Best movies like The Calm
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Calm Starring Jerzy Stuhr, Izabela Olszewska, Jerzy Trela, Danuta Wiercińska, and more. If you liked The Calm then you may also like: WUSA, Walesa: Man of Hope, The Wedding, No End, Riff-Raff 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 young man in his twenties leaves prison after a three-year sentence. He wants to start a new life in a place where he is not known and dreams only of a job, a wife and a family. He succeeds partially in fulfilling these dreams, but then runs into a conflict on a construction job between the corrupt boss and fellow workers secretly planning a strike. He becomes a pawn in one camp while remaining true to his ideals in the other. Filmed in 1976 and shelved for five years.
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Walesa: Man of Hope
How was it possible that a single man influenced contemporary world so significantly? This film is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of a common man’s metamorphosis into a charismatic leader — an attempt to see how a Gdansk shipyard electrician fighting for workers’ rights awakened a hidden desire for freedom in millions of people.
The Wedding
Set at the turn of the century, the story concerns a Polish poet living in Cracow who has decided to marry a peasant girl. The wedding is attended by a heterogenous group of people from all strata of Polish society, who dance, get drunk and lament Poland's 100-year-long division under Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The bridegroom, a painter friend, and a journalist each in turn is confronted with spectres of Polish past. In the end a call to arms is called but turns out to be a hoax.
Riff-Raff
Stevie, fresh from prison in Scotland, finds a job on a London construction site. The working conditions are poor and most of the men are working under aliases, due to immigration status and to not conflict with their "signing on" for unemployment benefits. Some coworkers help Stevie secure housing, squatting in a council estate. Then Stevie meets Susan, from Ireland, who's struggling to be a professional singer.
Camera Buff
Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.
Carry On at Your Convenience
This is the tale of industrial strife at WC Boggs' Lavatory factory. Vic Spanner is the union representative who calls a strike at the drop of a hat; eventually everyone has to get fed up with him. This is also the ideal opportunity for lots of lavatorial jokes...
I'm All Right Jack
Naive Stanley Windrush returns from the war, his mind set on a successful career in business. Much to his own dismay, he soon finds he has to start from the bottom and work his way up, and also that the management as well as the trade union use him as a tool in their fight for power.
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.
If I'm Lucky
Out of work swing band maneuvers a gig working for a political campaign, by drawing in and entertaining prospective voters at rallies. The candidate is really a stooge for a corrupt political machine, which discovers the band's handsome and appealing singer would make a better stooge. Meanwhile, romance blossoms between the band's singers. When election day approaches, the band's singer wants out of the campaign, but the machine threatens to smear him and his pals in the band if he quits.
Independence Day
Mary Ann Taylor loves the comforts of her hometown in Mercury, Texas. She has a steady job as a waitress in her father's diner, yet she can't help but feel unfulfilled by a life of pouring coffee and grilling hamburgers. Mary Ann's real passion is photography, but pursuing her dream of becoming a photographer means leaving Mercury behind.
Bopha!
In this story of a black policeman during South African apartheid, Danny Glover plays the cop, who believes he's trying to help his people, even while serving as a pawn of the racist government. When his son gets involved in the anti-apartheid movement, he finds himself torn between his family and what he believes is his duty.
When Nature Calls
When construction worker Greg becomes fed-up with his foreman and the "city life", he takes his wife and kids on a wilderness adventure.
Mediterranea
Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.
Man-Woman-Marriage
Victoria marries David, the man of her dreams. After a number of years and two children, the marriage turns out not to be what she had expected. Then she discovers her faith, and everything turns out for the best. In several scenes Victoria has visions of love and marriage throughout history: she appears in the Stone Age, with a tribe of Amazonians, in the Middle Ages and in the Roman era.
Land of the Free
A politician's campaign manager (Speakman) discovers that the candidate (Shatner) is a front for a military organization plotting a political overthrow of the government. In trying to expose the candidate's right-wing activities, he puts himself and his family in danger of being killed.
The Constant Factor
A young man is confronted with corrupt and vindictive colleagues at work and negligent officials at the hospital where his mother is dying. As he searches quixotically for a steadfast moral code by which to live, he suffers from the knowledge of human frailty and our darker inclinations to do harm.
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.
The Birthday
The four sequences in the film cover four days in a life of young Warsaw lad in September 1938, 1939, 1943 and 1944. In the first sequence Jurek decides not to study in the Sorbonne but enlists in a Polish military school instead. In the second sequence the war starts and Warsaw is occupied. In the third sequence he works in the underground resistance. The final sequence takes place during the Warsaw uprising.
Cat and Mouse
In 1966, a former gymnast returns to his hometown Danzig, which is now a part of Poland. He begins to reflect on one of his classmates, Joachim Mahlke, who disappeared during World War II. Mahlke was initially marked as an outsider due to his oversized Adam’s apple, but when he turned out to be a great diver, the in-crowd embraced him. Then he steals a Knight’s Cross from a soldier and is expelled from school. Volunteering for war service, he earns a medal himself and hopes his reputation will be rehabilitated. But the school principal refuses and Mahlke deserts from the army…
A Place Called Today
Racial tensions arise when a black lawyer runs for mayor of a racially divided town.
I Was Framed
A reporter runs from charges by a corrupt politician only to face them years later.
A Matter of Sex
Dramatization of the true story of the so-called Willmar Eight, a group of Minnesota bank workers who braved freezing conditions whilst picketing their branch in a struggle for union rights.
Forgive Us Our Debts
Threatened by creditors, a newly unemployed man agrees to work for a debt collector, but soon discovers his deal with the devil has unexpected costs.
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: The Heart Within
When Dr. Mike and Sully travel to Boston for Colleen's graduation from medical school, they find Dr. Mike's mother terminally ill. Sully finds himself a target for assassination by a corrupt politician.
Leave No Traces
In 1983, communist Poland is shaken by the case of high school student Grzegorz Przemyk, who is beaten to death by police. The only witness of the beating becomes the number one enemy of the state.
Time to Die
An impressionistic, black-and-white portrait of the day-to-day of a nonagenarian woman as she experiences the final act of her life. Danuta Szaflarska stars as Aniela, who lives in a massive yet rapidly-deteriorating wooden house, filled with souvenirs and treasures of eras gone by. Aniela runs into conflict in her dealings with others, particularly a nasty neighbor who sees her property as an eyesore and wants to do everything in his reach to buy it up and tear it down, and her married adult son, who - though kindly - triggers paranoia within Aniela (she cannot help but believe that he is scheming and planning to wheedle the property away from her). Driven aback by these individuals, Aniela finds one of her only sources of comfort and reassurance in her daily talks with her dog, Fila - and develops a great affinity for spying on the neighbors' doings whenever boredom creeps in.
The Ring with a Crowned Eagle
A Polish Resistance fighter who survived the Nazi years cannot accept the new Communist power.
WUSA
Rheinhardt, a cynical drifter, gets a job as an announcer for right-wing radio station WUSA in New Orleans. Rheinhardt is content to parrot WUSA's reactionary editorial stance on the air, even if he doesn't agree with it. Rheinhardt finds his cynical detachment challenged by a lady friend, Geraldine, and by Rainey, a neighbour and troubled idealist who becomes aware of WUSA's sinister, hidden purpose. And when events start spinning out of control, even Rheinhardt finds he must take a stand.