Best movies like South of the Clouds

A struggling, recently unemployed young factory worker returns to his family's laundrette, where he 'borrows' a police officer's shirt and begins successfully impersonating an officer of the law.

Few of us have stopped to consider the lives of the workers who manufacture the objects that make up our daily lives. We use these objects without knowing anything about the Foxconn plants in which they are made, or even where these factories are located, let alone who works in them. One such worker was the young Chinese poet Xu Lizhi, who, at the age of 24, jumped out of a building not far from where he worked at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen.

When the last factory in a small Rust Belt town closes its doors, an unlikely hero emerges in dutiful, quiet Allery Parkes. A career employee of the factory, the aging Allery can't reconcile how to live a life simply sitting at home doing nothing. Against the advice and pleas of his loving wife Iola, he forms an unlikely friendship with his charismatic neighbor Walter Brewer in order to revive the defunct factory.

Xiaofan, a young girl who works at a Karaoke Club, awakes one morning in a remote forest with her body covered in blood. As she struggles to find her way out, she tries to understand the drama circumstances which got her into the situation, events mainly related to her unpredictable boyfriend. She needs to make a decision that may change her life.

Winter in the northern Chinese province of Dansu. In order to build a chemical factory, poor farmers in the village of Gaotai are driven off their land by a local businessman and the party bosses of the communist village council.

A retired entertainer makes his living as a street musician on the streets of London. Two young children befriend the old musician, brightening his otherwise colorless life

Back from a tour of duty, Kelli struggles to find her place in her family and the rust-belt town she no longer recognizes.

Liu Hao is pedicab driver living in a country town of Hebei Province. He has three women in his life. The first one left a unrelated son when leaving him. The second one disliked his unrelated son. The third one is return of life according to his goodness and contentment.

Buddies Meng Yun and Yu Fei break up with their girlfriends and indulge themselves in living the bachelor lifestyle again. However, as their ex-girlfriends reemerge in their lives, their “Single Plan” starts to unravel!

An immersion into the rich landscapes of Sable Island and the life of Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who has lived over 40 years on this remote strip of sand.

When British aid worker Hana returns to Luxor, a sleepy city on the banks of the Nile, she comes across Sultan, a talented archeologist and former lover. As she wanders, haunted by the familiar place, she struggles to reconcile the choices of the past with the uncertainty of the present.

Legendary tomb explorer Hu Bayi is on a dangerous mission as he seeks out the Tomb of Emperor Xian, located on an island of monstrous creatures in this mystical action-adventure.

Marion is a factory worker who hopes to trade the assembly line, for a beautiful penthouse apartment. Mark Whitney, a wealthy and influential lawyer can make her dreams come true, but there is only one problem, he will give her everything but a marriage proposal. Will this affair ever lead to marriage?

A 17 year old boy from a village in the Sechuan province leaves for the big city looking for his father, who left 6 years before and has not been heard of since. The fact that his mother still receives money his father does nothing to tame his anger. He his not looking for a warm reunion, it is unconcealed revenge that drives him. Totally lost, he roams the big city with his basket of ducks on his back...

The film follows a peasant couple, Zhao Deshan and his wife Xiuzhi, living in rural Yunnan province near Zhaotong in southern China. Their lives are thrown into upheaval when the local mayor “rewards” them with two foreign sheep donated by a former villager, now an official in Beijing. The couple is then tasked with breeding the sheep for their wool and to bring prosperity to their small community. Much to their chagrin, the sheep do not take to their new environment and the couple are forced into ever more ingenious ways of making the sheep appear greater than they really are. As they do so, they also come to value the sheep as companions in their family. When it becomes clear that the two “great” sheep are not the boon they were thought to be, the local authorities repossess the animals.

Pedro returns home to a small mountain village in Guerrero, Mexico after years of working in the US. He finds his daughters older, and more distant than he imagined. His wife still has the same smile. Having saved some earnings from two trips to the US, he hopes to now finally make a better life with his family, and even to pursue his dreams on the side by starting a band: Copa Kings. He cherishes the everyday moments with his family. The villagers think this year's crop will be bountiful. There is also good work in a growing city an hour away. But the locals are wise to a life of insecurity, and their thoughts are often of family members or opportunities far away, north of the border. While working in the fields, Pedro meets and begins to mentor a teenager who dreams of the US. That place somehow always feels very present, practically knocking at the door. "Aquí y Allá" is a story about hope, and the memories and loss of what we leave behind.

Two married couples adjust to the vast social and economic changes taking place in China from the 1980s to the present.

A story of a businessman who accidentally boards a train bound for Russia with his mother and has to overcome difficulties with his mother and problems in his family life.

Dalibor K. is an industrial painter, amateur horror maker, the composer of angry songs, painter and a radical neo-Nazi. He is approaching 40, but he is still living with his mother Vera, Aged 63, and is yet to experience the real relationship with a woman. He hates his job, gypsies, Jews, refugees, homosexuals, Merkel, spiders and dentists. He hates his life, but he doesn’t know how to change it.

