Best movies like Return from Africa

Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a Poetry Festival in Shiraz, Iran, but she’d rather be in Paris. She lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. Once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of poets and Persians, all who tell her stories that force her to confront her past; the Iranian father she assumed abandoned her and the nature of Poetry itself. It’s about building bridges between cultural and generational divides. It’s about being curious. Staying open. And finding your own voice through the magic of poetry. Rosie goes on an unwitting journey of forgiveness, reconciliation, and perhaps above all, understanding, through learning about her father’s past, her own cultural identity, and her responsibility to it.

Madeleine, who runs a disco on the French-Swiss border, dreams of going to Paris to pursue a singing career. Her lover, Paul, who makes his living smuggling money, gold and goods across the border, plans to emigrate to Canada. Mali, a pretty young Algerian woman who lives in France and works in Switzerland, would like to be anywhere except where she is. Louis, born on a Swiss farm and trained as a clockmaker, would give anything to leave his mistress, Lucie, and move in with Mali.

A look at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties. Max, a dissatisfied copy editor; Myriam, a redhead into tantric sex; and Marie, a supermarket checker who gives unauthorized discounts to the elderly, search for renewed meaning on a communal farm. The title character, a six-year-old child, is the carrier of their hopes for the future.

This European existential drama utilizes complex symbols inspired by abstract psychological theories to explore the effects and reasons behind a young classical actor's decision to stop talking. No one knows why Massimo has vowed to stop talking. Other than speaking dialog from classical plays, Massimo refuses to say a single word. His father, a classic-literature professor believes it reflects to a disappointing love affair. His new girlfriend thinks Massimo is rebelling against his mother, a poet. A director learns of Massimo and commissions his mother to write a play about him. Though Massimo plays himself in the play, and does speak, he returns to silence when the play is finished.

The official record of Mallory and Irvine's 1924 expedition. When George Mallory and Sandy Irvine attempted to reach the summit of Everest in 1924 they came closer than any previous attempt. Inspired by the work of Herbert Ponting (The Great White Silence) Captain Noel filmed in the harshest of conditions, with specially adapted equipment, to capture the drama of the fateful expedition.

A manipulative childhood acquaintance worms her way into a teenager's circle of friends at an all-girls boarding school.

Paul is married, a successful engineer, and a conservative candidate in an upcoming local election. He falls in love with Adriana, a café waitress from Italy. Paul's party is very critical of foreign labour and wants to keep Switzerland to the Swiss. Where Paul falls deeper and deeper into the relationship and is ready to leave his wife, Adriana feels the social pressure growing and has to make her own decision.

It’s December 1999, and 25-year-old Jonah has just graduated from film school. As the new millennium begins, Jonah marries his longtime sweetheart Lila. Over the course of six months, the couple meet a number of interesting people, including Irina, an exiled Russian actress, as well as spending their time with Jonah’s sister Cecile and his filmmaking mentor Anziano. The discussions Jonah has with these friends and strangers help him to gain some perspective on his life and the new millennium.

A college boy with a speech impediment learns the hard way about love and heartbreak.

Paul has left his wife and children. Now his wife and ex-mistress is on the hunt for him.

Follows the lives of a group of young nurses in Los Angeles, including a nurse who joins a band of revolutionaries, and one who finds herself succumbing to drugs.

Inspired by the transformation of the sex-trafficking survivors whose lives she follows, the filmmaker finds the courage to break the silence about sexual abuse in her own life.

Mostly Sunny is a documentary that tells the remarkable story of Sunny Leone, the Canadian-born, American-bred adult film star who is pursuing her dreams of Bollywood stardom.

"Tallahatchie Bridge": With those two simple words, the powerful images of a lost innocence, a murky river and a mysterious suicide spring to mind. Scorning the demands of her overbearing family, Bobbie Lee Hartley and Billy Joe McAllister meet at their usual Choctaw Ridge trysting place and attempt to consumate their forbidden love. Ode attempts to reconcile modern moralites with a tradition-bound faith, and asks whether it's possible to commit a sin against a religion that won't even have you as a member.

Six years before this story begins, Rosemonde killed a would-be rapist. She was acquitted and returned to working part-time in a Geneva bar. Back in the present, a brand new television station seeks to create a television film about Rosemonde's life. The project is helmed by independent producer Kevin assigns his screen-writing pal Paul to interview Rosemonde and use it for the basis of a fictionalized teleplay. Unfortuantely for him, the taciturn and cynical barmaid wants nothing to do with project and refuses to speak to Paul. This satirical French-Swiss drama follows Paul as he simultaneously attempts to get her story and into her bed. Since Rosemonde refuses to speak to him, Paul decides to pay his ex-lover Marie, a serious stage actress, become the bar maid's friend.

Two young women from very different backgrounds journey into the countryside seeking respite from unsatisfactory lives and relationships, but ultimately find that there is no way back to the world they once knew.

Candice DeLong is Clarice Starling in "Silence of the Lambs," Samantha Waters on "Profiler" and Nicole Scott on "MISSING" all rolled into one tough female FBI agent. Lifetime's spine-tingling Original Movie is inspired by DeLong's harrowing real-life experiences in the field. DeLong (Jean Smart) is on the verge of retiring from the FBI so that she can spend more time with her son, when a serial rapist and murderer attacks one of her best friends. As a single working mom, she feels torn between her child's needs and avenging her girlfriend. Things get more complicated when she has to work the case with her married lover (played by A Martinez). This top cop's decisions will put her life in serious danger. Hold on, it's going to be a suspenseful ride!

