Best movies like If I Were for Real

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like If I Were for Real Starring Alan Tam, Nancy Hu Guan-Chen, Hsiang Lin, and more. If you liked If I Were for Real then you may also like: WUSA, West Of Shanghai, Red Corner, Revolution, Round Eyes In The Middle Kingdom 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.

Taiwanese film about the dark days of the Cultural Revolution and the young people who were destroyed by it, centered on a group of students who perform Nikolai Gogol’s play The Inspector General.

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WUSA

Rheinhardt, a cynical drifter, gets a job as an announcer for right-wing radio station WUSA in New Orleans. Rheinhardt is content to parrot WUSA's reactionary editorial stance on the air, even if he doesn't agree with it. Rheinhardt finds his cynical detachment challenged by a lady friend, Geraldine, and by Rainey, a neighbour and troubled idealist who becomes aware of WUSA's sinister, hidden purpose. And when events start spinning out of control, even Rheinhardt finds he must take a stand.

West Of Shanghai

American businessmen and missionaries working in China are captured and held prisoner by a local warlord.

Red Corner

An American attorney on business in China, ends up wrongfully on trial for murder and his only key to innocence is a female defense lawyer from the country.

Revolution

The San Francisco scene in 1967-68. Documentary about hippies shot during the height of the movement . Viewpoints from many kinds of people. Music by Steve Miller Band, Mother Earth, Quicksilver Messenger Service and others.

Round Eyes In The Middle Kingdom

Filmmaker Ronald Levaco, journeys back to China, the nation of his boyhood days, to discover what became of an old friend of his family, Israel Epstein.

Joanna

When 17 year old Joanna comes to Swinging London, she meets a host of colourful characters, discovers the pleasures of casual sex and falls in love. That's when things get complicated.

Kimjongilia

The first film to fully expose the humanitarian crisis of North Korea, this stylish, deeply moving documentary is centered around astonishing interviews with survivors of North Korea's vast and largely hidden prison camps, and interspersed with archival footage of North Korean propoganda films and original art performances.

Bandit Queen

Born a lower-caste girl in rural India's patriarchal society, "married" at 11, repeatedly raped and brutalized, Phooland Devi finds freedom only as an avenging warrior, the eponymous Bandit Queen. Devi becomes a kind a bloody Robin Hood; this extraordinary biographical film offers both a vivid portrait of a driven woman and a savage critique of the society that made her.

Blood Brothers

Three best friends who are barely getting by as fishermen seek their fate in 1930s Shanghai. Upon arriving in the bustling city, the naïve trio gradually find their innocence corrupted as they fall into the deepest depths of the criminal underworld.

The Blue Kite

The lives of a Beijing family throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as they experience the impact of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.

The Sand Pebbles

Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat USS San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the 'rice-bowl' system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.

An Inspector Calls

Based on a famous stage play and set in the year 1912, an upper crust family dinner is interrupted by a police inspector who brings news that a girl known to everyone present has died in suspicious circumstances. It seems that any or all of them could have had a hand in her death. But who is the mysterious Inspector and what can he want of them?

The Shanghai Gesture

A gambling queen uses blackmail to stop a British financier from closing her Chinese clip joint.

Marat/Sade

In Charenton Asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs a play about Jean Paul Marat's death, using the patients as actors. Based on 'The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade', a 1963 play by Peter Weiss.

Empire of the Sun

Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirit, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.

Farewell My Concubine

Abandoned by his prostitute mother in 1920, Douzi was raised by a theater troupe. There he meets Shitou and over the following years the two develop an act entitled "Farewell My Concubine" that brings them fame and fortune. When Shitou marries Juxian, Douzi becomes jealous, the beginnings of the acting duo's explosive breakup and tragic fall take root.

In the Heat of the Sun

The film is set in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. It is told from the perspective of Ma Xiaojun nicknamed Monkey, a teenage boy. Monkey and his friends are free to roam the streets of Beijing day and night because the Cultural Revolution has caused their parents and most adults to be either busy or away. The story revolves around Monkey's dalliances with his roguish male friends and his subsequent angst-filled crush with Mi Lan.

To Live

Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry. Addicted to gambling, Fugui loses everything. In the years that follow he is pressed into both the nationalist and communist armies, while Jiazhen is forced into menial work.

