Best movies like The Five Obstructions

The 18th-century Indian painter Nainsukh of Guler receives a poetic, visually stunning tribute from a young Indian filmmaker employing an arresting pictorial language. Shot in the region where Nainsukh produced his most celebrated work, this is a meditative and meticulous recreation of the world of an artistic genius.

A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

After destroying his older brother's motorbike in retaliation for his constant bullying, 11-year-old Krishna is sent to a traveling circus to earn money to pay for the bike's repairs, but soon winds up in the streets of Bombay's poorest slums. There, he befriends the drug dealer Chillum and young prostitute Sola Saal, while trying to make enough money at a neighborhood tea stall to repay his debt to his family.

Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, escaping life's troubles - even if just for a moment - by dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.

A troubled psychologist is sent to investigate the crew of an isolated research station orbiting a bizarre planet.

Fisher, an ex-detective, decides to take one final case when a mysterious serial killer claims the lives of several young girls. Fisher, unable to find the culprit, turns to Osbourne, a writer who was once respected for his contributions to the field of criminology. Fisher begins to use Osbourne's technique, which involves empathizing with serial killers; however, as the detective becomes increasingly engrossed in this method, things take a disturbing turn.

A director and a screenwriter write a screenplay together about a globally spreading epidemic. Unbeknownst to them, an outbreak develops around them in the real world.

Diana Guzman begins to train as a boxer and achieves impressive success, blazing new trails for female boxers, all while keeping it a secret from her father.

An IT company hires an actor to serve as the company's president in order to help the business get sold to a cranky Icelander.

A traveler stays the night at a rural inn, but gets no rest as he is tormented by various spectres and mysterious happenings.

With his first Dogma-95 film director Lars von Trier opens up a completely new film platform. With a mix of home-video and documentary styles the film tells the story of a group of young people who have decided to get to know their “inner-idiots” and thus not only facing and breaking their outer appearance but also their inner.

Set in Copenhagen during World War II, the film follows a German officer who visits his Danish mistress in the days after the occupation of Denmark has ended.

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.

Devoted teacher Anne Sullivan leads deaf, blind and mute Helen Keller out of solitude and helps integrate her into the world.

An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.

THE AUTEUR follows formerly renowned porn director Arturo Domingo (Five Easy Nieces, Requiem for a Wet Dream) through a bizarre weekend as he receives a lifetime achievement award at a film festival in Portland, OR. Encountering crazed fans, former collaborators, bitter enemies and free-loving hippies, Arturo attempts to put the pieces of his broken career and personal life back together.

A young, idealist American gets a job as a train conductor for the Zentropa railway network in postwar, US-occupied Frankfurt. As various people try to take advantage of him, he soon finds his position politically sensitive, and gets caught up in a whirlpool of conspiracies and Nazi sympathisers.

The film has been ten years in the making, and over time it has grown to become what the director himself has called an artistic testament. It is simultaneously his most personal and most provocative film. A film about growing older, about losing, about the special moments one remembers, and about the director's own circling around the essence of eroticism.

A sports wanderlust by three guys to visit every NFL stadium in the iconic vehicle that has inspired countless road trips and captivated the world a split window VW Bus named Hail Mary. Three guys one 1967 VW Bus and 25,000 miles of American roadways. Its about people, the community of NFL fans and VW enthusiasts alike. It's about emotional ties to teams bizarre infatuation and just down right love for the sport. The film is a 25,000 mile journey to glory documenting the human spirit through freedom friendship sports and America.

Created under a “manifesto” whose directives would make Lars von Trier shudder, this three-part film might look on paper like an exercise in forced hipness. Fortunately, its directors – Harmony Korine (USA), Alexsei Fedorchenko (Russia) and Jan Kwiecinski (Poland) – prove innovative and just insane enough to make The Fourth Dimension an exhilarating experiment.

