is a story on the struggle of inheriting $3 million in communist-era Romania when owning $1 could mean losing your freedom and touches on the theme of how money could buy if not happiness, at least the freedom to choose unhappiness.

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Kumu Hina

A transgender Native Hawaiian teacher inspires a young girl to fulfill her destiny of leading the school's male hula troupe, even as she struggles to find love and a committed relationship in her own life.

Closer to the Moon

A Romanian police officer teams up with a small crew of bank robbers to pull off a heist by convincing everyone at the scene of the crime that they are only filming a movie.

Half a Sixpence

"If I had the money, I'd buy me a banjo!" says struggling sales clerk Arthur Kipps. Soon he'll inherit enough to buy a whole bloomin' orchestra. But can his newfound wealth buy happiness?

Two Lottery Tickets

3 men from a provincial town who are in an urgent need for money so they decide to buy a lottery ticket. They win the lottery, but very soon, the ticket gets stolen.

Silk

Silk, the toughest cop in Honolulu, busts small time smugglers only to reveal a larger syndicate smuggling Asian mobsters into the States by buying the identities of Hawaiian citizens.

The Midas Touch

Drama about a 12-year-old boy who fantasises about having enough money to be able to cure his grandmother's serious heart condition. When he finds himself in a haunted house, the mysterious owner 'grants' him one wish - the Midas touch. The boy soon learns that it is more of a curse than a blessing when everything he touches turns into gold.

Freedom Song

Freedom Song (2000) is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan. In the midst of the Freedom Summer, a group of high school students in the small town are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community. The young activists meet resistance not only from white southerners, but from their parents, who have experienced firsthand the violence that can result from speaking out.[1] As high school students band together with the support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they make strides in registering African-American voters and gaining awareness for their cause.

The Orange Man

In 1987 a disillusioned door to door orange salesman horrifically murders his first victim. Move forward 27 years and a land developer is buying an orange grove. He and his 3 friends plan a fishing trip to get his head around the pending transaction, unbeknownst to them, his estranged wife and her new boyfriend have also chosen the very same location for a break. The usual strange noises and unnerving situations ensue when they congregate at a secluded cabin, as The Orange Man eliminates them 1 by 1 with the aid of his prosthetic hook and a bag of oranges!

Outbound

Matilda takes a one-day release from jail to attend her mother’s funeral, with no intention of returning. The clock is ticking as Matilda tries one last time to get help from her family and is forced to confront her troubled past.

The Death Triangle

The Romanian army faces the German army in the epic battles of Marasti, Marasesti and Oituz, marking a turning point in World War 1.

The Ship That Died of Shame

After World War II the crew of a motor gunboat join together to buy their old vessel and go into business for themselves. This may sound like a laudable scheme, but the business they choose to go into is smuggling.

Aglaya

This film is about the relationship of a mother and her daughter, the split-up of their family, the blessing and curse of belonging together and about coming of age - all this from the perspective of the young girl Aglaja. The story is based on real-life events, an Eastern European circus artist family that fled to the West. If they want to stay in the circus business they have to make up an exotic act. The mother spends all their money to buy a very dangerous act: hanging by her hair high up in the dome of the circus while juggling with burning torches. Every night Aglaja is terrified by the fear of losing her mother. But, on some day, she has to follow the family tradition and become the "Woman with the Hair of Steel".

Weddings, christenings and funerals

Cosmin plays a tennis game with 3 friends. He looks at the clock and starts panicking: he is late to the Registry Office, to a wedding- his wedding, with his ex-wife, who he had divorced without his friends knowing. Everything starts in 2007 when the real-estate bubble reaches its peak. Cosmin gifts Reli a land on the edge of a lake, for their wedding anniversary. He plans to build 7 villas, sell them and win 1 million Euros.

The Secret of Happiness

For two friends there is only one secret to happiness, that is easy to understand, but, perhaps, difficult to accept.

Everything is Wonderful

Set in New York, the film tells the story of the friendship between two European immigrants; Maria and Lena during one intense week, as they struggle to find happiness and test the limits of their freedom.

Sweet Idleness

This movie depicts the two years that young Stendhal spent in Italy. Stendhal, that time still known simply as Henri Beyle, is living the life of a wanderer, looking for a direction in his life, meeting famous Rossini and falling in love with young widow Giuseppina. A story of love, betrayal and an analysis of women and men's minds and souls.

Happy Funerals

Three heavy boozers - a Romanian, a Russian and a Bulgarian - are tripling away their... happiness, into vodka, at "The Happy Immigrant", a joint kept by a Turk. The fauna of this venue is made up out of the Babel Tower's survivors: immigrants who had chosen Romania, as a country where everything is possible. The predictions included... A police raid chases away the pub's barflies. The three professional boozers stop from running just in front of a fortune teller expert in a niche field: death prediction. The rest is entertainment! Although we are all indebted to one death, some refuse to pay this debt. They don't want to die when it was written for them. Or just predicted...

The Chosen One

A former political police agent that has left communist Romania decades ago in search of freedom has to go back to find it.

Păcală

Pacala is an important hero in Romanian popular tradition. He is always making fun of everything wrong with the human behaviour such as stupidity, greed or vanity. His attitude and actions always bring damages to the mean, evil and materialistic people. So beside the jokes, the movie has this philosophical layer, undoubtedly because Pacala's independent way of being, free spirit and his love for the nature creates a way of seeing life, bringing joy. Filmed in a very beautiful part of Romania in 1974, the movie had an important success at that time and it is considered one of the most loved movies in Romania ever. Like the hero, found in many stories and jokes, the movie forwards the spirit of true freedom and pure link with the nature, forgetting about times and governments.