Shanghai Noon

Chon Wang, a clumsy imperial guard trails Princess Pei Pei when she is kidnapped from the Forbidden City and transported to America. Wang follows her captors to Nevada, where he teams up with an unlikely partner, outcast outlaw Roy O'Bannon, and tries to spring the princess from her imprisonment.

Everlasting Regret

A person's life is destined to be shorter than that of a city. Having spent her whole life in Shanghai, Qiyao has her moments of prosperity and her fair share of loneliness. She finally fades and disappears but Shanghai remains a metropolitan city. Shanghai in the 1930s is glamorous and seductive.

Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore's view on how the Bush administration allegedly used the tragic events on 9/11 to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In Fear

Driving to a music festival in Ireland, a young couple gets trapped in a country maze on their way to a remote hotel, where an unidentifiable sinister force torments them.

I Love You Phillip Morris

Steve Russell is a small-town cop. Bored with his bland lifestyle, Russell turns to fraud as a means of shaking things up. Before long, Russell's criminal antics have landed him behind bars, where he encounters the charismatic Phillip Morris. Smitten, Russell devotes his entire life to being with Morris regardless of the consequences.

The Strawberry Statement

A college student joins a group of revolutionaries to meet girls but ends up committed to their goals.

Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl

Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.

House

Fresh from group therapy, a man shares odd anecdotes with ten others inside a church.

Perhaps Love

A love triangle develops between the male and female leads and the director during the making of a musical in Mainland China.

Platform

China's rapid changes from the late-1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

Savage Sisters

A corrupt General plans on smuggling one million US dollars out of the Banana Republic he dominates. Local revolutionaries plan on stealing the cash but are thwarted when a bandit leader they are working with double crosses them. A tough cop and her boyfriend help two of the female revolutionaries escape from prison hoping that they will lead them to the cash, which they plan on keeping for themselves.

A Soul Haunted by Painting

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Yu-liang leaves a brothel in a small Chinese town, to become the second wife of Mr. Pan. While Pan is away at the revolution in Yunnan, Yu-liang learns to paint and takes art classes at the Shanghai Art Institute, until it is closed for painting nudes. Because she cannot bear him a son, Yu-liang leaves Pan to his first wife, and studies art in Paris, where she wins an award for a nude self-portrait. She returns to join Pan in Nanking in the 1930's, and becomes a Professor until it is discovered that she came from a brothel. She returns to Paris to live the rest of her life there, and finally gains a major exhibition of her work.

Temptress Moon

Set in the decadent 1920s, Temptress Moon tells the very complicated story of a wealthy family living on the outskirts of Shanghai. Their youngest daughter, Ruyi, is brought up as a servant to her opium-addicted father and brother. Meanwhile, her brother-in-law Zhongliang has a successful, if illegal, career seducing and blackmailing married women in the city. When he comes to Ruyi's home the two fall in love, and trouble ensues.

The People at Universal

Former Sergeant Diogenes Hernandez owns the Universal, a precarious detective agency private in the Centre of Bogotá, which is based in the same apartment where he and his wife Fabiola inhabit. His nephew, Clemente Fernández, who works at the Agency, maintains a romance with Fabiola, without trying to hurt the feelings of his uncle, but driven by the need to alleviate their empty urban and anonymous man.

Lower Learning

Barry Goldwater Elementary is on the brink of collapse: the lowest test scores in the state, teachers who are either drunk or having sex on school grounds, and a principal who extorts money from parents. It's up to Tom, the down-on-his-luck vice-principal, to rally the lazy teachers, expose the principal's corruption, and turn the school around before an end of the day board decision.

Lies My Father Told Me

A Jewish boy grows up in 1920s Montreal with a grandfather who tells stories and a father who won't work.

Shanghai

An American man returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months before Pearl Harbor and discovers his friend has been killed. While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding.

The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

Follow several talented members of the ensemble as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways art can both preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution.

Absolute Proof

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell claims a Chinese cyberattack 'flipped' the 2020 election.

