Best movies like Occident

In this very black comedy about ill-suited neighbors united by marriage, Niki is a former colonel in the Romanian army whose daughter is married to the son of Flo, an aging Bohemian who is full of schemes for the “new” Romania. As the young couple prepares to emigrate to the U.S., Niki is obliged to interact with Flo, whom he finds totally unbearable.

A description of Romania before Ceausescu's downfall, through the story of Nela. Daughter of a former colonel of the Securitate, the romanian political police. She refused to become as her sister, an agent of this Securitate, and lives with her father. After he died, she leaves Bucharest, and ends up in a little town, where she meets Mitica, a surgeon, another herself, laughing of everything.

A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.

Amid the bitter divisiveness of the Civil War, Confederate Capt. Robert Adams (Julian Adams) feels the rift within his soul. Steadfastly loyal to the South, Adams also holds an unshakable love for his Northerner wife, Eveline McCord (Gwendolyn Edwards). Based on the true story of Robert Adams and produced by his descendents, this stirring historical drama -- a film festival favorite -- delves into the themes of honor, patriotism and love.

Bathsheba Everdine, a willful, flirtatious, young woman, unexpectedly inherits a large farm and becomes romantically involved with three widely divergent men.

Wanting to follow the current trend, Francesca, a young teacher from Bucharest, is eager to emigrate to Italy. Unfortunately,whilst desperately seeking support from those nearest and dearest to her, various untold truths unravel.

Toma and Ana meet as students in the literature faculty, and quickly fall in love. But, because of Ana's mental illness, their relationship slowly collapses.

After his daughter is assaulted and left with an injury that may jeopardize her opportunity to study in the UK, a Romanian doctor decides to do whatever it takes to secure her future.

Two doctors in Victorian England use manual stimulation of female genitalia to cure their patients' ills, leading to the invention of the vibrator.

Elijah has been bounced from group home to group home throughout his turbulent young life. What has sustained him is his art. After a promised scholarship is taken away, Elijah ends up in a fight that result in the death of another boy. Now, sentenced to a minimum of fifteen years, the young man must find a way to keep his soul alive behind bars or turn into a hardened bitter criminal.

First of all, the title does not refer to someone sentenced to jail. It is a movie about 6 lifetime friends who are all hitting the big `3-0' together during the same year. Each one looks inside themselves to see where has my life gone and what am I going to do with my future. Actually, what I saw was a black Seinfeld comedy. Tracy Morgan, who is one of the main characters, is a struggling comedian just like Jerry Seinfeld. He gives his opinion of what women want in a man in one of his comedy routines. Melissa De Sousa is looking for a man before time runs out. She is just like Elaine in Seinfeld. I don't remember the big problem with turning thirty, however, all the characters in this movie can show you what they are, such as not having fame, riches, a husband, a thin body, and staying young. Their life stories are probably repeated many times around the world.

When famed photographer Christina Eames dies unexpectedly, she leaves her estranged daughter, Mae, hurt, angry and full of questions. When Mae finds a photograph tucked away in a safe-deposit box, she soon finds herself delving into her mother's early life -- an investigation that leads to an unexpected romance with a rising journalist.

When an entire town in upstate New York is closed down by an unexpected snowfall, a "snow day" begins when a group of elementary school kids, led by Natalie Brandston, try to ensure that the schools stay closed by stopping a mechanical snowplow driver by trying to hijack his plow truck. Meanwhile, Natalie's big brother Hal is using this day to try to win the affections of Claire Bonner, the most popular girl in his high school, while Hal and Natalie's father Tom, a TV meteorologist, faces off against a rival meteorologist for weather coverage of the day's events.

An attempt to bring the work of surrealist artists to a wider public. The plot is that of an average Joe who can conjure up dreams that will improve his customer's lives. This frame story serves as a link between several avant-garde sequences created by leading visual artists of their day, most of whom were emigres to the US during WWII.

A touching story of eight very different people who are at a crossroads in life and must make decisions that will forever change who they are. Jack must decide to spend the rest of his life with his girlfriend Terri. Marina must reconnect with her aging father. Laurel must embrace her new pregnancy and come to terms with her father’s early Alzheimer's. And Dave must learn why life is worth living.

