Best movies like Platform

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Platform Starring Zhao Tao, Wang Hongwei, Liang Jingdong, Tian Yi Yang, and more. If you liked Platform then you may also like: Youth, Unknown Pleasures, Upstage, When China Met Africa, Queer China, 'Comrade' China 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.

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China's rapid changes from the late-1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

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Youth

A group of performing art troupe members each face their own trials and tribulations in Chengdu; from escaping a family scandal to dealing with unrequited love, each experiences rejection that shapes their lives.

Unknown Pleasures

Three disaffected youths live in Datong in 2001, part of the new "Birth Control" generation. Fed on a steady diet of popular culture, both Western and Chinese, the characters of Unknown Pleasures represent a new breed in the People's Republic of China, one detached from reality through the screen of media and the internet.

Upstage

Dolly Havens, a small-town girl with big-town ambitions that are larger than her talents, hooks up with Johnny Storm, a vaudeville performer, whose talents make the act a success. Dolly, thinking she is the reason, meets a handsome leading man and joins up with him but, before long, he discovers 'she ain't a trouper' and she is soon performing with 4th-class acts in Tank Town America

When China Met Africa

A cinematic feature documentary about China's foray into Africa told through the lives of Chinese adventurers & Zambian power brokers as they negotiate the tricky waters of this rapidly expanding and vital relationship.

Queer China, 'Comrade' China

This documentary reviews and summarises the development of homosexuality as an issue in the past three decades in China. We interviewed thirty prominent figures in the gay community, who have experienced the changes of views and life-styles regarding homosexuality.

Quitting

An actor becomes increasingly introverted and psychotic and his entire family attempts to intervene.

Red Amnesia

A retired widow has her daily routine derailed when she starts receiving mysterious, anonymous phone calls.

Round Eyes In The Middle Kingdom

Filmmaker Ronald Levaco, journeys back to China, the nation of his boyhood days, to discover what became of an old friend of his family, Israel Epstein.

Jasmine Women

Zhang Ziyi plays the youngest of three generations of women who leads lives in Shanghai. Joan Chen plays the great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. The film recounts this family, the mistakes they make, and a cycle that the granddaughter breaks out of.

Kelly and Me

Failing vaudeville performer, Len, is taken under the wing of the German Shepherd wonder dog, Kelly, and a new act is born. Len hopes all his dreams are coming true when he finds himself in Hollywood ... but Kelly is the one in demand on the big screen.

Finding Neverland

During a writing slump, playwright J.M. Barrie meets a widow and her four children, all young boys—who soon become an important part of Barrie’s life and the inspiration that lead him to create his masterpiece. Peter Pan'.

Dam Street

Yun is shunned when she becomes pregnant in school, and her mother gives the child up for adoption. When Yun tutors a boy 10 years later, her mother discovers he is Yun's son.

Farewell My Concubine

Abandoned by his prostitute mother in 1920, Douzi was raised by a theater troupe. There he meets Shitou and over the following years the two develop an act entitled "Farewell My Concubine" that brings them fame and fortune. When Shitou marries Juxian, Douzi becomes jealous, the beginnings of the acting duo's explosive breakup and tragic fall take root.

To Live

Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry. Addicted to gambling, Fugui loses everything. In the years that follow he is pressed into both the nationalist and communist armies, while Jiazhen is forced into menial work.

The East Is Red

Pre-Cultural Revolution propaganda at its most lavish, this model opera depicts the history and evolution of the Communist Party of China under Mao Zedong from its founding in July 1921 to the establishment of "New China" in 1949. Detailed in the musical are several key events in CPC history such as the Northern Expedition, the KMT-led Shanghai massacre of 1927, the Nanchang Uprising and formation of the People's Liberation Army, the Long March and the founding of the PRC on October 1, 1949.

Back in Time

A man recounts his life in Beijing during the 1980s and reminisces about the one truth that allowed him to endure.

Madeline's Madeline

Madeline has become an integral part of a prestigious physical theater troupe. When the workshop's ambitious director pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation rips out of the rehearsal space and through all three women's lives.

Paris Belongs to Us

A young woman joins a theatrical troupe where she slowly believes that the director is involved with a secret group and that he is in grave danger.

I Wish I Knew

Focuses on the people, their stories and architecture spanning from the mid-1800s, when Shanghai was opened as a trading port, to the present day.

