Best movies like Kabullywood

It’s snowing in Kabul, and gregarious waiter Mustafa charms a pretty student named Wajma. The pair begin a clandestine relationship—they’re playful and passionate but ever mindful of the societal rules they are breaking. After Wajma discovers she is pregnant, her certainty that Mustafa will marry her falters, and word of their dalliance gets out. Her father must decide between his culturally held right to uphold family honor and his devotion to his daughter.

In 2002, cable news producer Kim Barker decides to shake up her routine by taking a daring new assignment in Kabul, Afghanistan. Dislodged from her comfortable American lifestyle, Barker finds herself in the middle of an out-of-control war zone. Luckily, she meets Tanya Vanderpoel, a fellow journalist who takes the shell-shocked reporter under her wing. Amid the militants, warlords and nighttime partying, Barker discovers the key to becoming a successful correspondent.

A historic drama with musical Bollywood scenes. Kabul in the early 90s. Soviet values rule the country. Women can wear miniskirts, children can go to school and people can go to the cinema, concerts as well as universities. Life in Afghanistan is similar to life in the Western world. 14 years old Qodrat sells cinema tickets on the black market in the streets of Kabul. After selling a ticket to a secret police officer by mistake, he ends up at the Soviet orphanage, where he fakes his identity at the registration, in hope of getting more power. Everyday life for Qodrat is about friendships, falling in love, doing naughty things and going on adventures – just like it is for children in other parts of the world. However, behind the safe walls of the orphanage the world they once knew is drastically changing as the Mujahideens start the civil war.

After the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the restriction of women in public life, a pre-teen girl is forced to masquerade as a boy in order to find work to support her mother and grandmother.

After spending years in California, Amir returns to his homeland in Afghanistan to help his old friend Hassan, whose son is in trouble.

This remarkable animated documentary traces the unconventional upbringing of the filmmaker Jung Henin, one of thousands of Korean children adopted by Western families after the end of the Korean War. It is the story of a boy stranded between two cultures. Animated vignettes – some humorous and some poetic – track Jung from the day he first meet his new blond siblings, through elementary school, and into his teenage years, when his emerging sense of identity begins to create fissures at home and ignite the latent biases of his adoptive parents. The filmmaker tells his story using his own animation intercut with snippets of super-8 family footage and archival film. The result is an animated memoir like no other: clear-eyed and unflinching, humorous, and above all, inspiring in the capacity of the human heart.

Elisabeth and her brother Paul live isolated from much of the world after Paul is injured in a snowball fight. As a coping mechanism, the two conjure up a hermetic dream of their own making. Their relationship, however, isn't exactly wholesome. Jealousy and a malevolent undercurrent intrude on their fantasy when Elisabeth invites the strange Agathe to stay with them -- and Paul is immediately attracted to her.

Bruno and Sonia, a young couple living off her benefit and the thefts committed by his gang, have a new source of money: their newborn son.

Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach works dead-end jobs to support his sister and her son. Questioning his life, he paints, surfs and hangs out with his best friend, Gabe. When Gabe's older brother returns home for the summer, Zach suddenly finds himself drawn into a relationship he didn't expect.

Recounted mostly through animation to protect his identity, Amin looks back over his past as a child refugee from Afghanistan as he grapples with a secret he’s kept hidden for 20 years.

This documentary on the effect the talent competition "Afghan Star" has on the incredibly diverse inhabitants of Afghanistan affords a glimpse into a country rarely seen. Contestants risk their lives to appear on the television show that is a raging success with the public and also monitored closely by the government.

A family of Irish immigrants adjusts to life on the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen while also grieving the death of a child.

Mary Ann Taylor loves the comforts of her hometown in Mercury, Texas. She has a steady job as a waitress in her father's diner, yet she can't help but feel unfulfilled by a life of pouring coffee and grilling hamburgers. Mary Ann's real passion is photography, but pursuing her dream of becoming a photographer means leaving Mercury behind.

Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.

In post-Taliban Kabul, two lost children, brother and sister whose parents are in prison, try to survive every day by scavenging for food. At night, they join their imprisoned mother.

Elderly Dastaguir and his newly deaf 5-year-old grandson Yassin hitchhike and walk, but mostly walk, as they make their way to the coal mine where Dastaguir's son Murad works. Dastaguir must tell Murad that the rest of their family were all killed in a recent bomb attack.

Yale scholar Matt Carter introduces his wealthy fiancée, Allison, to his family, and initially everything goes smoothly. However, it isn't long before Allison learns that Matt has lied to her about his relatives to mask their failures and dysfunctions. His brother, Tim, flunked out of school and developed a drinking problem, and Matt struggles to keep his own troubling secret from his less than tolerant parents.

Benny, a college freshman at the University of Akron, Ohio meets and falls for fellow freshman Christopher at a football game. With the support of their families and friends they embark on a new relationship. But a tragic event in the past involving their mothers soon comes to light and threatens to tear them apart.

