Best movies like The Gadfly

The Universal Language is a new documentary from Academy Award-nominated director Sam Green (The Weather Underground). This 30-minute film traces the history of Esperanto, an artificial language that was created in the late 1800s by a Polish eye doctor who believed that if everyone in the world spoke a common tongue, humanity could overcome racism and war. Fittingly, the word “Esperanto” means “one who hopes.” During the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of people around the world spoke Esperanto and believed in its ideals. Today, surprisingly, a vibrant Esperanto movement still exists. In this first-ever documentary about Esperanto, Green creates a portrait of the language and those who speak it today that is at once humorous, poignant, stirring, and ultimately hopeful.

After bringing his beautiful new wife Paula home to America from a remote island on which she was raised, Professor Norman Reed begins to feel the clash between his world of rational science and hers of bizarre dancing and freaky voodoo rituals. Norman's stuck-up friends also sense Paula's strangeness, and soon their meddling gossip and suspicious scheming push the poor woman to use her magic to defend herself and her husband – and maybe even to kill! Or is it just the power of suggestion...?

A disparate group of volunteers are trained as saboteurs and parachuted into Belgium to blow up an office containing important Nazi records and to rescue a prominent S.O.E. agent, who is being interrogated by the Germans for vital information.

London at the turn of the century. Three men is on a mission from the IRA to steal all the gold in the vaults of the Bank of England. Norgate, their leader, discovers the bank's weak spot: an old forgotten sewer straight under the vaults.

Norfolk, England, 1770. The nephew of an innkeeper and the son of a reverend maintain a very close friendship until, after living a great adventure, they must separate their paths. The former will head his footsteps to London and bound his destiny to Lloyd's, a thriving insurance company; the latter will eventually become one of the greatest heroes in the history of the British Empire.

Timid old woman Pelageya Nilovna observes the revolutionary activities of her son Pavel Vlasov and gradually comes to realize that his cause is a great and noble one. She involves herself in the movement and finds joy and great courage in her new life as a revolutionary. Based on Gorky's novel, filmed in the silent era by Pudovkin.

Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His diplomatic status in a Catholic country prevents Colonel Kappler from openly arresting him, but O'Flaherty's activities become so large that the Nazi's decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican. O'Flaherty continues his work in a variety of disguises. Based on a true story. Written by John Vogel

In 1921 Dublin, the IRA battles the "Black & Tans," special British forces given to harsh measures. Irish-American medical student Kerry O'Shea hopes to stay aloof, but saving a wounded friend gets him outlawed, and inexorably drawn into the rebel organization...under his former professor Sean Lenihan, who has "shaken hands with the devil" and begun to think of fighting as an end in itself. Complications arise when Kerry falls for a beautiful English hostage, and the British offer a peace treaty that is not enough to satisfy Lenihan.

A suspenseful, genre-bending film with two converging storylines. An aspiring college journalist records events in a diary about the turmoil of a society due to the insertion of a RFID chip mandated by the government. ? Years later in the rubble of a post apocalyptic society filled with decay and violence, the diary finds its way into to the hands of an officer in the New World Army who uncovers the truth about the past and discovers everything he stood for was a lie. But what will he do now?

As a painter in the court of King Carlos IV, Goya has attained wealth and reputation. He believes in King and Church, yet he is also a Spaniard who dearly loves his people. This contradiction presents him with a dilemma.

Underground is a 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen, founded as a militant faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who fought to overthrow the U.S. government during the 1960s and 1970s. The film consists of interviews with members of the group after they went underground and footage of the anti-war and civil rights protests of the time. It was directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler and Mary Lampson, later subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an attempt to confiscate the film footage in order to gain information that would help them arrest the Weathermen. (Wikipedia)

Constance Bennett both produced and starred in the espionager Paris Underground. Bennett and Gracie Fields play, respectively, an American and an English citizen trapped in Paris when the Nazis invade. The women team up to help Allied aviators escape from the occupied city into Free French territory. The screenplay was based on the true wartime activities of Etta Shiber, who engineered the escape of nearly 300 Allied pilots. British fans of comedienne Gracie Fields were put off by the scenes in which she is tortured by the Gestapo, while Constance Bennett's following had been rapidly dwindling since the 1930s; as a result, the heartfelt but tiresome Paris Underground failed to make a dent at the box-office. It would be Constance Bennett's last starring film--and Gracie Fields' last film, period.

A rich girl is kidnapped by a revolutionary group, but instead of wanting to be rescued, she decides to join her captors' organization.

In 1908, Sultan Abdul Hamid rules the Turkish Empire, but he is faced with the threat of revolt by the Young Turk party. He allows Hilmi Pasha, the leader of the Young Turks, to return from exile and form the country's first constitutional government. With tensions still growing, chief of police Kadar Pasha assassinates Hassan Bey, the leader of the Old Turk party, and makes it look as if a Young Turk committed the crime, in order to give Abdul an excuse for arresting the Young Turk leaders. Meanwhile, Abdul becomes infatuated with a visiting Austrian singer. When she rejects his advances, she endangers both herself and her fiancé, a Turkish officer who also knows who really shot Hassan Bey.

