Best movies like The Complaint of an Empress

A renowned artist must uncover a young dancer's secrets in order to truly capture her likeness for a commissioned work.

The drawbacks and difficulties of military life are explored in this film. Paolo Passeri is a college graduate, somewhat spoiled, somewhat effete, who finds himself in an officer training program under the stern martinet, Captain Asciutto. He gradually becomes acclimated to the military mind-set, and when the Captain's wife decides to take a romantic interest in him, he does not report her dangerous peculiarities to anyone.

In 1970s Germany, Leopold, a 50-year-old businessman, picks up and seduces 20-year old Franz, who swiftly moves into his bachelor pad. Their cozy relationship soon sours as Leopold turns cranky and argumentative. When Franz's buxom blond girlfriend surfaces, and then Leopold's elegant and enigmatic ex, things get funnier, steamier and a lot more complicated.

Backpacking in the Caucasus Mountains, walking for hours, an engaged couple and their tour guide trade anecdotes and play games to pass the time, until a momentary misstep, that takes only two or three seconds, changes everything.

Jessica is an American ballerina who reluctantly enrols in a Russian dance academy, where she meets the charismatic choreographer Anthony. A dead ringer for Anthony's long dead lover, Jessica becomes Anthony's favourite student - and his personal obsession. But what should be the chance of a lifetime for Jessica becomes a living nightmare, as each of her fellow dancers is brutally murdered.

Epic story about two families and their friendship and common destiny in Sweden's Gothenburg in the 1940s and 1950s. Told from the perspective of young Simon Larsson, who learns that he's an adopted child who has a Jewish father from Germany. After WWII Simon travels to explore his roots - a journey that leads to the basic mysteries of the human life. After the bestselling novel by Marianne Fredriksson.

War Dancing tells the tale of Slammer, a small-time hood whose life changes when he is allowed to take part in a music video shoot. He begins to feel that a career in music might get him on the right track, but the video's choreographer dismisses Slammer's attempts at dancing. This gives Slammer the righteous anger he needs to improve his skills and show everybody he can besuccessful.

In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.

An original satire about women of the 90s in search of the men of their dreams. Franzy believes she's through with men, but desperately needs new amorous story lines for the comic strip she writes for a newspaper. So she observes her friend Maischa struggling to satisfy her need for love -- and someone who knows how to install her new shelf. Since joiner Klaus demands too much attention, she sets her eyes on the good-looking footballer Rene.

Pina is a feature-length dance film in 3D with the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, featuring the unique and inspiring art of the great German choreographer, who died in the summer of 2009.

Two men share an odd friendship while they care for two women who are both in deep comas.

A man inherits his estranged father’s prized possession — a derelict porno theatre — in Kire Paputts’ second feature, about gentrification and finding love and compassion in unlikely places.

Death in Love is a psychosexual-thriller about a love affair between a Jewish woman and a doctor overseeing human experimentation at a Nazi German concentration camp, and the impact this has on her sons' lives in the 1990s.

A groupie, an escort, and a strip club dancer get thrown into danger by the illegal activities of the men they love.

A vampire follows his instincts to a strip joint where he focuses in on one of the performers. He picks her for his meal because she is contemplating suicide, but he wants to share her life before taking it, and during the course of the evening they discuss their differences, their fears, and their lifestyles. As the moment of truth approaches, the woman becomes less sure that she wants to die.

A successful aging dancer takes a young female protegee.

In the late seventies director Wolfgang Büld hits the Screen with his historic documentary "Punk in London." The follow up of this rough document in the annals of the youth culture and it's first steps to become a worldwide phenomenon was the production of "Bored Teenagers" for German TV Station ZDF, which showed it in the frame of "Das kleine Fernsehspiel". Filmed at Locations around London, Cologne, Wuppertal and Büld's Hometown Lüdenscheid, it's parted into rare recordings of Adverts Live-Gigs mixed up with a little Storyline of a young couple that supports the Band around TV Smith and Gaye Advert on their Tour across Germany.

In 2011 Tunisia, as the Arab Spring awakens, unemployed graduate Aziz, nicknamed Zizou (Zied Ayadi), travels from his Saharan village to the big city of Tunis in search of a job. From television aerial installation to political intrigue, this fresh-faced young Candide will learn the ways of the world, fall in love with the ravishing Aicha (Sara Hanachi), and become famous.--Eddie Cockrell, FilmFest DC

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."

When Myriam, the mother of two young children, decides, despite the reluctance of her husband to resume his activity in a law firm, the couple is looking for a nanny. After a severe casting, they engage Louise, who quickly conquers the affection of children and gradually occupies a central place in the home. Gradually the trap of mutual dependence will close, until the tragedy.

Chantal Akerman followed famous Choreographer Pina Bausch and her company of dancers, The Tanzteater Wuppertal, for five weeks while they were on tour in Germany, Italy and France. Her objective was to capture Pina Bausch's unparalleled art not only on stage by behind the scenes.