Lady of Burlesque

After one member of their group is murdered, the performers at a burlesque house must work together to find out who the killer is before they strike again.

The Phantom Lover

In 1936 China, a nearly bankrupt drama troupe starts performing in a burned-out theater where the great actor Song Danping was killed. One of the actors, Wei Qing, starts seeing strange apparitions that could revive his troupe and deliver him to the same fate as Song Danping.

Shakespeare-Wallah

The story of a family troupe of English actors who travel around the towns and villages in India giving performances of Shakespearean plays. Through their travels we see the changing face of India as the old is replaced by the new, Maharajas become hotel owners, sports become more important than culture and the theater is replaced by Bollywood movies. Based on the travels of Geoffrey Kendal with his daughter Felicity Kendal.

Song at Midnight

In this Chinese version of The Phantom of the Opera, the mysterious Song Danping terrorizes the newly rebuilt opera house and its young star.

Stolen Desire

A rumbunctious and ribald tale of a troupe of travelling actors who alternate highlights of kabuki theatre with strip shows.

Sunflower

Sunflower is the story of the Zhang family in Beijing father, mother and son across three decades, centering on the tensions and misunderstandings between father and son. Nine-year-old Xiangyang is having the time of his life, free of adult supervision until the day he meets the father he can hardly remember. Having spent years away, he returns with strong ideas about his son learning to draw. But Xiangyang chafes under his father's constant rules and soon stages his own revolution against the lessons enforced.

The Three-Body Problem

Based on the novel of the same name by Cixin Liu, the first in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. Hundreds of physicists died mysteriously. A Chinese nanomaterials expert, Wang Miao, sees a mysterious countdown in his eyes. Soon he finds out that the "disastrous planet" under three suns in a game really exists. The three-body civilization there will reach the Earth in 400 years. A future catastrophe is coming for humanity...

Traces of a Dragon: Jackie Chan & His Lost Family

A surprising look at the past of movie star Jackie Chan and the difficulties of Chinese families during the Culture Revolution.

The Day the Hot Line Got Hot

The most ultra-secret telephone number of all is that of the "Hot'Line' that links the heads of state of the United States and Moscow. A conniving double agent manages to steal the top secret phone number and then begins to implement chaos by phoning Washington and Moscow, telling the two powers that their respective spy chiefs are traitors. It's spy versus spy, agent versus double agent, counter spy against counter-counter spy in a rapidly increasing international crisis that finds its solution on the stage of Chinese theater in Barcelona, Spain as the spy leaders, the traitorous agent, a beautiful girl, three old ladies, a young man caught up in the chain of events and a troupe of acrobats collide head on in battle.

The Prude

Pierre is the artistic director of a theater, and when his daughter Manon lets him know that she is coming to see him after a year's absence, Pierre decides to prepare for the meeting. He goes to the theater with his girlfriend Ariane and has the actresses in his troupe act out different aspects of his daughter's character. Unfortunately, this is not adequate preparation, for when Manon does show up, nothing goes quite as he imagined...

Drifters

The young adult life of Hong Yunsheng, nicknamed Little Brother, is seen as somewhat of a failure by those that know him. A Chinese national, he stowed away on a boat to the United States, where he worked as a dishwasher in the restaurant of a family from his hometown back in Fujian province. After two years in the States and after fathering an illegitimate child there named Fusheng, the child's mother Xuhui who is the restaurateur's daughter, he was deported back to China. Since, he has been floundering in life, which has caused a rift between himself and his older brother, who, with his wife, operate a street front diner and can't have children of their own. Little Brother relies on his new girlfriend, a woman he barely knows named Wu Ruifang who is a performer in a touring opera troupe, for emotional support. Despite Little Brother being the local poster boy for not stowing away, his friend named Monkey tried to do the same, but died on the voyage over due to exposure to toxic ..

Hibiscus Town

Based on a novel by the same name written by Gu Hua, a melodrama about the life and travails of a young woman who lives through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

Follow several talented members of the ensemble as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways art can both preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution.

Last Summer in the Hamptons

Helena Mora, the head of an eccentric theatrical family, has decided to sell her large estate in the Hamptons because of her recent money troubles. Before she completes the sale, she wants to have one last gathering of family and friends, with dramatic performances. Bringing everyone together, though, creates rivalries and tension, especially for Oona, a temperamental but successful movie actress who seeks the approval of her creative peers.

