Best movies like Heat
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Heat Starring Bolotbek Shamshiyev, Nurmukhan Zhanturin, Klara Yusupzhanova, Kumbolot Dosumbayev, and more. If you liked Heat then you may also like: Nostalgia, The Ascent, Despite the Falling Snow, Earth, Farewell 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.
An idealistic high school graduate goes to work on a state farm on the Kazakh steppe, only to clash with its authoritarian leader.
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The Ascent
Two Soviet partisans leave their starving band to get supplies from a nearby farm. The Germans have reached the farm first, so the pair must go on a journey deep into occupied territory, a voyage that will also take them deep into their souls.
Despite the Falling Snow
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.
Harvest of Fire
In a small Amish community, three barns are burnt down almost simultaneously. FBI agent Sally Russwell is sent in to investigate this possible hate crime. What she finds however is a community that little trust for outsiders or "The English" as they call them. However, in her investigations, Agent Russell makes friends with one entrepreneurial widow, Annie Beiler who has her own curiosity about this stranger. Together, Annie introduces Russell in-depth to this close knit community bearing many appealing attributes. However, as Sally's investigations continue, she discovers secrets that reveal uncomfortable truths about the religious community that are linked to the arson attacks.
Sacred Ground
SACRED GROUND tells the fact-based story of a mountain man and his Indian wife who happen upon a partially built cabin and finish it for their own home, not realizing that they occupy a sacred burial ground. A Paiute burial party clashes with the couple and in the ensuing skirmish, the wife is critically wounded while in the middle of childbirth. Bitter over her loss and needing a wetnurse for his baby, he steals one of the Paiute woman who had just lost a baby. In this modern version of Helen of Troy, the battle is on, as he takes on the whole band in a desperate attempt to survive. Written by Dale Roloff
The Steamroller and the Violin
Seven year old Sasha practices violin every day to satisfy the ambition of his parents. Already withdrawn as a result of his routines, Sasha quickly regains confidence when he accidentally meets and befriends worker Sergei, who works on a steamroller in their upscale Moscow neighborhood.
Taxi Blues
Ivan is old Russia: thick, dour, hard-working, often brutish; he misses Communism. He drives a taxi and one night meets Alexi, a new Russian, a musician, an alcoholic, irresponsible. Alexi stiffs Ivan for the fare, so Ivan tracks him down and a love-hate relationship ensues. When Alexi lets the bath water run over in Ivan's flat and Ivan must pay 500 rubles for repairs, he tries to force Alexi into day labor to repay him. It's hopeless. Then, suddenly, Alexi is discovered, goes on a jazz tour of America, becomes a celebrity, and returns in triumph. Ivan longs to renew the friendship, and it looks as if he may get what he wants.
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.
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.
Guerrilla Brigade
Episodic story of the resistance to the German invasion of the Ukraine in 1918 during World War 1, and made as an example of the guerrilla warfare and fierce spirit in which Ukrainian peasants were again resisting Teuton onslaughts in 1939. Highlights a small band of guerrillas and their battles using scythes, shotguns and, often, just clubs against the Kaiser's army in the Ukrainian forests.
Miles from Home
Two brothers who are forced off their farm in the debt stricken mid-west become folk heroes when they begin robbing the banks that have been foreclosing on farmers.
The Humpbacked Horse
Remake of the 1947 Soviet film directed by Ivan Ivanov-Vano and produced by the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow.
The Lonely Voice of Man
Set in the early 1920s after the end of the Russian Civil War, Red Army soldier Nikita returns to his hometown to see his partner Lyuba, both of whom are scarred by the trauma of the Russian Empire of yesteryear.
My Perestroika
Tells the story of five people from the last generation of Soviet children who were brought up behind the Iron Curtain. Just coming of age when the USSR collapsed, they witnessed the world of their childhood crumble and change beyond recognition. Through the lives of these former schoolmates, this intimate film reveals how they have adjusted to their post-Soviet reality in today's Moscow.
I Remember You
A dying woman’s wish sends her son on a train journey from the steppes of Uzbekistan to the Russian hinterland in search of his father’s grave. Just as the traveler’s home city of Samarkand is situated on the border between East and West, Khamraev balances his film on the edge of two cultures, evoking the soul of Russia and the crumbling beauty of what was once the Silk Road.
His Nickname Is Beast
Saveliy Govorkov, an Afghanistan war veteran tries to fight mafia in his own town.
Those People of the Nile
The construction of the Aswan dam as seen by those who took part in it: engineers, workers, Egyptians, and Soviets.
The Red Snowball Tree
A thief named Egor, having served a term in prison, goes to the country to meet his pen-friend Lyuba, a kind genial village woman. Egor comes to love Lyuba sincerely. Now he has friends, work and a beloved woman, he decides to break with his criminal past and start a new life. However, his former criminal associates interfere brutally.