In this high-camp farce, Goons legend Spike Milligan stars as William Topaz McGonagall, an unemployed Scottish weaver and aspiring poet laureate who falls in love with Queen Victoria - a brilliant cameo by Peter Sellers - and thereafter devotes his banal poetry to her. Though McGonagall's solicitations are rejected by the Queen, it doesn't stop the turgid prose, and pathos, from overflowing as McGonagall hilariously attempts to become the greatest poet in the land. The image of the bad poet, trapped by his romanticism and inspired by a muse with a tin ear, appealed mightily to Spike Milligan, and this cult British spoof features the Goons show maestro at his ridiculous, genre-defying best.

True story of Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone, inspired by his mother.

Two men, arty though somewhat staid, are drawn to the spirited and quixotic Rosemonde....

Lionel has a way with women. His sexual exploits make his friends jealous. One of them, Alain, challenges him to seduce a beautiful woman picked at random, fall in love with her and spend a night with her — but abstain from making love.

Delphine Seyrig, an extraordinary woman and actress, died on October 15, 1990. From "Last Year at Marienbad" by Alain Resnais to "India Song" by Marguerite Duras, she played in 34 films for cinema, 13 films for television and 33 plays. Jacqueline Veuve, filmmaker and friend of Delphine Seyrig, wanted to break the silence that has fallen on her memory by making a documentary that traces with emotion and subjectivity the life of the mythical actress, the fierce feminist but also the simple friend.

Speech-making is the art of persuasion. Well-honed rhetoric appeals not just to the mind, but to the heart and, deeper down, in the guts. Examining the speeches that provoked radical change, surprised pundits or shocked listeners, poet Simon Armitage dissects what makes a perfect speech. Simon gets the inside story behind some of the famous speeches of the modern age, talking to Tony Blair's speechwriter, to Earl Spencer on his controversial address at his sister's funeral and the woman who challenged the rioters in Hackney. We hear how Peter Tatchell confronted the BNP, Paul Boateng on how Enoch Powell's divisive speech personally affected him as a child, and Colonel Tim Collins, whose charge was to motivate his troops on the eve of the Iraq war. Simon discusses the nuts and bolts of speech writing with Vincent Franklin, aka the blue-sky thinking guru Stuart Pearson from The Thick of It, and gets tips on powerful delivery from actor Charles Dance.

Tender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place.

On the 100th anniversary of the founding of a watchmaking company in Geneva, Charles Dé the founder's 50-year-old grandson has had it: he speaks eccentrically to a reporter, recognizing his grandfather as a craftsman and his son as a businessman, but is evasive about himself. He gives his family the slip and moves in with a young couple he meets by chance, doing the cooking, reading, drinking, and engaging in philosophical discussions with them. The young couple comes to love Charles. In secret, he stays in touch with a daughter, and the rest of the family hires a private investigator to find him, setting in motion a business take-over that threatens his Bohemian happiness.

Woody Allen meets Frances Ha in this new British drama by first-time feature director, poet, actor and publisher Greta Bellamacina. Greta also stars as Celeste, a young mother trying to carve out a career as a poet in modern-day London. Meanwhile, friend and neighbour Stella (played by co-writer Sadie Brown), dreams of being an actor but spends much of her time babysitting Celeste’s son. Part ode to the city, this is a skilfully observed tale of friendship and family with a refreshingly understated sense of humour.

In The Beckoning Silence, Joe Simpson, whose amazing battle for survival featured in the multi-award winning "Touching the Void", travels to the treacherous North Face of the Eiger to tell the story of one of mountaineering's most epic tragedies. As a child, it was this story and that of one of the climbers in particular, that first captured Simpson's imagination and inspired him to take up mountaineering.

The efforts of an aspiring filmmaker to include an unwilling female in his production.

A young drifter meets up with a strange old man who claims that he has been taught to fly by birds

Koroviev, a police officer who teaches poetry in a brigade of police poets, is in search of a precious Bible annotated by Pierre Maheu, the captain of the St. Elias, a legendary ship. His quest leads him to befriend a young thief who introduces him to a mysterious woman named Coriandre.

Community Action Center is a 69-minute sociosexual video by A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner which incorporates the erotics of a community where the personal is not only political, but sexual. This project was heavily inspired by porn-romance-liberation films, such as works by Fred Halsted, Jack Smith, James Bidgood, Joe Gage and Wakefield Poole, which served as distinct portraits of the urban inhabitants, landscapes and the body politic of a particular time and place. Community Action Center is a unique contemporary womyn-centric composition that serves as both an ode and a hole-filler.

Inspired by a true story. A grieving mother enlists the help of her deceased daughter’s friend to track down her killer and wonders if the killer is someone close to home.

A young screenwriter and a wanna-be director find a backer for their latest movie project... a mafioso who expects his no-talent son to get the leading part.

Would An Innocent Woman Keep Silent? Would the fear of a murderer's death shake her from the Sphinx-like silence that shielded- who?

In this ode to resilience and life, Jean decides to set off on a one-way trip to a country destroyed by war with a minimum of luggage and a drill. But nothing is going exactly as planned. His despair quickly strikes him as derisory in the face of the fate of those who welcome him, clinging to the slightest hope of reconstruction. Upon contact with them, the urgency to end it no longer becomes so pressing, to the point where Jean little by little rediscovers a meaning in his existence.