Best movies like Our River... Our Sky

When single mom Kay Harris inherits a failing small-town diner, her eccentric Aunt Zena attempts to liven things up with a 'ghostly' practical joke. But when Zena suddenly suffers a stroke and her spirited prank is mistaken by the townspeople for a spiritual vision, Kay soon discovers that it'll take a real miracle to bring her community and her family back together!

In this Oscar-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower.

French drama based on the 1996 kidnapping and killing of seven monks in Algeria. A group of Trappist monks reside in the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria, where they live in harmony with the largely muslim population. When a bloody conflict between Algeria's army and Muslim Jihadi insurgents disrupts the peace, they are forced to consider fleeing the monastery and deserting the villagers they have ministered to. In the face of deadly violence the monks wrestle with their faith and their convictions, eventually deciding to stay and help their neighbours keep the army and the insurgents at bay.

The story of a soldier faced with mission of executing prisoners in an unspecified place and time. The film follows a hot summer day in the life of Džoni, a twenty-year-old recruit, who is sent to an abandoned farm on an unknown mission. The soldiers wait to battle unnamed terrorists, but instead, a bus full of prisoners arrives to the barracks. The commander orders the soldiers to execute the prisoners. At first, Džoni is shocked by the cruel killings, but as more prisoners arrive, he begins to enjoy the executions.

Ayesha is a widow with a secret past, living with her beloved son Saleem in a small town in Pakistan close to the Indian border. When the fires of Islamic nationalism invade their tranquil lives, Saleem and a few of the town's other young men are soon gripped by a religious fervour, and they attempt to bring radical Islamic law to their friends and neighbours. After a group of Sikh pilgrims arrive in town, tensions reach boiling point as Ayesha's haunted past comes rushing back.

With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.

In a quiet suburban town in the summer of 1958, two recently orphaned sisters are placed in the care of their mentally unstable Aunt Ruth. But Ruth's depraved sense of discipline will soon lead to unspeakable acts of abuse and torture that involve her young sons, the neighborhood children, and one 12-year-old boy whose life will be changed forever.

Although he already has searched Iraq unsuccessfully for weapons of mass destruction as a member of a UN mission, German bio-weapons expert Arndt Wolf is still obsessed with the idea that Saddam Hussein is hiding something. Nobody around him is interested in this topic any more. This changes abruptly when an Iraqi asylum seeker claims to have been involved in the manufacture of chemical weapons. The German Federal Intelligence Service summons Dr. Wolf to ascertain the legitimacy of the claims made by the informant, who has been given the code name “Curveball”.

Three friends, Victor, Amy and David, reunite after 10 years and uncover one of the key, hidden reasons for the war in Iraq.

Chronicles of everyday life in Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion.

After the death of her mother, Sara moves to the South Side of Chicago to live with her father and gets transferred to a majority-black school. Her life takes a turn for the better when befriends Chenille and her brother Derek, who helps her with her dancing skills.

Hatun Aynur Sürücü, a German woman of Kurdish origin, was shot dead by her brothers at a bus stop in 2005. The story of a woman who fought for her freedom and independence despite her family's objections, and whose life ended in a horrific murder.

Hafiz, a rascally beggar on the periphery of the court of Baghdad, schemes to marry his daughter to royalty and to win the heart of the queen of the castle himself.

The Polish artist Julia and her husband Piotr, a talented and successful composer, live in Kraków. When Julias's mother, Barbara falls ill with stomach cancer, the life of the family is falling apart. Julia accompanies her mother to death, but her husband Piotr is at rehearsals in Cologne and leaves her to cope with this difficult situation. Only her friend Adrian is at her side. Her father Jurek is also overwhelmed by the impending loss of his beloved wife. After the death of the mother her father takes comfort from alcohol. Shortly after the father dies. Julia found only in the arms of Adrian to rest, but this in turn destroyed her marriage to Piotr. After the loss of the parents and break up of the marriage she is now alone in the world with an uncertain future where Adrian is of little help

Following the death of Manu (Resetarits) in a car accident, the film relates the interwoven stories of several people who become indirectly connected by the events and aftermath of the crash.

