Best movies like Kidnapping - Hungarian Style

This feature-length documentary from 1974 takes viewers inside Fidel Castro's Cuba. A movie-making threesome hope that Fidel himself will star in their film. The unusual crew consists of former Newfoundland premier Joseph Smallwood, radio and TV owner Geoff Stirling and NFB film director Michael Rubbo. What happens while the crew awaits its star shows a good deal of the new Cuba, and also of the three Canadians who chose to film the island. (NFB)

A newly promoted plant supervisor finds himself in the position of having to announce a layoff of his fellow workers.

This story follows a young student, who is orphaned as she grows to adulthood in the shadow of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Coming from the Communist intelligentsia, she sees her friends and family react differently. Her lover, a married factory manager, supports the patriots and later assists fellow workers in staging a strike. Meanwhile her sister and others express anger at being forced from their homes during the revolution and continue to express a hatred for the rebels afterwards. But in the end they realize that for all people, real life is not possible after the revolt and its brutal suppression by the Soviets and their collaborators.

Set in the 1890s on the Hungarian plains, a group of farm workers go on strike in which they face harsh reprisals and the reality of revolt, oppression, morality and violence.

Sons and daughters of international billionaires are sent to an boot camp where they are taught basic survival skills in hopes it will teach them responsibility. When they are taken hostage and taken for ransom by kidnappers, they will need to utilize every skill they learned to survive.

Jill Yates' daughter Emily takes up with bad boy Gary, whose violent behavior lands him and Emily in trouble. To avoid prison, Gary and Emily appear to commit a double suicide, but Jill sets out to prove Gary has gone on the lam, taking Emily with him.

Blondie and Dagwood are in charge of operations at a mountain motel. The elderly owners of the establishment are in danger of losing their life savings. Among other things, arson threatens.

An experimental submarine with a very experienced crew, the "Siren II" is sent to find out what happened to the "Siren I" after it mysteriously disappeared in a submarine rift. Things go awry when they begin to find things that shouldn't be there...

After having lost her parents, young Juli returns from the Soviet Union to her native Budapest. Scarred by the wounds of the past, the ghost of Stalin’s oppression haunts her as she reunites with her aunt and adoptive mother Magda.

People in the future live in a totalitarian society. A technician named THX 1138 lives a mundane life between work and taking a controlled consumption of drugs that the government uses to make puppets out of people. As THX is without drugs for the first time he has feelings for a woman and they start a secret relationship.

Martians fear their children have become lazy and joyless due to their newfound obsession with Earth TV shows. After ancient Martian leader Chochem suggests that the children of Mars need more fun—including their own Santa Claus—supreme leader Lord Kimar assembles an expedition to Earth. Once there, they kidnap two children who lead them to the North Pole, then capture the real Santa Claus, taking all three back to Mars in an attempt to bring the Martian children happiness.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA.

A troubled loner, Bob Maconel, imagines blowing up the tower in Los Angeles where he works. He takes a revolver to his office intent on killing colleagues, and then himself. At home, he holds conversations with his fish, who encourage him to do it. His supervisor picks on him. As he's screwing his courage to the sticking place, he drops a bullet; while on the floor looking for it, another colleague does exactly what Bob has been planning. Bob emerges a hero and the one colleague he likes, a woman with a bright smile, is severely wounded. Can Bob help her through despair and find himself and joy in life? Or, as everyone says, is this impossible for a man like him?

A simple, religious Hungarian woodcutter lives with his wife and boy child with a small community of squatters among the peaceful mountains of Transylvania until a lumber company claims their land and forces them all to become company workers or else leave the land. This 1942 Hungarian film takes a detailed and unflinching look at the hardships of mountain living, and the realistic approach proved influential to the Neorealist movement in Italian cinema. Hungarian master director Istvan Szots won the Biennale Cup at the Venice Film Festival for his auspicious debut, but the film was banned by the Nazis as "too Catholic" and not publicly exhibited until after World War II.

The President is the story of a dictator of an imaginary country in the Caucasus, who is forced to escape following a coup d’état, and begins a journey to discover his country in the company of his five-year-old grandson. The two travel across the lands that the President once governed. Now, disguised as a street musician to avoid being recognized, the former dictator comes into contact with his people, which he comes to know from a different point of view.

Fast Food High tells the story of Emma Redding, a young fast food restaurant employee who musters her inner Erin Brockovich and tries to start a union. When new management takes over the local fast food restaurant, favoritism, unstable hours and sexual harassment come with it. Eager to do something about it, Emma risks losing her job, her boyfriend, and her status with the "in" crowd as she squares off against big business in the greatest challenge of her young life.

The discovery of a way of turning petrol into water makes a fortune and romance for the young inventor.

At Baycrest, an old-age home in Toronto, we follow a social worker as she talks to residents, particularly Max, Claire, Ida, and Rachel. The film opens on Claire's birthday, she's 89; Max, a tiny cheerful man, is her close friend. Rachel is lonesome, missing her son, complaining he rarely visits. Ida relies on memory for her solace. Helen has no memory and doesn't recognize her daughter; her moods swing. Murray keeps his cap on and likes women. Staff members bring medication, provide care, and offer small talk. Memory is fleeting: Claire re-experiences the death of a close companion several times, each time without remembering her previous grieving. Lives are circumscribed

A young, hipster entrepreneur crashes and burns on the eve of his company’s big launch. With his entire life in disarray, he leaves Manhattan to move in with his estranged pregnant sister, brother-in-law and three year-old nephew in the suburbs — only to become their manny. Faced with real responsibility, he may finally have to grow up — but not without some bad behavior first.

