Best movies like The Marvellous Spiral

A movie-theater employee adjusts to a new life as the cinema he's worked at for over 25 years faces closure.

Aragón, Spain, early 20th century. María del Pilar is a honest girl whose good name is dirtied when an old suitor seeking revenge accuses her of losing her virginity outside of marriage. The scandal soon spreads throughout the countryside.

José Sirgado is a low-budget filmmaker whose heroin addiction distorts his perspective of the real world. Although he is a depressed and unstable individual, his mood improves when he receives the mysterious films of Pedro, with whom he shares his passion for cinema.

After his lover rejects him, a young man in early 20th century England, trapped by the oppressiveness of Edwardian society, tries to come to terms with and accept his sexuality.

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

An account of the life and work of legendary Japanese actor Toshirō Mifune (1920-97), the most prominent actor of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema.

Robert J. Flaherty's South Seas follow-up to Nanook of the North is a Gauguin idyll moved by "pride of beauty... pride of strength."

Tevye is a dairyman in the Russian Ukraine early in the 20th century. He lives in a cabin outside Boyberik with his wife Goldie, his widowed daughter Tseytl, her two children, and his younger daughter, the unmarried Khave. Khave is being courted by Fedya, a Christian, the son of a local government official. Tevye warns Khave against romance and marriage outside her faith, but Fedya is persuasive too. What will Khave decide, how will Tevye react, and when the Tsar initiates a pogrom, will Tevye's friends come to his defense? Can the stubborn Tevye reconcile his heart and tradition?

In 1973, a young gallery assistant goes on a wild adventure behind the scenes as he helps aging genius Salvador Dali prepare for a big show in New York.

Francisco Goya (1746-1828), deaf and ill, lives the last years of his life in voluntary exile in Bordeaux, a Liberal protesting the oppressive rule of Ferdinand VII. He's living with his much younger wife Leocadia and their daughter Rosario. He continues to paint at night, and in flashbacks stirred by conversations with his daughter, by awful headaches, and by the befuddlement of age, he relives key times in his life.

Documentary on the social pandemic of fatherlessness afflicting today's societies.

Region of Castilla La Vieja, Spain, early 20th century. In Luján, a village ravaged by drought, Juan, a humble farmer who survives with his wife and son, confronts a local loan shark and is imprisoned as a result.

In this docudrama, life in a Catalan village in the early years of the Franco era (1939-1975) is chronicled.

Hong Kong, 1978. South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee is kidnapped by North Korean operatives following orders from dictator Kim Jong-il.

This documentary traces the history of the B-Western from it's silent movie origins to its demise in the early 1950s. The film contains a large number of scenes from early silents and seldom seen films, as well as old photographs of the stars and one-sheet advertisements for lost films.

Francisco Sanz Baldoví (Anna, 1872-Valencia, 1939), better known as “Paco Sanz” or “ventriloquist Sanz”, was one of the most popular artists in Spain in the first half of the 20th century. In 1918, the Spanish ventriloquist filmed this fascinating documentary (entitled “Sanz and the Secret of His Art”), with the help of filmmaker Maximiliano Thous and his two artisan mechanics, in order to show the extraordinary complexity of the mechanism of his dolls and his ability to handle them on stage.

A fiction film made with fragments of reality. An historical documentary made by cogging fictional elements. This is the odyssey of those who dared dreaming and were devoured by their dreams. An adventure into the origins of cinema and utopias, an historical road movie. The K Effect recounts Maxime's passionate life during the 20th century: a century shaken by fascinating utopias that spawned cheerful dreams and dreadful nightmares. Lights and shadows. The great metaphor of cinema.

Most of us know Billy Graham as the self-assured and charismatic preacher who became one of the most important figures of 20th Century Christianity. Now, with the release of Billy: The Early Years, we meet Billy as the earnest and promising young man at the crossroads of faith and doubt, ultimately facing the moment of decision that launched one of history’s most powerful evangelistic careers.

