Best movies like Shivers
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Shivers Starring Tomasz Hudziec, Teresa Marczewska, Marek Kondrat, Zdzisław Wardejn, and more. If you liked Shivers then you may also like: Waterland, Wetherby, Noi the Albino, Kes, King of the Hill 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.
A boy comes of age under an oppressive, cruel socialist government and watches as it slowly but surely distorts his family, his school and even his own thoughts.
You may filter the list of movies on this page for a more refined, personalized selection of movies.
Still not sure what to watch click the recommend buttun below to get a movie recommendation selected from all the movies on this list
Noi the Albino
17 year old Nói drifts through life on a remote fjord in Iceland. In winter, the fjord is cut off from the outside world, surrounded by ominous mountains and buried under a shroud of snow. Nói dreams of escaping from this white-walled prison with Íris, a city girl who works in a local gas station. But his clumsy attempts at escape spiral out of control.
King of the Hill
Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis. His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.
Bang Bang You're Dead
A troubled and bullied high school student fights against judgement from his community after threatening to bomb the football team.
Bridge to Terabithia
Jesse Aarons trained all summer to become the fastest runner in school, so he's very upset when newcomer Leslie Burke outruns him and everyone else. Despite this and other differences, including that she's rich, he's poor, and she's a city girl, he's a country boy, the two become fast friends. Together, they create Terabithia, a land of monsters, trolls, ogres, and giants and rule as king and queen.
The Chocolate War
A surreal portrait of a Catholic Private School and its hierarchy. A new student must submit to the bizarre rituals of his peers and the expectations of the school's administration by selling chocolates.
Acne
At the age of 13, Rafael Bregman has already lost his virginity, but has never kissed a girl. With his pimple-riddled face, his dysfunctional family, and a lowered self-esteem, getting this much anticipated first kiss proves trickier than expected. It's now time for Rafa to build up some self confidence and attract the attention of his class mate, Nicole...
The History Boys
The story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students at a Yorkshire grammar school in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. Bounced between their maverick English master, a young and shrewd teacher hired to up their test scores, a grossly out-numbered history teacher, and a headmaster obsessed with results, the boys attempt to pass.
Death of a President
After Poland won freedom from of its long overlordship by Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, it took a further four years for its National Assembly to elect Gabriel Narutowicz as its first president. Narutowicz was a professor who until his election had been living in Switzerland. Those were chaotic times, and shortly after his election, he was assassinated by right-wing fanatics. This epic Polish film chronicles the circumstances of Narutowicz's election and assassination.
Election
Tracy Flick is running unopposed for this year’s high school student election. But Jim McAllister has a different plan. Partly to establish a more democratic election, and partly to satisfy some deep personal anger toward Tracy, Jim talks football player Paul Metzler to run for president as well.
White Bird
Julian Albans, the bully who left Beecher Prep, is visited by his Grandmère from Paris and is transformed by her remarkable story of compassion and courage. As a girl in Nazi-occupied France, the young Grandmère goes into hiding with the help of a schoolmate, a young man who risks everything to give her the chance to survive. Together, they find beauty and love in the secret world of their own creation.
Machuca
Santiago, capital of Chile during the Marxist government of elected, highly controversial president Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports his leftist views by introducing a program at the prestigious "collegio" (Catholic prep school) St. Patrick to allow free admission of some proletarian kids. One of them is Pedro Machuca, slum-raised son of the cleaning lady in Gonzalo Infante's liberal-bourgeois home. Yet the new classmates become buddies, paradoxically protesting together as Gonzalo gets adopted by Pedro's slum family and gang. But the adults spoil that too, not in the least when general Pinochet's coup ousts Allende, and supporters such as McEnroe.
Detachment
A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.
Escape from the 'Liberty' Cinema
The screening of a movie "Daybreak" at the "Liberty" Cinema is interrupted by an unusual event - actors come to life on the screen, start conversations among themselves, draw the audience into them. Crowds gather around the cinema, the relevant authorities and services wonder what to do in this complicated situation. Also arriving is the censor, a man reaching his fifties, a one-time literary critic and journalist. The line between fiction and reality begins to blur.
Miguel Wants to Fight
In a neighborhood where fighting is stitched into the fabric of everyday life, Miguel has never found himself in one. However, when a combination of events turn his life upside down, Miguel and his friends enter into a series of misadventures.
Palindromes
Aviva is thirteen, awkward and sensitive. Her mother Joyce is warm and loving, as is her father, Steve, a regular guy who does have a fierce temper from time to time. The film revolves around her family, friends and neighbors.
Miss Stevens
Stuck at a crossroads in her personal life, it falls on high school English teacher Miss Stevens to chaperone three of her students — Billy, Margot and Sam — on a weekend trip to a drama competition.
King Jack
Growing up in a rural town filled with violent delinquents, Jack has learned to do what it takes to survive, despite having an oblivious mother and no father. After his aunt falls ill and a younger cousin comes to stay with him, the hardened 15-year-old discovers the importance of friendship, family, and looking for happiness even in the most desolate of circumstances.