Murder at the Windmill

A man watching a musical show at the Windmill theatre is shot apparently from the stage. The cast continues the performance so that the detective can solve the murder.

The South Shaolin Master

The narrative centres on a nomadic opera troupe who travel to various towns as part of their nationwide tour and astound the locals with their skills. When visiting a coastal town, one of the young performers becomes involved in a market brawl after two local bullies begin to push their weight around. The righteous young performer is saved from a vicious beating at the hands of the thugs by a mysterious fighter who uses his sublime abilities to save the day. He gradually reveals to his new friends that he is a former Shaolin student and a staunch patriot - readily opposing the Manchu rulers. In a finale filled with glorious fight action, the time for revenge is realised and the battle between good and evil once again takes place.

Smoky River Serenade

The ramshackle Smoky River Ranch is all that stands in the way of a developer and a big real-estate deal, but the old man who owns the ranch won't sell it, because he has to take care of some down-and-out theater people to honor his dead son's memory. Frustrated, the developer sends in a pretty young girl to try to trick the old man into selling the ranch.

Zhu De & Agnes Smedley

American journalist Smedley visits Zhu De and is attracted by his personality.

Forever Young

At the end of the 1980s, Stella, Victor, Adèle and Etienne are 20 years old. They take the entrance exam to the famous acting school created by Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Romans at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre. Launched at full speed into life, passion, and love, together they will experience the turning point of their lives, but also their first tragedy.

The Gods Must Be Funny in China

In the early 1990s, Nǃxau was cast in three low-budget unofficial sequels that continued the fish-out-of-water aspects of the first two films.

Dixiana

A circus performer falls in love with the son of a plantation owner in antebellum New Orleans. When the young man's stepmother objects to the wedding, the couple break apart and go their separate ways for a time. Also in the mix are two circus comics who feud over the heart of another Southern belle.

Grand Guignol

Sarah, the wife of a theater director, decides to leave her mutt of a husband because she is tired of his morbid fantasies. It is true that Baptiste has a rather unstable troupe that rehearses horror plays in a dance hall. Sarah comes out of the wings for life, but it turns out to be as incongruous and phantasmagorical as her husband's plays. This is why she returns to him. "The real grand guignol is life. The other is the farce."

Witness to Waco: Inside the Siege

An in-depth look into the Branch Davidians, a religious cult led by David Koresh in the late 1980s and early 1990s that ultimately met with a tragic, fiery end.

Ping-Pong: The Triumph

In the early 1990s when the Chinese men's table tennis team is at a low ebb, head coach Cai Zhenhua is tasked with forming a new team to finally fight to the top at the 1995 World Ping Championship in Tianjin, China.

Children of Chaos

Is there still a chance for Marie, an unwed young mother and a former drugs addicted prostitute, who is sent to a reformatory school?

Shadow of China

A Chinese immigrant tries to make his way to the top as a businessman in Hong Kong while his former radicalism is transformed into cynicism.

Phantom of the Theatre

A haunted theatre, filled with the vengeful spirits of a tragically-trapped performance troupe murdered in a fire 13 years ago, waits for the once-grand palatial playhouse to re-open with a new show - and bring in new victims.

The Blind Orchestra

In the early years of the reign of Hassan II, Houcine, a fan of the new king, is the director of a popular orchestra and the proud father of Mimou. This is a very particular troupe, male musicians who are sometimes forced to pretend that they are blind in order to play at parties reserved for women in conservative Moroccan families. But then young Minou runs into Chama, the neighbor’s new maid

Record Without Words

In the early 1990s, "Public Order Defence Squads" in China — usually made up of discharged military personnel, unemployed young adults and local hooligans — were supposed to maintain public order in villages and towns. Most of the time, however, they ended up dealing with all sorts of mundane matters in their towns. The story begins with a mysterious case of serial dog killings. LI Lizhong, leader of the local defence squad, starts an investigation into the case, following a set of strange clues and studying them using piecemeal knowledge of primitive criminology and ichnology. After a string of hijinks, the squad catches the dog killer. However, the evidence also shows that the case is closely related to the accidental death of Lizhong’s father.

From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China

A beautiful expression of two differing cultures brought together by the warmth and dedication of a great musician and humanitarian. In 1979, as China re-opened its doors to the West, virtuoso Isaac Stern received an unprecedented government invitation to tour the country. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2000.

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