Ken Loach documentary; made for Central Television in 1988, but rejected, and not shown until the following year, when it was taken up by Channel 4. It tells the story of the West Midlands-based Young Foundry theatre group members Stephen Page,Paul Harper, Jimmy Dunn,Chris Dunn, Caroline White and Roy Stokes who act out a series of scenes reflecting their past, unemployment, homelessness and drug abuse that is rife in the local area.

A portrait of a woman’s life between 1915 and 1975. In Jutta Brückner’s documentary, her mother looks back at the 60 years of her life, talking about her father’s early accidental death, the constraints faced by a lower middle-class family of five, her training as a seamstress, marriage to a bookkeeper committed to social democratic ideals, the privations of war, and not least of all, her later realisation that fear may have caused her to miss opportunities … An ingenious collage of picture and sound accompanies the mother’s narrative, a tapestry of proverbs, pop songs, marching music, and the noise of war. Hundreds of photographs – most selected from August Sander’s (1876–1964) project “People of the 20th Century”, alongside newer photos by Abisag Tüllmann, among others – lend the individual vita of the director’s mother a kind of ontological validity. Images of labourers and office workers, excursions and marches, imbue what we hear with references that transcend the personal.

Like every summer, little Salomé returns to her family village nestled in the Portuguese mountains for the holidays. As the vacations begin in a carefree atmosphere, her beloved grandmother suddenly dies. While the adults are tearing each other apart over the funeral, Salomé is haunted by the spirit of the one who was considered a witch.

Hope is tasked with teaching Manhattan's former "Most Eligible Bachelor" how to dance for his extravagant, society wedding. But as the dance lessons progress, complications ensue when feelings begin to develop between student and instructor.

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

There's drama aplenty for the travelling theatre company Chekhov Cabaret. The actors share the good times and the bad as a nomadic tribe where work and private life always mingle. They don’t mince words, these obstreperous actors with a sardonic sense of humour. Theatre always comes first.

Inspired by Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Sokurov’s Save and Protect recalls the most crucial events of Emma’s decline and fall: affairs with the aristocratic Rodolphe and the student Leon, the humiliation that follows her husband’s botching of the operation on the stable boy’s clubfoot. The universality of the theme of eternal struggle between the soul and the flesh is conveyed through the absence of specific reference to time or place: although the film seems to begin in 1840, its surreal mode effortlessly accommodates an automobile and the strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In” on an off-screen radio. Focusing on passion from a woman’s perspective and downplaying plot, Sokurov explores his subject in exquisite detail, capturing not only the heat of passion but also the quiet moments before and after and the innocent sensuousness of the body.

Story about a WWII wife & mother who joins a local dance band to provide for family while husband at war. Romantic involvement with one of the band members make her decisions difficult when husband returns from war. Story watches the progression of the band as it grows into a popular, successful recording and touring group. Excellent music and soundtrack.

This meditative French-Canadian film tells the story of a young woman's search for the father she has never known. Marie Chapdelaine (Carole Laure) grew up in a remote area of Quebec without ever knowing her father, a lumberjack. She moves to Montreal, settles in there with a job as a topless dancer and begins her search for him. Eventually, with the help of his former mistress, they find the lumber camp he was working in, only to discover that he was killed in a labor dispute.

Fall 1989: Jan is almost 16. Caught while trying to escape to West Germany, he is transferred from prison to a juvenile detention center. Here, he meets Jana ... and what starts as a bet, becomes true love. When Jana gets pregnant, the situation spirals out of control. In the summer of 1990, Jana and Jan flee into the unknown, insecure future of a new Germany.

This film discusses the search for the last remains of Demasduit (Mary March), one of the last of the Indigenous Beothuk people, set in the Red Indian Lake area of Central Newfoundland. A young girl, Bernadette Buchans, believes that she is related to Mary March. Throughout the whole film, Bernadette and her father Ted are searching for the grave of her mother. An archaeologist/ photographer, Nancy George, accompanies them and she also believes that she has family connections to the Beothuks.

The Ballet de l'Opera National de Paris mounted this production of the late Pina Bausch's dance-opera Orpheus und Eurydike, which Bausch had adapted from composer Christoph Willibald-Gluck and Ranieri de' Calzabigi's 1762 opera Orfeo ed Euridice. As the title suggests, it takes its basic narrative from the myth of Orpheus, and his courageous but ill-fated attempt to rescue his lover Eurydice (also known as Eurydike) from the jaws of the underworld. This particular production finds Yann Bridard dancing as Orpheus and Marie-Agnès Gillot dancing as Eurydike , with mezzo-soprano Maria-Riccarda Wesseling accompanying Bridard and soprano Julia Kleiter accompanying Wesseling. Pina Bausch did the choreography and stage direction, while Rolf Borzik designed the sets, costumes and lighting. The Balthasar-Neumann Ensemble & Choir, under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock, lend musical accompaniment.

The talented, young veterinarian Dr. Tana Fechner falls in love with the riding stable owner Bernhard Bausch. However, love is not a good star, because the doctor is suspected of killing two of Bausch's horses in order to support her work on a rare virus by presenting suitable cases.