Best movies like Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life Starring Alice Krige, Mark Rylance, Gottfried John, Daniel Smith, and more. If you liked Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life then you may also like: Welcome the Stranger, Winter, The Old Dark House, The Bed Sitting Room, Brother Bear 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.

Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school's operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There's a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?

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Welcome the Stranger

Alice arrives unannounced at her estranged brother Ethan's house in an attempt to reconcile, but bizarre visions, the return of his strange girlfriend and Alice's paranoia and suspicion force the siblings to cling onto reality amidst mysterious circumstances.

Winter

In the last of the Silly Symphonies season cycle, bears hibernate (or try to), raccoons sneeze, moose swim, and pretty much everyone ice skates. Everyone gathers around the groundhog to see what happens.

The Old Dark House

Seeking shelter from a relentless rainstorm and landslides in a remote region of Wales, five travelers are admitted to a large foreboding old house that belongs to the extremely strange Femm family. Sepulchral Horace Femm and his obsessive, inhospitable sister Rebecca are the group's peculiar hosts. The house also holds surprises - and a brutish mute manservant named Morgan.

The Bed Sitting Room

In the hazy aftermath of World War III, the fallout from a 'nuclear misunderstanding' is producing strange mutations amongst the survivors, and the noble Lord Fortnum finds himself transforming into a bed sitting room.

Brother Bear

When an impulsive boy named Kenai is magically transformed into a bear, he must literally walk in another's footsteps until he learns some valuable life lessons. His courageous and often zany journey introduces him to a forest full of wildlife, including the lovable bear cub Koda, hilarious moose Rutt and Tuke, woolly mammoths and rambunctious rams.

Den Brother

Alex Pearson has a lot to learn about teamwork. As the star of the Lemon Oaks hockey team, Alex almost always has his way on and off the ice. That ism until he pulls a stunt so outrageous not even his own coach can give him a pass. His punishment? Suspension from the team, a never-ending list of chores and a job watching his little sister Emily after school.

The Comedy of Terrors

An undertaker who hasn't had any 'customers' in a long time is forced to pay one year's back-rent. To get money he starts to kill people, which brings absurd results.

Coming Apart

A psychiatrist secretly films his female patients as an experiment; he pushes both him and his customers in ways that induce his own mental breakdown.

Sister My Sister

The film is based on a true incident in Le Mans, France in 1933 called the Papin murder case, where two sisters brutally murdered their employer and her daughter. The murder shocked the country, and there was much speculation about the sisters, including allegations that they were having an incestous lesbian affair with each other.

House of Usher

After a long journey, Philip arrives at the Usher mansion seeking his loved one, Madeline. Upon arriving, however, he discovers that Madeline and her brother Roderick Usher have been afflicted with a mysterious malady: Roderick's senses have become painfully acute, while Madeline has become catatonic. That evening, Roderick tells his guest of an old Usher family curse: any time there has been more than one Usher child, all of the siblings have gone insane and died horrible deaths. As the days wear on, the effects of the curse reach their terrifying climax.

Prelude: Dog Star Man

A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time. Part of the Dog Star Man series of experimental films.

Duck Amuck

The short-tempered Daffy Duck must improvise madly as the backgrounds, his costumes, the soundtrack, even his physical form, shifts and changes at the whim of the animator.

The Face of Another

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.

Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets

Conditions have been better for the nameless protagonist: his grandmother is a shoplifter and his war criminal father and sister have an unhealthy, intimate relationship with the family rabbit.

Shithouse

Lonely college freshman Alex has closed himself off from his peers, who all appear to have this whole "college thing" figured out. But everything changes one night when Alex takes a leap and attends a party at Shithouse - a legendary party fraternity - where he forges a strong connection with Maggie.

Ice Quake

As the permafrost melts in Alaska, underground rivers of volatile liquid methane form which sets off a series of devastating earthquakes. Forced apart by this violent occurrence, one family must find each other during the holidays and work to stop the deadly rivers that could cause a worldwide catastrophy.