If you ever find yourself traveling down Interstate 49 through Missouri, try not to blink—you may miss Rich Hill, population 1,396. Rich Hill is easy to overlook, but its inhabitants are as woven into the fabric of America as those living in any small town in the country. This movie intimately chronicles the turbulent lives of three boys living in said Midwestern town and the fragile family bonds that sustain them.

The military draft is back. Three best friends are drafted and given 30 days to report for duty. In that time they're forced to confront everything they believe about courage, duty, love, friendship and honor. If called to serve, what would you do?

Uninspired and newly single painter Sara is down on her luck and wants nothing more than to get away from her problems. When she decides to take a trip to visit her mom, she becomes involved in the efforts to save a local church which is in danger of closing down.

This is a story about a mother's love for her child and an activist's love for his country - and the stakes are life and death. Spanning five countries, THE ABOMINABLE CRIME explores the impacts of homophobia through the eyes of two gay Jamaicans who are forced to choose between their homeland and their lives. Simone, a young lesbian mother, survives being shot outside of her home by anti-gay gunmen. She must choose between living in hiding with her daughter in Jamaica or traveling alone to seek safety and asylum abroad. Maurice, Jamaica's leading gay-rights activist, is outed shortly after filing a lawsuit to overturn Jamaica's anti-sodomy law. He escapes to Canada, but decides to return to continue his activism.

The story of Mary Thomas, the mother of basketball star Isiah Thomas, and how she fought to keep her family together and her sons out of trouble despite the surroundings of poverty, drugs, crime and violence of their ghetto neighborhood.

After Fred von Bergen, a German immigrant in America, is forced from his job by anti-German hysteria before the first world war, he and his friend Bob Wilson leave America and join the German air force. There, both men fall in love with ambulance driver Alida Hoffman. When America enters the war, Bob is caught between loyalty to his home country and the threat of execution for desertion and treason to Germany. It remains for his friend Fred to extricate him from the dilemma - but at what cost?

This documentary tells the story of Rose West from baby to mother to murderer. This is a side to the world’s most notorious criminal that viewers have never seen before – her childhood. Using incredible first-hand accounts from people who knew her as a child; neighbours, teachers, friends and relatives, we’ll go through the key turning points in her upbringing that made her the killer she was to become. By intercutting between her harsh childhood and the psychopathic tendencies she presented in later life and the despicable crimes she would go on to commit, plus with the advice of on-screen psychologists; the viewer will get a better sense of why Rose West became the serial killer of at least 12 young women.

Set during the Iraq-Iran war in the 80s, the film tells of a tragicomic road trip set in Iraq's Kurdistan.

In 1959, underground revolutionaries try to assassinate Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Kassem in Baghdad. News reports claim they have failed, and at first the revolutionaries lay low, but as the secret police continue to comb the neighborhoods with house-to-house searches, they flee to the countryside. Among those fleeing is Saddam Hussein, the future president of the republic.

Trapped. Alone. Desperate. Is it by chance or fate that brings seven ordinary people together for the ride of their lives? When an incredible life changing event causes them to be trapped; they must struggle to retain their sense of purpose while devastation rains around them. Can they live through the violence, and the horrors that follow them? Time is running out - one of them wants everyone dead.

The peaceful order of the Sisters of No Mercy are forced to avenge the murder of one of their own when an evil priest and his co-hort 'Saint' Theresa use the order as a cover for drugs and prostitution. Sisters of No Mercy spoofs nunsploitation movies while melding movie making techniques with modern socio-political overtones and Internet found footage to create a viewing experience of meta-awareness. Sisters of No Mercy chronicles our madcap adventures as we try and nurture and develop the community needed to sustain our independent theatres and video stores here in Chicago. It's also an introduction to a little-known sub-genre of exploitation cinema called Nunsploitation. Sex! Violence! Nuns!