Set in Italy, the story takes place in this very country, during WW2, where German occupation army ruled everything, just before the allied forces came, in 1944. Crawford plays here a doctor whose son has been shot by the Germans. Of course he has no more taste in life. He continues his work as a German officers' physician. One day, he throws a bomb just in the middle of German troops. Many soldiers and officers are killed. Some time later, the lead officer of the Nazis troops suspects the doctor to be the responsible of the explosion. He lets him know that he himself knows...

A boggy swashbuckler of Irish freedom-fighter Michael Martin. In 1815, Michael Martin, member of an Irish revolutionary society, turns highwayman to support it, and soon becomes an outlaw. In Dublin, he meets famous rebel "Captain Thunderbolt" and becomes his second-in-command, under the name "Lightfoot."

Nazis chase a U.S. newsman (Robert Mitchum) paid to smuggle names of Greek resistance leaders to London.

The story of a fear-inspiring revolutionary general who develops a passion for the daughter of a wealthy villager. It's hate at first sight so far as the girl is concerned, but this will soon change.

Gabrielle Picard (Elda Hall) and Pierre Dupont (Rupert Julian) are lovers in a small French village in the early 1870s; Gabrielle's brother Anatole (Kingsley Benedict) is Pierre's best friend. The two young men are called to service by their country and go to Algiers. Anatole becomes the bugler and one day when he is commanded to sound the retreat, he sounds for the troops to charge instead. Anatole becomes a hero because of his action, but when the two men make their victorious return home, they find the Picard home ransacked and Gabrielle gone.

Action-filled drama about a ship captain, ashamed of his background in the slave trade, forced against his will to again transport human cargo.

Narrative of a period of life (1926 - 1934) of the Nicaraguan revolutionary leader Sandino, who was known as "The general of free men."

A duke has deposed Prince Mauritz's father, so Mauritz spends his time in affairs with a countess, the duke's wife and a gypsy girl Adrienne. Years later she is a famous actress in a play resembling the sad story of their earlier relationship. He falls in love with her again. The jealous duchess and the duke arrange to have him shot by firing squad but revolutionaries save him and make him King.

In the late 1800s, Miss Pilgrim, a young stenographer, or typewriter, becomes the first female employee at a Boston shipping office. Although the men object to her at first, she soon charms them all, especially the handsome young head of the company. Their romance gets sidetracked when she becomes involved in the Women's Suffrage movement.

A student group called Otpor! ("Resistance!" in Serbian) forms part of the nonviolent opposition movement that toppled the regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

Irene is a magazine editor living under the shadow of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Francisco is a handsome photographer and he comes to Irene for a job. As a sympathizer with the underground resistance movement, Francisco opens her eyes and her heart to the atrocities being committed by the state.

A cardinal is arrested for treason against the state. He is a popular hero of his people, for his resistance against the Nazis during the war and his resistance when his country again fell to a totalitarian conqueror. In prison, his interrogator is determined to extract a confession of guilt, and thus destroy his power over his people.

Lamas plays an indentured servant who rises to power in Georgia shortly after the Revolutionary War.

A French Resistance fighter discovers he's a dead ringer for a Nazi official.

A film adaptation of the short story of the same name by Guy de Maupassant. The action takes place in the XIX century. Franco-Prussian War of 1870. A group of French bourgeois leaves in a stagecoach from Rouen occupied by Prussian troops. Along with them comes one attractive demimonde lady. The only way to get out is to persuade her, nicknamed "Ball-of-Fat" a la "Boule-de-Suif" to satisfy the lust of the head of the gendarmerie...

Lyddie (Tanya Allen) faces a daunting task: She's struggling to reunite her family and save their farm. To do that, she takes a job at a cotton mill and, with the help of Diana (who's toiled in the mills since age 10), learns that there are risks involved with being a factory girl -- namely, dangerous working conditions and low wages. Soon, Lyddie finds herself in the forefront of a suffrage movement to better those appalling conditions.

Two part film about David Bek and Mkhitar Sparapet's major Armenian uprising against Safavid Persia in the Syunik region in the 18th century.

As they are leaving the church following their wedding, Count Adrian Beltrami and Countess Anna-Marie are told that the Austrians are marching on the town to quell an Italian uprising. The bride and relatives induce the count to flee to his castle, but Tangy, a silhouette cutter, brings word from the revolutionary committee asking him to return; the count goes, asking Tangy to pose as the count and protect Anna-Marie.

A Russian village struggles through the German occupation during World War II in this tense drama from the Soviet Union. As the town doctor finds his home has been taken by German troops, his daughter becomes involved in the anti-Axis resistance, and his son -- confined to a mental hospital -- escapes to fight the invading armies.

Takes place in the 25th century on a remote mining planet that is under alien attack. The military rulers that promised to defend the population may be in league with the invaders. In this environment, a young photojournalist named Jade is recruited to be part of an underground resistance movement.