Story of a Bad Boy
17 year old Pauly is a closeted high school kid who wants it all. His dad wants him to make the track team, his mom wants him to do well in band, and Pauly just wants to get closer to the new student teacher doing the school play.
The Long Day Closes
Bud is a lonely and quiet boy whose moments of solace occur when he sits in rapture at the local cinema, watching towering and iconic figures on the movie screen. The movies give Bud the strength to get through another day as he deals with his oppressive school environment and his burgeoning homosexuality.
Man of Marble
A young Polish filmmaker sets out to find out what happened to Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer who became a propaganda hero in the 1950s but later fell out of favor and disappeared.
Hamburger: The Motion Picture
Russell has been expelled from several schools for lewd, crude and nude conduct. Busterburger University is his last chance at education and satisfying his disappointed parents
Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin
Set in a small Ukrainian village during the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941 Private Chonkin, not overly endowed with intelligence, is left to guard a downed military aircraft. The authorities appear to have forgotten about him so this leaves him free to work his chams on the village postmistress, Njura, untill the local militia are tipped off.
Man of Iron
In Warsaw in 1980, the Communist Party sends Winkel, a weak, alcoholic TV hack, to Gdansk to dig up dirt on the shipyard strikers, particularly on Maciek Tomczyk, an articulate worker whose father was killed in the December 1970 protests. Posing as sympathetic, Winkel interviews the people surrounding Tomczyk, including his detained wife, Agnieszka.
Powder
Harassed by classmates who won't accept his shocking appearance, a shy young man known as "Powder" struggles to fit in. But the cruel taunts stop when Powder displays a mysterious power that allows him to do incredible things. This phenomenon changes the lives of all those around him in ways they never could have imagined.
Song for a Raggy Boy
William Franklin is a teacher who was born in Ireland and moved to the United States only to repatriate in 1939 after his leftist political views cause him to lose his job. Franklin becomes the first non-cleric instructor at St. Jude's, a school for wayward boys run by Brother John, who is a firm believer in strong discipline.
Pamiętnik znaleziony w garbie
A story about the life of a woman, two men of her life and her son, Janek Garbus, seen through the eyes of the latter - "conceived by an NKVD uncle on the night after the Soviet army entered".
The Here After
When John returns home to his father after serving time in prison, he is looking forward to starting his life afresh. However, in the local community his crime is neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Nightmares
Set before the first World War in part of Poland under Austrian occupation, the story of a young boy in primary school who later grows up to become a rebellious, poetic-minded teen in the same school when the national movement toward liberation is under way. The story of a country where church and state work together to suppress the human spirit.
300 Miles to Heaven
Based on a true story dating back to 1985 when two Polish boys, a teenager and his little brother, escaped from communist Poland all the way to Sweden, hidden under a truck. In the movie, their destination has been changed to Denmark.
New Port South
A group of teenagers wish to rebel against the administrators and teachers (the system) in their suburban Chicago high school called New Port South
The Run of the Country
An Irish lad (Matt Keeslar) who fled from his oppressive, widowed father (Albert Finney) falls for a girl (Victoria Smurfit) from an affluent family.
The Railway Station Man
An Irish artist, widowed by an IRA bombing, gradually learns that the American man she has become involved with is not who he seems.
At Full Gallop
Zanussi has described the film as his most autobiographical work. A young boy in post-World War II, Communist-dominated Poland, whose father's decision to remain in Britain after the war has made his family politically-suspect with the local Party authorities, is sent by his mother to stay with an "aunt" (in reality an old family friend) in Warsaw.
An Epitaph for Barbara Radziwill
Drama about historical figure Barbara Radziwiłł, her romance with King Sigismund II August, her death and her posthumous return to Vilnius.
Plain Clothes
To prove his brother's innocence, undercover officer Nick enrolls in high school again, dealing with crushes, bullies, humiliations, popularity swings, and quirky teachers and staff to find the real murderer.
The Town Christmas Forgot
An urban family that can’t seem to get along gets stranded in a remote, impoverished lumber town two days before Christmas. When they become involved in the town’s home-grown Christmas pageant, they not only help solve the town’s problems but learn to connect with each other just in time for the holidays.
Cider with Rosie
A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story set in the Cotswolds during and immediately after the First World War.
Hotel Pacific
Set in the early 1930s, a young man finds a job as a dishwasher in a hotel and quickly works his way up the ladder. Loosely based on the novel by Henryk Worcell.
Siberian Exile
An epic tale of Poles, Ukrainians, Jews who are deported to Russia. Their fate is shown from the perspective of a young boy Staszek, who goes to Siberia with his family and neighbors from a small village in the eastern Polish borderlands. Together with his companions he starts hard struggle for survival, where the most fearsome opponent turns out to be terrible, merciless nature... Circumstances force the boy to reevaluate his life and grow up faster. Soon he will have to learn the essential struggle for survival and make decisions that will where rate will be life of his relatives. He will also have to choose between love for the Jewish Zinnia and the Russian Luybka.
Waterland
The story of a mentally anguished high school history teacher going through a complete reassessment of his life. His method for reassessing his life is to narrate it to his class and interweave in it three generations of his family's history.