Staples, a successful plant operator, is brought in from Ohio to take an executive position at Ramsey & Co. in New York. He forms a friendship with Briggs, the long-time vice president, but it soon becomes apparent that Walter Ramsey, who has inherited the position of CEO, is grooming Staples to replace Briggs. Ramsey will not fire Briggs, instead doing everything he can to humiliate and sabotage Briggs until he resigns.

A huge, alien structure resembling an inverted cone, appears in the woods outside a small rural town. Sent from Washington to investigate the origin of the mysterious object, a team of investigators discovers that intelligent parasites from inside the "cone" can attach themselves to humans' nervous systems and control their minds, taking control of the authorities and workers, making communication with the outside world impossible, and leaving the responsibility of stopping the invasion up to seven people who have thus far been able to avoid possession by these creatures from parts unknown.

This story shows the two different parts of acting. The father is a strong, ambitious and inconsiderate actor but his son (Tibor) is a sensitive one. This all takes part somewhere in Hungary when socialism "controlled" the country.

The Horatio Alger parable gets the film noir treatment with the redoubtable Edmund O’Brien as a whip-smart telephone technician who moves up the ladder of a Syndicate gambling empire in Southern California until distracted by an inconveniently married Joanne Dru and his own greed. Ripped from the headlines of the 1950 Kevaufer Organized Crime Hearings, this fast-moving picture is laden with location sequences shot in Los Angeles, the Hoover Dam and Palm Springs including the famous Doll House watering hole on North Palm Canyon Drive!

Ellie and Joe Farrelly are a busy couple bringing up a teenage son while running a large building company. When they suddenly have twins, a stranger comes into their life at just the time when they need help the most.

Men, most of them naked, talk about their penises. They range from 17 to 70+, all from the U.S. The interviews are edited around themes: discovery, early sexual experiences, masturbation, size, oral sex, libido, performance, disease and maladies, maturity. A lexicographer discusses language, especially slang; a few archival educational-film clips divide the topics. Images and stories mix with facts and philosophical reflection. The usually private becomes public.

Ken Williams is determined to discover the identity of the mysterious Rattler, who preys upon railroads and transportation companies like that owned by Jane Corwin. The Rattler is especially difficult to catch because of his skill at disguising himself as other people.

The heroes of the film are manual workers, members of a Socialist Brigade. Gyula, the brigade leader once has a dream where the gate-keeper searches through Lenin, about to leave the factory. He decides to stage Gelman's play, Premium, with his brigade, since the drama very effectively depicts what they see in the world around.

Great white sharks bio-engineered to be the size of piranhas with the purpose of living in rich peoples exotic aquariums, terrorize New York City when they get into the water supply and do what great white sharks do best.

Jim Glover is an engineer in charge of constructing a railroad to the sea. He gives the company president Gage a tour of the area of land coveted for its use as a short cut that can save hours on the journey. After the officials visit a recently constructed dam, the train makes a stop in a dull town, and Gage's daughter Laura throws a charity bazaar to combat the boredom. Jim puts together a mock-holdup that saves the event from financial ruin, endearing Laura to him. Later, an accident traps three workers in a cave, and Jim is called away to rescue the victims.

Guy Martin helps restore XH558, the last airworthy Avro Vulcan bomber, to prepare it for its last ever flight, a 1000-mile farewell tour of Great Britain, before it is grounded.

Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes was the hip-hop voice of TLC, the best selling female R&B group of all time. On March 30th, 2002, Lisa decided to document her life. She filmed at a mysterious spiritual retreat deep in the jungles of Honduras, but 26 days later, after a tragic accident, she was dead and her unedited tapes were left behind. Last Days of Left Eye is the re-imagining of the film Lisa never got to complete. Revealing private moments from Lisa's journals and home movies, along with highlights from her celebrated career, this film is an intimate journey into the soul of a talented and still provocative young artist. Directed by Lauren Lazin, Academy Award nominated director of Tupac: Resurrection (2005, Best Documentary Feature), Last Days of Left Eye has screened to sold-out audiences at film festivals around the world.

Seven-year-old Kayla's father dies unexpectedly on a mission in the U.S which changes Kayla's life completely. She takes on the responsibility of her broken family. She inspires the people around her with love and singing. And in the end, she manages to carve out a happy life.

An award winning Indie festival favorite, AESOP is a film about a company that has developed a pill that ends the aging process, meaning people will not age or die of old age. Unfortunately, not everyone will get it. Ruth works at AESOP, helping decide who gets the pill and who doesn't. She meets and falls in love with Marie, and eventually learns that Marie will not be eligible for the pill.

The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) — a group of current and former Amazon workers in New York City’s Staten Island — takes on one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies in the fight to unionize.

Two women fight to hold the manufacturers accountable for the Agent Orange catastrophe. Incriminating documents disappear. Activists are threatened. A helicopter technician secretly films the contamination exposing a massive cover-up.