Best movies like The Island of Contenda

In Vera Cruz in the 1940s, Nacho, an Indian, waits tables at Don Lázaro's café at Hotel Ofélia. He falls for Lola, an opium-addicted, alcoholic whore who's hopelessly in love with Gardenia Wilson, a masked wrestler who slept with her once but knows she's unbalanced. Don Lázaro warns Nacho about Lola, and Nacho knows his love will be unrequited, but he'll do anything, regardless of how degrading, to be near her. Lola, for her part, can be sadistic. Republican exiles who are regulars at the café encourage Lola's desire to assassinate Franco. Nacho in turn mixes this political mirage with his fascination with the plot of "The Mikado." Where do fantasies and obsessions lead?

Zabette de Chauvalons leaves a convent in Brussels to join her father on the island of Martinique, escorted by Père Bénédict. In St. Pierre she finds that her father has died; his widow, who rules the island's French society, believes Zabette to be the child of a beautiful quadroon with whom Zabette's father left for France; when Zabette is sent to the mulatto quarter, Stéphane Séquineau is present and takes an interest in her. Destitute, Zabette is forced to auction off her Paris fashions, and though Quembo, a cunning quadroon, is the highest bidder, Stéphane outbids him at the last minute and professes his love, which she accepts, believing herself to be une fille de couleur; however, his older brother, Maurice, insinuating that a mixed marriage would ruin him, persuades her to desist.

A Palestinian seeks Israeli permission to waive curfew to give his son a fine wedding. The military governor's condition is that he and his officers attend. The groom berates his father for agreeing. Women ritually prepare the bride; men prepare the groom. Guests gather. The Arab youths plot violence. One Israeli officer swoons in the heat and Arab women take her into the cool house. A thoroughbred gets loose and runs to a mined field; soldiers and Arabs must cooperate to rescue it. As darkness falls, tensions between army and villagers rise, and the groom's wedding-night anger and impotence threaten family dignity and honor. Can cool heads prevail?

A transgender woman returns – with her two male lovers – to her family home in the countryside to look after her dying mother.

After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live.

A well-off Indian family is paid an unexpected, and rather unwanted, visit by a man claiming to be the woman's long lost uncle. The initial suspicion with which they greet the man slowly dissolves as he regales them with stories of his travels, tales that are at odds with their conventional middle class perspective on the world.

After the Portuguese government demolishes his slum and relocates him to a housing project on the outskirts of Lisbon, 75-year-old Cape Verde immigrant Ventura wanders between his new and old homes, reconnecting with people from his past.

Jimmy Gralton returns from New York and reopens his beloved community hall, only to meet opposition from the local parish.

Macário spends an entire train journey to the Algarve talking to a woman he does not know about the trials and tribulations of his love life: straight after starting his first job as a book keeper at his Uncle Francisco's shop in Lisbon he falls madly in love with a young blonde, who lives across the road. No sooner does he meet her than he straightaway wants to marry her. His uncle, totally opposed to the match, fires him and kicks him out of the house. Macário departs for Cape Verde where he makes his fortune. When he finally wins his uncle’s approval to marry his beloved, he discovers the “singularity” of his fiancée’s character.

The film tells a story of Mariana, a nurse who leaves Lisbon to accompany an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip home to Cape Verde. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama.

A documentary about the men who run a pet cemetery, and the men and women who bury their pets.

A couple's attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home a fiancé who is black.

An unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but taking as main focus the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte.

An immigrant leaves his sweetheart in Italy to find a better life across the sea in the grimy slums of New York.

At the age of twenty-nine, Elgar Enders "runs away" from home. This running away consists of buying a building in a black ghetto in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Initially, his intention is to evict the black tenants and convert the building into a posh flat. But Elgar is not one to be bound by yesterday's urges, and soon he has other thoughts on his mind.

A moving and uplifting drama about the effects of interracial marriage in the 1960s. Friends since childhood, and loved by both families, this couple are exiled after their wedding and have to wage a courageous battle to find their place in America as a loving family.

Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.

A biography of the American rock band The Beach Boys, with interviews, concert footage and clips from movies and television shows they appeared in.

A virtuous Spanish princess becomes queen of Portugal, and soon is affected by the social struggles and the reckless fight to power between the king's faction and that of his son's.

Challenged by a new student, tutor and theorist Galileo co-opts emerging telescope technology and discovers irrefutable proof of the heretical notion that the earth is not the center of the universe. But in a rigid society ruled by an uneasy alliance of aristocracy and clergy already undermined by the Plague and the Reformation, science is a threat and enlightenment is a luxury. Faced with either death at the hands of the Inquisition or recantation to a hypocritical but all-powerful Papacy, Galileo must choose between his own life and the restless scientific curiosity that he has spurned family, friends, and wealth to pursue.

A woman who is in love with her boss entices him to join her at a nudist camp, but his affection soon turns elsewhere.

The touching portrait of eight-year-old Sasha, who questions her gender and in doing so, evokes the sometimes disturbing reactions of a society that is still invested in a biological boy-girl system of thought.

Six reckless and troubled teenagers are forced to spend their weekend together in a vacation house.

Through the madness of summer and to the sound of music, the past and the present of 'Morangos com Açúcar' cross paths in a unique adventure. Between the beach and the pool, the campsite and the holiday camp, long-time friends meet again and new friendships happen.

Two actors performing in Strindberg's "Inferno" as God and Lucifer, find themselves competing in real life as well. One of them, Henrique, has spiritual obsession with John Wayne and his way of walking. He and de Dieu, his fellow actor who plays Lucifer and also directs the Strindberg play, engage in a philosophical and spiritual tug-of-war, especially when they meet an author named God, who has plans for another drama to feature both actors.

Cleo is six years old, has a myopic look and has been madly in love with Gloria, her nanny, since she was born. When Gloria receives a call and must urgently return to her home in Cape Verde to care for her two children, whom she has not raised, Cleo makes her promise to meet one last time. Gloria accepts and invites Cleo to spend the summer vacations on her island. A last summer that they will spend together, in Gloria’s family, before inevitably saying goodbye.

A Cape Verdean woman navigates her way through Lisbon, following the scanty physical traces her deceased husband left behind and discovering his secret, illicit life.

Story of the 1974 coup that overthrew the right-wing Portuguese dictatorship--which continued the fascist policies of long-time dictator Antonio Salazar--and of two young army captains who were involved in it.

In Portugal, in the 60s, the corpse of a man appears on Dog's Beach. The corpse is identified as the major Dantas, a man wanted by authorities after his escape from a military prison where he was awaiting trial for insurrection.

More than two thousand Gibraltar citizens were evacuated to the island of Madeira during WWII, changing forever their lives and the history of the island.

Hipólito is a self-made man, who went up in life in devious ways, and used for profit the social turmoil when Portugal changed from a monarchy into a republic, and then to a military regime. Finally, he is forced into exile. Back in 1935 to family, friends, and lovers, he is in a mix-mesh of lies, and scheming, again.

Portuguese fictional feature film directed by Henrique Campos.

In the 1950s, a handful of prisoners attempt a daring escape from Peniche, a castle on the north coast of Portugal for the political dissidents of the regime.

Miguel —alias Tibars, alias “Djon África,” born and raised in Portugal— is a kindhearted Rastafarian who loves women and lives a carefree life. Until one day a stranger tells him he's the spitting image of his father, “a player and a crook.” His father, whom he never even knew! This intriguing discovery makes him change tack. Particularly when his grandmother, who always took care of him, finally tells him how his father was in prison; how sad Miguel was as a toddler when he couldn't see him; how his father was banished to Cape Verde. Miguel goes there to visit him. Who is this man?

A celebration of the legendary band that revolutionized pop music, and the iconic, harmonious sound they created that personified the California dream, captivating fans for generations and generations to come.