Under threat in Algeria, Ismahel emigrates to France where he wants to live and work, with the hope that the people he's fleeing from will forget him the time he is away. In the letters that he writes to the daughter that he left behind in his homeland, he tells his own story in the guise of the biblical tale of Jonas and the Whale. Somewhere in France, an elderly farmer has just lost his young son. His three other children help him as much as they can to get through the trial of the funeral, but the ceremony is halted when the old man falls ill. The two stories unfold parallel to each other and are alternated.

Amir is an illegal Pakistani immigrant smuggled into England in the 1960's to work, to send money to his family and perhaps even bring them over with him. A skilled laborer, he is forced to do unskilled work like shoveling sheep dung and processing wool. He lives in a boarding house with nearly a dozen other men, under the supervision of Hussein Shah. He befriends a young student, Sakib, who dreams of being a writer. Their existence is punctuated by secret movies, a visiting prostitute, fear of detection and deportation, and the gangster-like smuggler who comes by for his take every week. The household is shaken up by the arrival of a white girl, Shah's girlfriend, and the sense of femininity and family she brings.

Love Project despicts the lives of young adults developing within the artistic community around a production by director Touga. These Millennials are living in an era where everything seems transient, torn between their dreams of absolute freedom and anxieties about their uncertain future. They live in the fast lane and have difficult choices to make.

In the remote valleys of the Hindu Kush live the Kalash people, the smallest ethnic minority in Pakistan. With a distinct culture and polytheistic religion, they are said to be descendants of Alexander the Great’s troops. But modern life is reaching their valleys and their culture and way of live is under threat.

A flat in Ladbroke Grove, West London. 1952. When Hester Collyer is found by her neighbours in the aftermath of a failed suicide attempt, the story of her tempestuous affair with a former RAF pilot and the breakdown of her marriage to a High Court judge begins to emerge. With it comes a portrait of need, loneliness and long-repressed passion. Behind the fragile veneer of post-war civility burns a brutal sense of loss and longing.

"Jiyan" takes place in Halabja about five years after Saddam's infamous chemical attack in 1988. Diyari (Kurdo Galali) has come from his new homeland, America, to put up a badly needed new orphanage. As construction proceeds, he gradually becomes acquainted with the tragic individual stories of the survivors. Prime among these is orphan girl Jiyan (Pirsheng Berzinji), and her lively young cousin Sherko (Choman Hawrami). Although he seems to fit right into life in this impoverished town, Diyari can hardly absorb the catastrophe that hit there, nor can he accept the level of injury that he encounters. When the orphanage is ready, Diyari says his goodbyes, plunging Jiyan back into quiet despair.

Northpole, the magical city where Santa and his elves live and work is in trouble. Families around the globe have gotten too busy to enjoy the season together, and Northpole depends on their holiday happiness to keep running. In the hopes of turning things around, a determined young elf befriends a little boy with a lot of spirit. His skeptical journalist mom doesn’t have room in her heart for anything but the facts, so it’s going to take a little nudge from his charming teacher to create an unbeatable Christmas team to turn around this town and share the importance of the season with the whole world.

The film tells the story of 12 U.S. soldiers who guarded Saddam Hussein in the months leading up to his execution. It explores the two distinct sides of Saddam Hussein: the cruel tyrant who uses torture and murder as tools and the contemplative prisoner who exhibits surprising affection, dignity, and courage in the face of death. The film will delve into the guards' experiences and shows how Saddam's presence affected them on a personal level.

"LIFE WILL KNOCK YOU DOWN. THIS FILM WILL PICK YOU UP." This true story is about ordinary people who discover that faith happens in the midst of lifes twists and turns. Every incident in this film is based on actual events that came from the same small church. What do a drug addict, a feisty old lady, an African refugee, an ex-boxer, a salesman and a Chinese entrepreneur have in common? They are all connected through Heights Community Church.