Delia, a young Romanian girl, comes to Bucharest with her parents to collect a prize she has won in a contest organized by a soft-drinks company. The prize is a beautiful new car. All Delia has to do now is appear in front of the camera in a commercial. All goes well until it becomes clear that Delia and her parents have very different ideas about what to do with the new car. Meanwhile, the contest's sponsor needs a radiant prize-winner with a gleaming smile. A wicked satire and a psychological portrait of a society perverted by its slavery to capitalism and consumerism

Sheridan O'Connor and Riccardo Rossi were destined to meet on the set of their first big movie together when barely out of their teens. What they didn't know was that their on-screen chemistry would translate into a hot and heavy off-screen romance destined only for disaster. Now, living continents apart and a lifetime later, expecting their paths never to cross again, they are thrown back together to star in an updated version of their original film. The studio has high hopes that they will be able to attract the same audience who loved them the first time around. But working together again could demand greater acting skills than either ever imagined: long hours filming awkward romantic scenes, reliving the past and coming face to face with what fate has in store for them. Only slightly shaken and gently stirred by family and friends, Sheridan and Riccardo must find a way to make the perfect martini out of life so as not to waste a single drop of happiness.

In Old California, a young Frenchman transporting a chest full of silver travels by stagecoach to San Marino, to complete a complex business deal. The stagecoach is ambushed by a band of men whose leader, a mysterious bandido known as Cisco (Gilbert Roland), claims the silver is money that was extorted over a period of years from the poor people of California. The bandits take the money and escape, but Cisco stays behind with the Frenchman -- who, it turns out, is actually a lovely mademoiselle, Jeanne DuBois (Ramsay Ames). She follows him to the bandit's lair, where Cisco tells her he intends to return the stolen money to the poor people. The two rivals are irresistibly drawn to each other, however, and as a token of love Cisco offers to return the money to Jeanne instead. Now she must decide whether to complete her business deal, or to comply with Cisco's wishes and redistribute the wealth.

When his daughter goes missing in an apparent alien abduction, Gabriel's search takes him dangerously close to her strange group of so-called friends. But the further he goes inside their computer game and fantasy-obsessed world, the more he realises that he must confront his own difficult memories if he is to get his daughter back.

Chico is a young piano player with big dreams. Rita is a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice. Music and romantic desire unites them, but their journey - in the tradition of the Latin ballad, the bolero - brings heartache and torment.

Two childhood friends are separated after one’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one week as they confront notions of destiny, love and the choices that make a life.

While waiting for their bus five passengers who have all just had horrible nightmares decide to tell them to each other to help kill time. A swimmer, who has lessons in a swimming pool with a dead swimmer, tells the first one. A young boy, who goes camping with two friends and has a crazy man as a leader, is next. Then a lonely woman, who has an infatuation with the anchor of a late night show, and finds that he is indeed a vampire. A young man, who finds he has the gift of bringing dead people back to life, brings a cold blood criminal back to life. Last, a skeptic professor of anthropology tells to his students about an evil native Mexican creature from the Middle Ages called "Ixpe", and a young woman embodies it. When the bus finally arrives they get a huge surprise.

When event planner Chloe is hired to plan the local Christmas Festival, she is beyond thrilled to embrace the challenge. Professionally, everything is going great, but much to the dismay of her mother, Chloe confesses she has given up on ever finding Mr. Right. That all changes the night of the opening of the festival when she meets Evan. The two begin a whirlwind romance, but as Christmas Day nears, Chloe learns that Evan is being transferred overseas for work. What follows is three more Christmases where Chloe and Evan cross paths at the annual festival, but each year something - or someone - stands in the way of true love. Will a touch of Santa's magic on their fourth Christmas Eve finally bring them together?

Ilie, a small-town police chief, wants to build a modest comfortable life for himself, but ends up making the wrong choices. Middle-aged and alienated, he feels the need to be a part of something - to build an orchard, even a home. Although dubious things happen in the village, Ilie only sees what suits him. The moment he gets involved in the village marks the beginning of his collapse. In a vacuum of solutions, he tries to be what he has never been before: the justice seeker who arrests everyone guilty.

