Best movies like I Saw the Sun

Children here don't shape their own destiny.

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like I Saw the Sun Starring Mahsun Kırmızıgül, Demet Evgar, Murat Ünalmış, Altan Erkekli, and more. If you liked I Saw the Sun then you may also like: Yasmin, Zozo, Under the Bombs, Rhino Season, Journey of Hope 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.

In the southeast region of Turkey, the Kurdish family of Altun lives in a small mountainside village plagued by a 25-year war that makes their daily lives a hellish struggle. As the war intensifies, the family is forced to migrate west to the city of Istanbul.

selected filters: Sort: Default

You may filter the list of movies on this page for a more refined, personalized selection of movies.

Still not sure what to watch click the recommend buttun below to get a movie recommendation selected from all the movies on this list

Know any good movies to watch like I Saw the Sun 2009. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.
7.2 / 10 2004 Drama
suggested by: user509hr6785p6

Yasmin

In England, the Pakistanis Yasmin lives two lives in two different worlds: in her community, she wears Muslin clothes, cooks for her father and brother and has the traditional behavior of a Muslin woman. Further, she has a non-consumed marriage with the illegal immigrant Faysal to facilitate the British stamp in his passport, and then divorce him. In her job, she changes her clothes and wears like a Westerner, is considered a standard employee and has a good Caucasian friend who likes her. After the September, 11th, the prejudice in her job and the treatment of common people makes her take side and change her life.

Zozo

A Lebanese boy gets separated from his family during the civil war and ends up in Sweden.

Under the Bombs

In the wake of Israel's 2006 bombardment of Lebanon, a determined woman finds her way into the country convincing a taxi driver to take a risky journey around the scarred region in search of her sister and her son.

Rhino Season

Kurdish-Iranian poet Sahel has just been released from a thirty-year prison sentence in Iran. Now the one thing keeping him going is the thought of finding his wife, who thinks he's been dead for over twenty years.

Journey of Hope

In a village in eastern Turkey, tales of the economic success of Turks in Switzerland inspire Haydar to convince his wife Meryem that they must go. He sells their livestock and small plot of land in exchange for passage for two. He wants to leave their seven children in the care of the eldest and his parents; his father advises him to take one son to be educated in Europe, as economic insurance. The three set off for Istanbul, Milan, and Switzerland, stowing away on a ship. At Lake Como, they pay the rest of their money to unprincipled men who abandon them at an Alpine pass before a blizzard. Father and son are separated from Meryem. Will anyone reach the land of promise?

America America

A young Anatolian Greek, entrusted with his family's fortune, loses it en route to Istanbul and dreams of going to America.

7.1 / 10 2008 Drama
suggested by: healthnut

Autumn

Arrested while a student in university, Yusuf is released from prison after ten years. He returns home and is welcomed by his sick and elderly mother. Soon he will meet Eka, a beautiful Georgian girl who is a sex worker, and love becomes a final desperate attempt to grasp life and elude loneliness.

The Butterfly's Dream

In a small Turkish town, two young tuberculous poets try to survive while publishing their poems. As they both fall in love, their life would never be the same.

5.3 / 10 2015 Drama
suggested by: solotraveler

Back to School Mom

Mary Thomas, a free-spirited musician, has spent the past two decades traveling the world, but at age 41 she decides to go back to college and finish her degree so that, for once, she can finally finish something she started. Back at her old university, she becomes close friends with her popular and charming "peer tutor" -- only to learn that he is actually the son she gave up 20 years earlier.

Head-On

With the intention to break free from the strict familial restrictions, a suicidal young woman sets up a marriage of convenience with a forty-year-old addict, an act that will lead to an outburst of envious love.

The Twilight of the Golds

When Suzanne Stein has a genetic analysis done on her unborn child, she discovers that although she has a healthy baby, the child will most likely be born gay, like her brother, David. She must decide whether to keep the child, or to have an abortion. Her family enters a crisis about love and acceptance as she makes this difficult choice.

The Edge of Heaven

The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together.

For Those in Peril

Aaron, a young misfit living in a remote Scottish fishing community, is the lone survivor of a strange fishing accident that claimed the lives of five men including his older brother. Spurred on by sea-going folklore and local superstition, the village blames Aaron for this tragedy, making him an outcast amongst his own people. Steadfastly refusing to believe that his brother has died, he sets out to recover him and the rest of men.

Steam: The Turkish Bath

Francesco and Marta run a husband-and-wife design company in Rome. When Francesco's aunt dies in Instanbul he travels there to sort out the hamam turkish steam bath that she left him. He finds a love and warmth in his realtives' Instanbul home that is missing from his life in Italy.