Why Me?

Cristian, a young idealistic prosecutor whose career is on the rise, tries to crack a case against a senior colleague accused of corruption. The dilemma of choosing between his career and the truth weighs heavily on his shoulders. Looking further to solve the case, he enters a danger zone paved with unexpected and painful revelations.

The Ladder

Based on true events, The Ladder follows the spiritual journey of Andrei, a sensitive, socially awkward young man who turns to acting in his search for true happiness. After the fall of communism, he is blinded by the illusion of freedom and democracy and faces a series of brutal events that have deeply marked Romania's recent history. Finding comfort in playing the part of Aliosa in a stage adaptation of The Karamazov Brothers, he becomes closer and closer to his character, gradually discovering the way to understanding divinity.

Love 1. Dog

A solitary mountain man finds a young woman who has been beaten and abandoned in the woods. He makes her the object of his passion, but her dark past catches up on them.

So, What Is Freedom?

Inspired by historical facts, this film is a story of love and survival against the background of the 1951 Communist ordered deportation of 40,000 landowners and people of non-Romanian origins to the Baragan Plain, the "Romanian Siberia".

Crossing Dates

3 separate stories take place over two days. The characters' paths intersect, and they affect each-other unintentionally.

Beyond America

Under an Eastern European totalitarian regime, a prominent dissident writer survives repression by resuming a submissive sexual relationship with her former lover. After their split-up years ago, he had joined the Secret Police in order just to take her back and provide the protection she needed. Struggling to preserve her humanity, she falls in love with a young platonic dreamer, a kind of rebel without cause, whom she initiate in literature and reinvents as a character capable to meet her own desires of freedom. BEYOND AMERICA is a love story and an action drama altogether, with archetypes of an aggressive, totalitarian society.

The Football Monologues

The Football Monologues tells the stories of seven different people living in and around the beautiful game. Each of our subjects talks intimately, unveiling their innermost hopes and fears. One by one they touch on themes central to us all: the fragility of our mental selves, the failings of our bodies, the complexities of our relationships and ambitions and our need to connect.

Felix and Otilia

In this monumental Romanian film, a large family and its many generations vie for advantage, seeking to win the inheritance sure to be left behind by a wealthy older man of the clan. This movie is based on a popular novel by George Calinescu, and is similar in some ways to England's BBC television series, The Forsythe Saga, based on Galsworthy's books. Along the way, stories of friendship, love and rivalry emerge. In one story, a poor young man is disappointed in love as his girl chooses lucre over love in selecting a mate.

The Thistles of The Bărăgan

Rumania's entry in the 1958 Cannes Film Festival was the excessively melodramatic Ciulinii Bărăganului. The title translates as Fools of Bărăgan, in reference to a band of beleaguered feudal Rumanian peasants. But these are no fools: instead, they are fearless freedom fighters, organizing a brave (though foredoomed) revolt against the tyranny of the landowners. The parallels drawn between the people of Bărăgan and Russia's revolutionary leaders are all but impossible to miss. It would have been nice, however, if the story had not been told in such a heavy-handed, spell-it-all-out fashion.

Dirty Computer

The story of a young woman named Jane 57821, who is living in a totalitarian near-future society where citizens are referred to as 'computers.' 'Dirty Computer' explores humanity and what truly happens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness when mind and machines merge, and when the government chooses fear over freedom.

Where the Trail Divides

Col. Landers adopts two children, "How," an Indian boy, and Bess, whose parents were killed in an Indian uprising. When the children are grown, How proposes to Bess, whom he has loved since his childhood. She accepts his proposal, thus angering Clayton Craig, Lander's nephew who also wants to marry her. After Lander's death, How is exiled from the ranch, so he and Bess buy new land. One day, after he has been away, How returns to his cabin to see Bess and Craig embracing. How grants Bess her freedom after which she marries Craig and moves to New York. Some time later, How discovers oil on the land that he gave Bess, so he follows them to New York. There he finds that Craig has been unfaithful to Bess. In the end, Bess rejects Craig so that she and How can remarry and find "a trail to happiness together." -From TCM.com Database, powered by the AFI.

1, 2, 3, Whiteout

In a future present, a rebellious Veronique finds herself working for an inventor who has dedicated himself to the cause of a positive darkness; he is working to counter the tide of a bright, diffuse, and technologically oriented time as represented in the film by man-made light. Veronique's brother Alix works for an agency that is attempting to thwart the process.

The Music Island

A film about freedom of individuals and how this changes according to the environment they are living in. The impact of society on peoples lives, it's about corruption, power of money, drugs and karma.

The Happiness Playbook

Journalist Amy goes undercover at a happiness retreat run by the handsome Paul. Sparks fly between the two, but when Amy learns Paul is secretly the son of a wealthy investor, she must choose between a career-making story or her growing feelings for Paul.

Temple Wood: A Quest for Freedom

A wacky queer themed black comedy and loving homage to 80s cult horror that tells the story of Martin, a young student whose professor goes missing while investigating ancient practices set around an ancient burial ground in the Scottish highlands. Martin packs up his things, finds a small room for rent, and takes up his professor’s investigation of Temple Wood. However, he soon finds that his professor’s disappearance may be related to ancient druid practices and some very dark happenings within these highlands. As Martin explores, he finds that he finds himself digging deep into his own emotions and if he is ever allowed to leave these highlands – he will never be the same again.

3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1 Ghost

A ghost from the 1920s refuses to leave the home just listed by Anna, a new real estate agent. Worse, the spirit is convinced she cannot "pass over" until she gets Anna back together with her ex.

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