Imagination

Dr. Reineger, a famous neuro-psychologist, has become convinced that a twin girl named Anna has a rare form of Autism called Asperger's Syndrome, rendering her unable to cope with reality. As for her blind sister, Sarah, the doctor cannot say for sure why her imaginary visions map so close to Anna's. At home, unable to face reality, their father leaves the family. To escape the pain, the girls sink deeper and deeper into their imagination. When a major earthquake takes their mother's life, Reineger gets more involved with helping the now-orphaned twins, while struggling with his realization that the girls seem to be capable of prophetic visions. The girls escape the doctor's institution and a subsequent search finds no trace of them. Have they transcended the physical realm? A mixture of live action, stop motion animation and other techniques makes this film a fantastic journey into the realm of imagination.

MVP: Most Valuable Primate

Jack is a three-year-old chimpanzee who has been the subject of a long-term experiment by Dr. Kendall, a researcher who been teaching Jack to communicate through sign language. Jack scrambles onto the ice in the midst of practice for Steven's junior league hockey team, and he and his teammates discover the monkey has a natural talent for the game.

The Servant

Hugo Barrett is a servant in the Chelsea home of indolent aristocrat Tony. All seems to go well until the playboy’s girlfriend Susan takes a dislike to the efficient employee. Then Barrett persuades Tony to hire his sister Vera as a live-in maid, and matters take another turn for the worse…

Songs My Brothers Taught Me

This complex portrait of modern-day life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation explores the bond between a brother and his younger sister, who find themselves on separate paths to rediscovering the meaning of home.

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs

Set in a blazing land where the sun ceaselessly shines, this dramatic fantasy examines love’s darker aspects.

Pervert Ward: S&M Clinic

An abusive psychologist enjoys torturing and abusing his wife. After rough sexual session of pain and dominance she decides to leave her husband. Then her masochistic twin sister arrives and of course plenty of kinky sexual torture and bondage happens next.

Phantom

In Tokyo, a girl and her boyfriend spend a night talking about their life, their precarious condition and their difficulties to earn a living, their place in the world, if ever they have one...

Careful

In the remote Alpine village of Tolzbad at the turn of the century, people talk quietly and restrain their movements lest avalanches come and kill them. This atmosphere lends itself to repressed emotions - shown through the parallel stories of butler student Johann lusting after his mother (an old flame of the mysterious Count Knotkers) and Klara's attraction to her father (who lusts after his other daughter), leading to duels and suicidal plunges galore. All this is shot in the style of an early German sound film, complete with intertitles, deliberately crackly soundtrack and 'hand-tinted' colour effects.

Dim Sum Funeral

An Irish funeral has a wake. A Jewish funeral has sitting shiva. A traditional Chinese funeral is something else entirely. Thats what the estranged siblings of the Chinese-American Xiao family must undergo upon news of their mothers death. The one brother and three sisters dont get along, however they share one thing: hatred for their domineering and manipulative mother, the Dragon Lady."

The Visitor

After a series of tragedies including the death of his father-in-law, Robert and his wife Maia leave their home in London to move back to her childhood home. But when Robert discovers an old portrait in the attic of a man who is his spitting image, he goes down a rabbit hole to discover the identity of this mysterious doppelganger known only as the visitor. It isn’t long until he realizes – where the visitor goes, death follows.

Lapse

Renee wakes up one morning in the middle of the desert with blood on her hands. She cannot remember why she is there, how she got there or with whom she came. Her quest to uncover forgotten events leads her on a journey of discovery where reality and memory collide and people are not what they seem.

The Blue Note

A look at the last few days of in the life of composer Frédéric Chopin's professional life.

It's Such a Beautiful Day

Bill struggles to put together his shattered psyche, in this feature film version of Don Hertzfeldt's animated short film trilogy.

Amazing Winter Romance

When journalist Julia goes back home to find inspiration, she discovers her childhood friend has built a giant snow maze which prompts her to find her way to true love.

Asylum Seekers

Six people on the verge of a breakdown decide to check themselves into an insane asylum, only to discover there is just room for one.

Homesick

Ambitious cello student Jessica receives an invitation to an international contest. A great opportunity, but at the same time it means enormous pressure. Stress begins to gnaw on Jessica's everyday life and soon reality and imagination blur.

The Atrocity Exhibition

A doctor in a mental research institution is driven insane by the spectacle of the horrors of the twentieth century.

Solitude

Each character involved in this psychological exploration of family and sexuality discovers what it means to suffer inexplicable torment rather than be alone.

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