Erik Nietzsche is an intelligent but in many ways inexperienced shy young man who is convinced that he wants to be a film director. In the late 1970s, Erik is accepted by the Danish National Film School where he enters a world of angry and unhelpful tutors, weird fellow students and unwritten rules. In this both exhilarating and angst-provoking period for him, Erik feels increasingly like a foreigner in the film industry. Frequently, he is merely an observer of the absurdities that surround him. He encounters trade union disputes, falls in love and experiences self-assured empowered women who refuse to make a commitment. The film is a drama full of comedy - a sharp portrait of a conceited but entertaining world of film which we suspect our dogged young director will eventually conquer with his vision.

A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.

Minor Mishaps is the story of a family's reaction to the untimely death of their matriarch, examining the effect of the tragedy on John, her husband, who is himself ill, his daughters, Marianne and Eva, and their friends and family. When a man's wife dies in an accident, his children return home to deal with the tragedy together. The film throws a spotlight on each of their lives as they confront the changed dynamic in the family and their own lives, with some surprises, revelations and false accusations occurring along the way.

Erik and Lisbeth are getting married and then honeymoon to Austria. When Mom and Dad need to have another baby, the four small decides to go on the honeymoon as well. They hide in the caravan and come unseen to Austria. Since they do not have passports, Erik can not just send them home. The children are only listed in their mother's passport and she is in the hospital giving birth. Lisbeth and Erik have to take care of the kids. It provides a lot of fun entanglements between the wedding couple and the children. Erik and Lisbeth doing now what they can just get a few moments alone. However, there is always something, so it will be an unforgettable honeymoon with my sister's children.

What are the consequences of a young person to be famous at an early age, being a public person? "Født til Filmen" is about the Danish actress Stine Bierlich's (1967 - 2007) life and career. Through interviews with herself, with her family - Ann Bierlich (mother), Asger Leth (brother), Jørgen Leth (stepfather), friends and people from the film industry it tells us about Stine's life from being a child actress to becoming a celebrated young star of the 80's. The film is a comment on today's worshipping of stars, and how fame has almost become a drug in itself. It’s as if here’s every answer to any doubt. But as Stine's story shows, reality can actually be the opposite.

Showtime's "In the 20th Century" is a millennium-related strand of feature-length documentaries in which famous directors take on major subjects of their choosing. In the last of the six films, "The American Tapestry," filmmaker Gregory Nava takes viewers on an uplifting and challenging journey through the memoirs of five immigrant families, each one on a quest for its own American Dream. Beautifully interweaving accounts from several generations, Nava composes an astonishing tapestry of personal triumphs and tragedies, as each story of courage unfolds. The American Dream is an elusive thing, and the lives of the people in Nava's film are both triumphant and tragic, teeming with optimism and sometimes despair. They expose the finest and worst in America as well as what we feel most magnificent and dreadful. They are part of the many contrasting threads that make up the American tapestry — a complex portrait of a nation at the turn of the millennium.

Based on a short story by George MacDonald, a princess experiences constant weightlessness.

This beautiful film about the immigrant experience is a San Francisco film about Eritrea. Sephora Woldu plays "Sephora" who, like the director, is an architecture student but also a filmmaker. She is pitching to her traditional mother a film she wants to make about a man who fled their home country and ended up in San Francisco. As a recently arrived immigrant, he is terribly homesick for his native Eritrea, but will not admit it due to unease towards speaking ill of the country; and more consciously in hesitance of admitting hard truths about his culture and himself. "It’s colorful and visually whimsical in a way that can only be described as if the Wizard of Oz went to Africa," said Woldu.

In 1982, Wim Wenders asked 16 of his fellow directors to speak on the future of cinema, resulting in the film Room 666. Now, 40 years later, in Cannes, director Lubna Playoust asks Wim Wenders himself and a new generation of filmmakers (James Gray, Rebecca Zlotowski, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Nadav Lapid, Asghar Farhadi, Alice Rohrwacher and more) the same question: “is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?”

Set in the neurosurgical ward of Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet, the city and country's main hospital, nicknamed "Riget", a number of characters, staff and patients alike, encounter bizarre phenomena, both human and supernatural.