At a Christmastime event, Jenna shares an impromptu, unforgettable kiss with the dashing billionaire, Cooper Montgomery. Unaware of his intentions and fearful of getting hurt in another relationship, Jenna vows to resist his charms, but begins to realize his affection is real as the two spend more time together.

Tales from the Golden Age is composed of 6 unconventional short stories, each one dealing with the late communist period in Romania, told through its urban myths from the perspective of ordinary people. The title of the film refers to the alluded "Golden Age" of the last 15 years of Ceauşescu's regime.

Wonderfully surreal, painfully real, this is the story of children, adults and animals who live together trying to have a better life, but sometimes death comes unexpectedly. The lives of three characters surrounded by a bunch of extraordinary, funny, absurd but quite realistic events. It is all about us, people who eat the animals that they love and the animals that love people unconditionally.

Pacala is an important hero in Romanian popular tradition. He is always making fun of everything wrong with the human behaviour such as stupidity, greed or vanity. His attitude and actions always bring damages to the mean, evil and materialistic people. So beside the jokes, the movie has this philosophical layer, undoubtedly because Pacala's independent way of being, free spirit and his love for the nature creates a way of seeing life, bringing joy. Filmed in a very beautiful part of Romania in 1974, the movie had an important success at that time and it is considered one of the most loved movies in Romania ever. Like the hero, found in many stories and jokes, the movie forwards the spirit of true freedom and pure link with the nature, forgetting about times and governments.

A feisty 17th-century Scotswoman falls in love with a despised landowner, to the dismay of her father.

NELU, a man in his forties, works as a security guard in the local supermarket in Salonta, a small town on the Romanian-Hungarian border. This is the place where many illegal emigrants try to cross, by any means posible, to Hungary and then further to Western Europe. One morning, NELU will “fish” something different out of the river: a Turkish man trying to cross the border. Not able to communicate verballly, the two men will somehow understand each other. NELU takes the stranger to the farmhouse, gives him some dry clothes, food and shelter. He doesn’t really know how to help this stranger. The Turkish man gives NELU all the money he has on him so he will help him cross the border. Eventually, NELU takes the money and promises he will help him cross the border tomorrow, MORGEN…

Bucharest 1989 - the last year of Ceausecu's dictatorship. Eva lives with her parents and her 7 year old brother, Lalalilu. One day at school, Eva and her boyfriend accidentally break a bust of Ceausescu. They are forced to confess their crime before a disciplinary committee and Eva is expelled from school and transferred to a reformatory establishment. There she meets Andrei, and decides to escape Romania with him. Lalalilu becomes convinced that Ceausescu is the main reason for Eva's decision to leave. So with his friends from school he devises a plan to kill the dictator.

Box is a story of two people who meet at a crossroad. Two different destinies, two different lives, face to face in a game of sweat, blood and tears. Rafael (19) is a young boxer who dreams to conquer the world; Cristina (33) is a single mother who lost her balance. Two lives; one running very close to the earth, the other trying to fly high up, too high.

Emigration is one of the most pronounced issues faced by the post-communist Romanian society. With a script inspired from the life of the Romanian community in Cyprus, the film tells a painful, personal story in a world in which we use only numbers to talk about emigration, prostitution and suffering, as an unfortunate statistic. Abused by her step father, then driven away from home, Eva, a Romanian teenager, becomes a victim of human trafficking. She ends up prostituting herself in Cyprus. Years later, the young woman creates her own web of relations and becomes a full-fledged "courtesan" for influential men: politicians, diplomats, business people. Her life takes a dramatic turn when she is diagnosed with AIDS.

Alex, in his mid-thirties, is a quite neurotic character. When his mother is hospitalized with a stroke, the caring son's life gets out of track. At the hospital he finds himself in a burlesque kind of human zoo full of unexpected characters and surprising events. Trying to manage the situation in between everybody's advice, he's coming hypochondriac. While his mother seems to feel perfectly fine Alex is making his own set of mistakes - throughout with best intentions.

An animated feature-length documentary telling the story of the life of Crulic, a 33 year-old Romanian accused of having stolen a wallet from an important Polish judge. Crulic was brought to the Krakow Detention Center Custody prison. He decided to start a hunger strike from the day he was arrested, demanding a meeting with somebody from the Romanian Consulate.