A remote village in southwest China is haunted by traces of its cultural past while its residents piece together their existence. Zhiziluo is a town barely clinging to life. Tucked away in a rugged corner of Yunnan Province, Lisu and Nu minority villagers squat in the abandoned halls of this remote former Community county seat. Divided into three parts, this epic documentary takes an intimate look at its varied cast of characters, bringing audiences face to face with people left behind by China's new economy. A father-son duo of elderly preachers argue over the future of their village church. Two young lovers face a break-up over harsh financial realities. A twelve year-old boy, abandoned by his family, scavenges the hillside to feed himself.

A talented trainee pilot is given the opportunity to virtually test the latest fighter jet, which pushes him to his limits.

Lao San, is a retired Marine veteran who lives in his world of innocence and optimism due to a brain injury. He assumes the role of a dedicated vigilante and fights people whom he considers bad.

In World War II, an American Air Force pilot of the Flying Tigers was flying over Yunnan province of southern China on a special mission, carrying vital information. He was shot down and captured by Japanese invasion forces. A small rescue party of American GIs teamed up with resistance guerrilla fighters in the minority tribes of the south. The GIs and local guerrilla together conducted an International Rescue of the pilot and his information vital to the war effort.

20-year-old Jing Hao came to Shenzhen to live with his young sister alone. The siblings live a warm yet straitened life. In an effort to pay for his sister's expensive surgery, Jing Hao gets an opportunity by chance, thinking that a better life is coming, but unexpectedly encounters a serious setback. Under the pressure of both time and money, Jing Hao, who has no way out, decides to take a desperate gamble. Can this ignite the spark of hope for his troubled ordinary life?

To celebrate his 90th birthday, an old single journalist, Sabio, decides to gift himself with an intense night of love with a virgin teenager. Rosa Cabarcas, his old friend as a brothel madam arranges him the ideal young woman, Delgadina, a factory worker, who sells her virginity to support her family, but when he sees her sleeping angelically, he loses interest in pure pleasure and falls in love with her. That love was not meant to be true, but fate changes, and that hope is born of an opportunity for unbridled love.

Documentary series made in China in the early 90s. Agland was an anthropologist and he’d already made a wonderful series in the 80s about the Baka tribe in Cameroon. For Beyond the Clouds, he spent several years in a small town in Yunnan province telling the stories of various characters he met. He focuses on normal people but in doing so tells us about China’s past as well as its present and the monumental change that was coming.

A chain-wallah from Delhi travels across India in search of his missing son, in the hopes that whoever took him, returns him unharmed.

When Tomás returns to his remote island holiday home he discovers his reclusive wife and child have vanished. With nowhere to turn and a storm approaching, he is forced to place his trust in the small community's lone retired police officer, Labhaoise, to investigate. As the search takes an unexpected turn, some uncomfortable truths are revealed. Meanwhile the storm looms ever closer.

Based on a true story, this film follows a 7-year-old boy, Wawa, and his older sister, Naxiang, who live beside the Nujiang River in Yunnan Province, China. Every day, Naxiang crosses the river to attend school using an overhead cable, but their mother will not allow Wawa to use the cable. Eventually, Wawa secretly uses the cable to cross to the other side. The dangerous activity has deadly consequences, and the siblings’ lives are changed forever.

The film tells the story of a group of Chinese youths who robbed a bank of the “Manchuguo”, a puppet regime formed in China’s northeastern provinces by Japanese invaders in the 1930s and ’40s.

Chaoying, a retired rancher, decides to renovate his house after selling off his cattle. Shuhe, a villager helping with the renovation, is found badly injured after a hit-and-run. Chaoying and his friend Shuangzi vow to bring the culprit to justice.

Set in early 20th century. Yuan Shih-kai is forced by Japan to sign on the twenty-one demands and transfers the possession of Shandong province to Japan from German. General Cai of Yunnan province decides to uprise and lead a punitive expedition against Yuan. A famous courtesan Xiao Feng Xian admires Cai's prestige and is arrested for covering Cai before uprising.

Da Chuan, who was born in the 1980s, used to work at a train accessory factory as a repairman in Qiqihar city of Heilongjiang province, Northeast China. As majority of the average people there, his life is nothing special but routine.

Old Pop, a retired factory worker, lives in a former industrial area of Beijing with his extended family. He likes going to the market with his old colleague, Lao Chang. One day, he recognizes a face he had been unable to forget: his first love, Li Ying. An elegant old woman, Li Ying seems to have trouble remembering people, and her daughter is openly hostile to Old Pop. Despite these obstacles, the two elders start meeting in secret. Discovering that Li Ying has Alzheimer, Old Pop plays little games with her to exercise her mind. As in his award-winning first films, Liu Hao uses non-professional actors to recount an unusual love affair with a poetic and humorous touch.

In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.