In the Gloaming

Danny, dying of AIDS, returns home for his last months. Always close to his mother, they share moments of openness that tend to shut out Danny's father and his sister.

The Motel Life

A pair of working-class brothers flee their Reno Motel after getting involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident.

Pandora's Box

When an aging matriarch starts showing signs of dementia, her dysfunctional family in Istanbul must navigate a minefield of unresolved issues to care for her.

The Scoundrel's Wife

Already an outcast for crimes she did not commit, a woman struggling to raise her two children in a small village during World War II is suspected of being a saboteur.

Catfish in Black Bean Sauce

An African American couple (Winfield and Alice) adopt two orphans from a Vietnamese refugee camp. After twenty-two years, the children are reunited with their birth mother, bringing deeply submerged resentments and misconceptions to the surface and forcing the characters to reexamine their identity and relationships in both comical and poignant situations.

Good Fences

Set in the 1970s, Tom Spader is an attorney who is determined to end what he has dubbed "the colored man's losing streak." When his winning of a high-profile case thrusts him into the limelight, he decides to moves his wife and their two kids out of their mixed lower-middle-class town and into the posh enclave of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Three Monkeys

A family battles against the odds to stay together when small lies grow into an extravagant cover-up. In order to avoid hardship and responsibilities that would otherwise be impossible to endure, the family chooses to ignore the truth, not to see, hear or talk about it. But does playing “Three Monkeys” invalidate the truth of its existence?

5.3 / 10 2007 Drama
suggested by: OceanicOctopus

Brick Lane

The grind of daily life as a Brick Lane Bangladessi as seen through the eyes of Nazneen (Chatterjee), who at 17 enters an arranged marriage with Chanu (Kaushik). Years later, living in east London with her family, she meets a young man Karim (Simpson).

Propaganda

Based on a true story set in 1948, customs officer Mehti is faced with the duty of formally setting up the border between Turkey and Syria, dividing his hometown. He is unaware of the pain that will eminently unfold, as families, languages, cultures and lovers are both ripped apart and clash head on in a village once united.

Red Dirt

At only twenty, Griffith is struggling with the responsibilities of caring for his unwell aunt, grieving the loss of their family's matriarch, and his own dreams of leaving Pine Apple. With the arrival of a stranger, Griffith's carefully constructed walls of shame and silence begin to come down and his life takes an unexpected turn.

Times and Winds

In a small, poor village leaning over high rocky mountains, the villagers are simple and diligent people who struggle to cope with a harsh nature. They earn their living off the earth and a few animals they feed. Fathers always prefer one of their sons. Mothers command their daughters ruthlessly. Ömer, the son of the imam, wishes hopelessly for the death of his father. When he understands that wishful thinking does not have any concrete results, he begins to search for childish ways to kill his father. Yakup is in love with his teacher, and one day after seeing his father spying on the teacher he dreams too, like Ömer, of killing his father. Yıldız studies and tries to manage the household chores imposed by her mother. She learns with irritation about the secrets of the relationship between men and women.

Journey to the Sun

Mehmet, a young Turkish man newly migrated from the village Tire, takes a job searching for water leaks below the surface of the streets of Istanbul. Due to a strange set of events, he is mistaken for a Kurd, imprisoned, and brutally beaten. Upon his release a week later, he becomes an outcast marked as a Kurd, losing his apartment, his job, and eventually his girl friend, Arzu. When a Kurdish friend, Berzan is killed in a street protest triggered by a hunger strike, Mehmet takes a trek to return the body to Berzan's home village near the Iraqi border, and learns why so many Kurds are refugees.

Innocent

17-year-old Eric follows his parents to immigrate to Canada and is thus forced to confront different emotional and cultural problems. He must not only adjust to the new environment, but also come to terms with his homosexuality. Standing at the brink of adulthood, he encounters a series of potential romantic interests - his handsome cousin, a schoolmate, a middle aged lawyer and finally a kitchen helper. They represent different stages in Eric's development, from infatuation, sex, love to a sense of responsibility.

My Father and My Son

A left-wing journalist whose wife died while giving birth to his son during a military coup returns to his family's farm. Estranged from his father for turning his back on the family and wasting his life with political activism instead, he tries to reconnect with him so that his son will have a place to live as his health is deteriorating due to the extensive torture he had to endure.

Cholera Street

Salih is a mechanic and the son of a respected barber named Ali. A woman named Tina arrives at Cholera Street, where she takes up residence and works as a prostitute.