Who Is Guilty?
Blinded by the desire of wealth, mother of Siko makes him leave behind his wife and child and go to America.
Tractor Drivers
The story takes place in a Soviet placed in what is now Ukraine. A mechanic arrives in the Soviet, lead by a young independent woman driving tractors and, between many comedy sketches and propaganda mottoes, a love comes to light.
Alyonka
Set in 1955 when many migrated from Russia to the Steppes of Kazakhstan, this is the trip back to the Canal from the frontier and farms by a number of people who tell their settler stories. Alenka Muratova (Ovodova) is a winsome 13 year old who talks Dmitry Prokovich, the chief mechanic for the Soviet, into giving up his seat in the truck to a young mother with her infant daughter. Then Alenka and Dmitry share the back of the open truck with a young woman, newly graduated dentist who has not been able to find a position, Stefan, a hitchhiker with a dog who hopes his upper-class wife will return to him and the countryside, and Vasselina Petrovolka, a woman who lost one of her twin daughters in a riding accident by the river shortly after they arrived, and now is returning to tell the other twin of her sister's fate. A warm hearted look at common folks traveling in the frontier.
The Asthenic Syndrome
In the old days it was called hypochrondria, or black melancholia. Now, apparently, it's termed the Asthenic Syndrome. Whatever it is, Nikolai, a teacher of epicly indifferent pupils, has got it, and it's not much fun.
The First Teacher
Dyuishen is assigned to the mountainous Kirghiz region of Central Asia by the Young Communist League after he is discharged from the Red Army. It is 1923 and the Civil war has ended. The former soldier becomes a teacher, bringing the Leninist doctrine to the remote Moslem area where elders did not allow children to go to school. He falls in love with one of his students, but the young woman is sold by her father to a wealthy chieftain. When the school is burned down, the majestic poplar trees that are a source of local pride are cut down to rebuild the new structure.
Days of Eclipse
This bleak late soviet-era drama follows the career of Malyanov, a young medical school graduate who has been sent to work in Turkmenia. Here he runs into a hodge-podge of people of differing ethnicities, all of them victims of the government's earlier mania for relocating and eliminating whole ethnic groups and classes of people. These desperately unhappy people are unable to find any pleasure in this diverse companionship, but instead are antagonistic to it, and often resort to desperate measures in their doomed attempts to ease their pain.
You and Me
Two young talented neurosurgeons — Pyotr and Sasha — are enthusiastically working on a complex medical experiment. But in search of stability and a better life, Pyotr goes to work in Stockholm, Sasha becomes a major official. Pyotrr's overseas life does not add up, and he returns to Moscow. Realizing that his friend has a completely different life, Pyotr goes to Siberia, where he works on an ambulance. There he meets a girl with a brain disease, the study of which he had once been involved in, but did not finish the job. Feeling in vain of a lived, failed life, a sense of professional guilt in front of this sick girl, whom no one can help, torment him, and he again recalls his true destiny.
Dzhamilya
Based on the novel of the same name by Chinghiz Aitmatov. The action takes place during the days of World War II in one of the villages of Kyrgyzstan. The famous artist Seit recalls his childhood, his first unrequited love for Dzhamilya, the wife of his older brother, and the wounded front-line soldier Daniyar, whose songs taught to notice beauty... A poetic story about love, the secrets of creation, the national customs of the Kyrgyz people.
The Second Circle
A man tries to come to terms with his father's death and to deal with the mundane details of his burial in a society cut off from spirituality.
Beginning of an Unknown Era
Two young directors adapted the short stories of two Russian authors whose works had been banned for decades, and so their film ended up in the censor’s vault as well – for twenty years. Both tales look back to the post-revolutionary era: 'Angel' speaks tragically of the brutality and destruction of the time, and 'The Homeland of Electricity' captures its haunting grotesquery.
There Lived a Doctor
A young doctor Nikolai Alexandrovich Zaostrovtsev, a fourth generation medical professional, found himself in the Gladuny village directly after the Institute. Neither he himself, nor his father, a town surgeon, expected that he would linger long their. But having become a real doctor in this working village community, he remains true to his profession without any dreams of glory or city life…
Native Steppes
The film takes place in a Kazakh village. Aman and Aizhan love each other very much, but they often quarrel. Their neighbor Nagima decides to use one of these quarrels to marry her son Ospan to Aizhan. This leads to a number of ridiculous situations that the characters get into. But good, as always, overcomes evil, and the young people reconcile — Aizhan marries Haman.
Kiss the Ground
Sheds light on an alternative approach to farming called “regenerative agriculture” that could balance our climate, replenish our vast water supplies, and feed the world.
Nostalgia
A Russian poet and his interpreter travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.