In the poor, desolate northern provinces of the mountainous feudal Sunni kingdom of Afghanistan (before the Soviet-engineered republican revolutions), the status of the proud men and their clans is determined less by wealth or even military power (both rare) then by victories in the ancient, though game of buskashi, a vicious form of polo dating back to Genghis Khan, in which the chapendaz (participating horsemen) use their horse-whips on both mounts and rivals in a ruthless fight for a heavy 'ball', a dead calf, which must be carried a long way, almost impossible with all the others mercilessly assailing. Tursen, a former champion, now holds the status of village notable thanks to his position as stable-keeper of the regional lord Osman Bey, and has finally bred a horse without equal, the white stallion Jahil, in time for the royal tournament on the plain of Bagrami, just outside the capital Kabul...

Juliette, a lone survivor of an apocalyptic era, fights to survive against hunger, thirst, a broken leg and strange disturbing creatures that only come out at nighttime.

While her life is falling apart, single mother Christine finds a magical family heirloom that leads to love and good fortune during Christmas.

The inspiring story of three women risking their lives to incite political, activist, and armed uprisings in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.

The film follows two brothers over the course of a decade. While they begin as kids in search of thrills in the sprawling slums of Morocco’s Sidi Moumen, we witness their gradual, and ultimately shocking, radicalisation.

In Paris during WWII, an Algerian immigrant is inspired to join the resistance by his unexpected friendship with a Jewish man. Based on not very known facts about the Muslim community in Paris during WWII, when the Paris Mosque and its dynamic leader played a pivotal role in supporting the resistance and rescuing Jews.

A Russian doctor is invited to work at Afghanistan's top hospital during the war, and sees firsthand the carnage caused by the Islamist mujaheddin as they attempt to overthrow the socialist government.

Summer 1998—Kabul under Taliban rule. Zunaira and Mohsen are young and in love. Despite the daily violence and misery, they hope for a better future. One day, a foolish gesture causes life to take an irrevocable turn.

On August 15, 2021, Afghanistan descends into chaos. In one day, the completion of the withdrawal of Western forces precipitated the debacle of the regime in place: the army vanished, the leaders fled and the Taliban took Kabul without a fight. The great Central Asian country opens a new chapter in its tragic history, twenty years after the "war on terror" launched by George W. Bush in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The undisputed masters of 40 million trapped Afghans, the "students of religion" are back and are savoring their revenge by posing as the United States' victors. Their program will surprise no one: to restore the Islamic emirate and set up the "true" sharia, i.e. a perfect world, with divine commandments applied to the letter as in the time of the prophet.

Shot on the streets of Kabul, Granaz Moussavi’s (My Tehran For Sale) outstanding new feature is in the tradition of the great child-centred works of the 1980s when filmmakers such as Kiarostami, Panahi and Amir Naderi (to whom this film is dedicated) were putting Iranian cinema in the forefront of world production. 9-year-old Hewad is an irrepressible, street-smart kid who is energetically working every angle, hustling everything from pomegranate juice to amulets to protection from the evil eye. His real ambition is to be a movie star, and this comes a step closer when he meets an Australian photographer. But in a city where every family has a member who has been “martyred,” the streets are as perilous as they are vivid. Australia’s recent involvement with Afghanistan has been mixed, to say the best. The deeply-felt humanism of this film might just be our most effective contribution to that troubled country.

Lieutenant of the French forces engaged in Mali, David Faber is seriously burned during the explosion of his armored vehicle. Repatriated to France for intensive care, he must begin a long convalescence, under the worried but devoted gaze of his sister Jeanne. They meet again in the family house in the Alps, between mountains, lake and forests. Jeanne tries to reconnect her brother with the past, but David, who suffers from amnesia after the accident, does not seem to be interested in reconciling with the man he used to be.

In a war ridden country a woman watches over the husband reduced to a vegetable state by a bullet in the neck, abandoned by Jihad companions and brothers. One day, the woman decides to say things to him she could never have done before.

Three Afghan women from different social background, living in Kabul, are facing a big challenge in their lives. Hava, a traditional pregnant woman whom no one cares about, is living with her father- and mother-in-law. Her only joy is talking to the baby in her belly. Maryam, an educated TV news reporter, is about to get a divorce from her unfaithful husband that finds out she is pregnant. Ayesha, an 18-year-old girl, accepts to marry her cousin because she is pregnant from her boyfriend who disappears after hearing her pregnancy news. Therefore, she needs to find a doctor to get an abortion and regain her virginity. Each of them has to solve her problem by herself for the first time.

Zoey Miller, a super smart computer major uninterested in romantic love, has her life turned upside down when Zack, the school’s soccer star, gets amnesia and mistakes Zoey for his girlfriend.

The story of four kids in Afghanistan whose lives changed dramatically after US troops completed their withdrawal and the Taliban swept to power

Three young men meet Djamel (Yassine Azzouz), a charismatic manipulator, who turns the three friends against society.