Lola and Billy the Kid

Murat, a Turkish gay youth living in Berlin’s Turkish ghetto, decides to come out to his family. What he doesn’t know yet is that his family has even bigger secrets to hide.

Eat a Bowl of Tea

An American-Chinese man brings over his wife from China to America, but the challenges of making a living and adjusting to a new life, plus the attentions of a gambler threaten their marriage.

In Celebration

In a Yorkshire mining town, three educated brothers return to their blue-collar home to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary of their parents, but dark secrets come to the fore.

Speed of Life

Drew (Scott Caan) must care for his father, a former professor who can now barely communicate due to Alzheimer. Depressed and struggling to make ends meet, an old buddy tries to get him to become a pusher. He gets further drawn in by a new and exciting girlfriend, Sarah (Mia Kirshner), who uses drugs.

Eighteen

Pip, a street kid just turning 18, receives his grandfather's World War II-era memoirs and discovers parallels to his own life.

Lipstikka

Lara is Palestinian and lives in London. She has everything she wants in her life: a husband, a son and a beautiful house in one of the best areas of the city. Nevertheless, her everyday life appears cold and grey, only brightened up by surreptitious sips of vodka. But one day, Inam, a sensual, resolute girl, knocks on her door. Lara seems to be transported back to her adolescence when she and Inam were close friends, and studied together in Ramallah. In Lara's astonished eyes we see a mixture of fear and desire towards the woman whom she had lost sight of. A deceptive tangle of memories which a trauma, a love affair and an experience with two Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem an re-surface. From a gripping, well structured emotional thriller that traces back their memories through recurrent flashbacks that take us to the West Bank in 1994, during the Intifada.

The Breath

A small task force of the Turkish army have to defend a relay station in the middle of nowhere against a possible terrorist raid.

Intersection: Glad to Have You Eren

A true intersection story of a teenage boy lives in Black Sea hills whose life is full of struggle, a heroic soldier Ferhat and an uninvited visitor from back of beyond.

Late Bloomers

High School basketball coach, Dinah Groshardt, falls for the school secretary, Carly Lumpkin, and upsets the entire school in the process.

Losing Chase

An intimate and turbulent relationship develops between Chase, a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown and Elizabeth, the caretaker employed to look after her.

Cider with Rosie

A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story set in the Cotswolds during and immediately after the First World War.

Everyone

Complications arise when family and friends gather for a gay couple's backyard wedding.

Lovelorn

A retired teacher who returns to Istanbul after years away, Nazim tries to reacquaint himself with his hometown, which has changed significantly. While waiting for his pension to begin, Nazim takes a temporary job as a taxi driver and frequently ends up in the seedier parts of the city. …

The Wall

Produced, written and directed by Yılmaz Güney within his own personal experiences of capital offense, he dedicates Duvar to male teenagers aged 13 to 19 living behind the bars under diabolical treatments. These teenagers get barbaric corporal punishments, injurious harrows, tortures and sexual abuses just for taking the responsibility of their destiny on a wrong turn.

Five Minarets in New York

Two Turkish anti-terrorist agents are sent to New York City on a mission to find and bring back the dangerous Islamic leader codenamed "Dajjal", believed to be hiding in there. Working with the FBI and NYPD, the agents orchestrate the arrest of Hadji Gumus, a well-respected Muslim scholar and family man who years before fled to the United States after being released from a Turkish prison, where he served time for murder. This tale love, friendship, peace and prejudices, takes us on a journey seeking to answer the question of whether innocence or guilt even matters to one who lusts for vengeance.

The Dark Side of Love

Two brothers on different life paths, a gay waiter with a crush on an eligible bachelor and a drug addict in a twisted dependent relationships with his girlfriend, reunite to mourn the death of their mother.

6.9 / 10 2010 Drama Family
suggested by: AuroraAntelope

When We Leave

Umay is a young woman of Turkish descent, fighting for an independent and self-determined life in Germany against the resistance of her family. Her struggle initiates a dynamic, which results in a life-threatening situation.

For a Moment, Freedom

Centers on a group of weary Middle Eastern refugees who have made their way to Turkey to apply for European visas.

Song of My Mother

A young Kurdish man is torn between his mother's nostalgic search of a song in her dreams and an uncertain future with his pregnant girlfriend.

Come to My Voice

This is the story of two women on opposite ends of a lifetime, a very young, curious Jiyan and her life-weary but resistant grandmother Berfe, in order to save the person who links them to each other.

More related lists

Sort results by:

X close
Default
Clear filters
...