A young woman, who has inherited her grandparents' huge house, a fascinating place full of amazing objects, feels overwhelmed by the weight of memories and her new responsibilities. Fortunately, the former inhabitants of the house soon come to her aid. (An account of the life and work of Fernando Fernán Gómez [1921-2007] and his wife Emma Cohen [1946-2016], two singular artists and fundamental figures of contemporary Spanish culture.)

A rare look at the the career of film director Pedro Almodóvar, especially his early works, with interviews with the director himself and his stars and admirers.

A documentary chronicle of one of our greatest directors.

The life and work of one of the great masters of Italian cinema, Sergio Leone (1929-89); a rich and fascinating portrait through unpublished testimonies of collaborators, actors, directors and critics who reconstruct every aspect of his creative activity.

Among the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara; The Miracle Man (1919), with Lon Chaney; He Comes Up Smiling (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks; an early lost sound film, Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), filmed in early Technicolor, and the only color footage of silent star Clara Bow, Red Hair (1928). The program is rounded out with interviews of film preservationists involved in identifying and restoring these films. Also featured is a new interview with Diana Serra Cary, best known as "Baby Peggy", one of the major American child stars of the silent era, who discusses one of the featured fragments, Darling of New York (1923).

Actor and writer Mark Gatiss embarks on a chilling journey through European horror cinema, from the silent nightmares of German Expressionism in the 1920s to the Belgian lesbian vampires in the 1970s, from the black-gloved killers of Italian bloody giallo cinema to the ghosts of the Spanish Civil War, and finally reveals how Europe's turbulent 20th century forged its ground-breaking horror tradition.

Paul Merton goes in search of the origins of screen comedy in the forgotten world of silent cinema - not in Hollywood, but closer to home in pre-1914 Britain and France. Revealing the unknown stars and lost masterpieces, he brings to life the pioneering techniques and optical inventiveness of the virtuosos who mastered a new art form. With a playful eye and comic sense of timing, Merton combines the role of presenter and director to recreate the weird and wonderful world that is early European cinema in a series of cinematic experiments of his own.

The story of the creation of The Spirit of the Beehive, a film directed by Víctor Erice in 1973.

Long treated with indifference by critics and historians, British silent cinema has only recently undergone the reevaluation it has long deserved, revealing it to be far richer than previously acknowledged. This documentary, featuring clips from a remarkable range of films, celebrates the early years of British filmmaking and spans from such pioneers as George Albert Smith and Cecil Hepworth to such later figures as Anthony Asquith, Maurice Elvey and, of course, Alfred Hitchcock.

Based on the life of a classic french cineast Jean Vigo, the story follows his daily struggle with sanity, normal life and uncompromising filmmaking. Story also focuses on his relationship with his supporting wife whom he met in sanatorium.

In the middle of shooting a film, the lead actress meets with the director to discuss a problematic scene.

During the last years of Franco's dictatorship, Fernando, an old republican exile, returns to his home in a small Castilian village and befriends Aurora, a young and attractive teacher.

César Neira, an almost forgotten actor, gets involved by chance with Teresa, a teacher from a small village in Cáceres who has won a radio contest. The prize is a trip to Madrid to experience just for a fortnight the life of the famous and wealthy people.

The horror film [REC] — directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, and released in 2007 — was an unprecedented triumph for Spanish fantasy cinema. Fifteen years later, those responsible for the creation and worldwide success of this cinematic milestone decode its keys and resurrect the myth.

An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).

The fantastic story of how an ancient martial art, Chinese kung fu, conquered the world through the hundreds of films that were produced in Hong Kong over the decades, transformed Western action cinema and inspired the birth of cultural movements such as blaxploitation, hip hop music, parkour and Wakaliwood cinema.

Produced by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the film used actors to recreate the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and compare working conditions of the early 20th century to that of the 1950s.