Underground

Underground is a 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen, founded as a militant faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who fought to overthrow the U.S. government during the 1960s and 1970s. The film consists of interviews with members of the group after they went underground and footage of the anti-war and civil rights protests of the time. It was directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler and Mary Lampson, later subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an attempt to confiscate the film footage in order to gain information that would help them arrest the Weathermen. (Wikipedia)

2000 Mules

Bestselling Author and award-winning Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza expose widespread, coordinated voter fraud in the 2020 election, sufficient to change the overall outcome. Drawing on research provided by the election integrity group True the Vote, “2000 Mules” offers two types of evidence: geotracking and video. The geotracking evidence, based on a database of 10 trillion cell phone pings, exposes an elaborate network of paid professional operatives called mules delivering fraudulent and illegal votes to mail-in dropboxes in the five key states where the election was decided. Video evidence, obtained from official surveillance cameras installed by the states themselves, confirms the geotracking evidence. The movie concludes by exploring numerous ways to prevent the fraud from happening again.

Katherine

A harrowing look at the 60s and early 70s through the eyes of Katherine Alman, a wealthy debutante who slowly, but inexorably spirals down into a fight for the causes that shook a nation, leading a path to the underground life. Written by Miguel Cane

The Lion's Den

A group of Staten Island radicals lead by ex-philosophy student Marie and her boozy filmmaker boyfriend Nick attempt to kidnap the CEO of the Leo Corporation but instead accidentally capture Daniel, a nutty small time accountant. With Daniel in custody at their commune, several of the radicals attempt to 'revolutionize the bedroom', an endeavor further complicated by a surprise visit from Marie's tough boy ex-lover Junior. (from IMDB)

Execution of Justice

The true story of the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk on November 27, 1978. The case of assassin Dan White has become known as the "Twinkie defense" after his sentence was reduced from first-degree murder to voluntary manslaughter. White served five years in prison and committed suicide in 1985.

The Sinking City: Capsule Odyssey

Hong Kong is just a ridiculous place full of lies. In this prosperous city, there are a group of people that have to live in the ‘space capsule’, which is a large seminar room subdivided into small living rooms. In such a small living space, this group of people all struggle to fight for their ideal lifestyle which reflects the spirit of Hong Kong.

Alias Boston Blackie

It is the Christmas Holidays and reformed thief, Boston Blackie goes to Castle Theater to pick up players who will perform for prisoners that are still in prison. He takes a girl with him who has a brother already in prison. She has visited the prison twice in the month, so is not suppose to visit again. However when the group is completed the girl is included as well as Inspector Farrady. One of the clowns in the show is kidnapped and replaced by a con who wants to get even with two ex-partners. Boston Blackie figures out that a con has replaced one of his clowns but is unable to stop him. Blackie's clothes are stolen and a murder is committed. Of course, the Inspector immediately suspects Blackie of being involved. Now it is Blackie's job to find the killer, exonerate himself and help the girl free her brother.

Morning Sun

The film Morning Sun attempts in the space of a two-hour documentary film to create an inner history of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (c.1964-1976). It provides a multi-perspective view of a tumultuous period as seen through the eyes—and reflected in the hearts and minds—of members of the high-school generation that was born around the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and that came of age in the 1960s. Others join them in creating in the film’s conversation about the period and the psycho-emotional topography of high-Maoist China, as well as the enduring legacy of that period.

American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally

The life of American woman Mildred Gillars and her lawyer, who struggles to redeem her reputation. Dubbed “Axis Sally” for broadcasting Nazi propaganda to American troops during World War II, Mildred’s story exposes the dark underbelly of the Third Reich's hate-filled propaganda machine, her eventual capture in Berlin, and subsequent trial for treason against the United States after the war.

A Beautiful Mistake

A boy, an old man, two beautiful twin sisters get caught up in a voyeuristic scandal during the Cultural Revolution in China. This controversial film was subsequently banned and was never made public in China.

Where the Skin Lies

Six people bound together by a traumatic experience decide to round off a year of group therapy in style. They join each other once more, traveling up to the Scottish Lowlands for a reunion weekend in a 1970s holiday let. Soon a number of mysterious and horrifying events start to expose the cracks in their relationships, and one by one they discover that trust runs but skin-deep. A night of closure turns out to be far more final than they could have anticipated.

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