Best movies like The Pirates of Buban

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Pirates of Buban Starring Shōhei Imamura, Kō Nishimura, Shoichi Ozawa, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi, and more. If you liked The Pirates of Buban then you may also like: Oro, Kabisera, Karayuki-San, the Making of a Prostitute, One Piece: Giant Mecha Soldier of Karakuri Castle, Imelda and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

By going to the Philippines, Imamura comes to meet people living in an extreme poverty. He discovers very quickly that some communities are under the control of cruel & armed pirates. Imamura will come to meet those men in order to understand their position.

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Know any good movies to watch like The Pirates of Buban 1972. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.

Oro

The film is about the lives of simple folk caught between the crossfire of Kapitana accused of political patronage, and Patrol Kalikasan using the environment as a front for their own political and economic interests on the small mining community.

Kabisera

A Filpino family deals with hooded people who are involved in extra-judicial killings and other abuses in Philippine society.

Karayuki-San, the Making of a Prostitute

Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute is a 1975 Japanese film by director Shohei Imamura. It is a documentary on one of the Japanese "karayuki-san," who were women that were taken from their homes in Japan and used as prostitutes in the post-war period. Many of these women were told that they were doing this to support their families because of the extreme poverty that the war left much of Japan to live in. Imamura focuses on a particular such woman who was sent to Malaysia and never returned to Japan. Joan Mellen, in The Waves at Genji's Door, called this film, "Perhaps the most brilliant and feeling of Imamura's fine documentaries."

One Piece: Giant Mecha Soldier of Karakuri Castle

The Straw Hats visits an island, known as Mecha Island, where a fisherman sings an old folk song about a Golden Crown. Searching for that mysterious treasure, they find a hidden entrance into the island. The island's leader, Ratchet, impressed with the find and in search of the Golden Crown himself, invites the crew to join him in his search and the crew along with Ratchet and his henchmen enter the cave. As it turns out, the islands true form, is that of a giant turtle. Ratchet, who had known this all along, uses his mechanical castle to take control of the turtle, in order to use it, to take over the world. Now the Straw Hats have to stop not only Ratchet, but also the helpless turtle, from crashing into a nearby island.

Imelda

A "beyond the shoes" documentary on the former first lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos.

Laban Kung Laban

A young man, jilted by his girlfriend, join forces with an older man in avenging the death of his brother and fighting the ruling powers in their community.

Ang Tanging Ina Mo: Last na 'to!

A few months after Ina left the position as the President of the Philippines, she is back in the media limelight as she releases a book of her life in her journey as a mother to her children and as a mother to the people of the Philippines. Ina now lives a simple life with her beloved children, together with her long-time best friend, Rowena.

Insiang

A story about the life of a young girl living with her mother in the slums of Manila, which becomes unbearable when her mother's young boyfriend moves in with them.

Manila Calling

During WWII, a group of brave Americans spy on the Japanese after their invasion of the Philippines and became the first U.S. Guerrilla fighters.

Astro Mayabang

Astro is Filipino and he is proud of it. He flaunts it through his clothes, accessories, and collections of CDs, posters, and post cards of the Filipino achievers he idolizes. He comes across Dawn, a Filipino-American girl, who befriends him in hopes of learning more about her Filipino heritage. Astro teaches her the side of the Philippines he knows well and prefers.

Operation; Get Victor Corpuz, the Rebel Soldier

The film OPERATION: GET VICTOR CORPUS, THE REBEL SOLDIER is based on the real-life story of Lt. Victor N. Corpus, a graduate of, and subsequently instructor at, the Philippine Military Academy (PMA, the Philippine equivalent of West Point) who in 1970 defected to the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. When he defected, he led a group of NPA guerrillas in raiding the PMA armory and bringing out high-powered firearms that considerably boosted the guerrilla group's armed strength.

Kabisera

Andres is a well-liked, respected, and middle-aged fisherman who rents out commercial spaces to people in the town market. Ge seems to have everything a man could ever need: a loving family, a home, sustenance, and good friends he can trust. One day, he discovers several bricks of shabu floating in the sea. With his discovery, everything begins to change.

Suicide Commandoes

The story line, although in fiction, was set in the last days of the Second World War in the Philippines, particularly the Bessang Pass in the island of Luzon. The combined Filipino and American military forces are having a hard time in defeating the Japanese Imperial Army. Because of this situation, many military personnel and civilians on the side of the Filipino and Americans caught between the opposing forces are dying in large numbers everyday. Equipment and logistics in large quantities are also lost during the same time. The top brass of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) decided to select six Filipinos from various several guerrilla units under its command to execute a mission codenamed “Mission X-310”:

Reef Hunters

Fredo is a fisherman who has endured more than his share of hardship in life; his wife and child both perished in a boating accident, and today Fredo approaches each trip to the sea with the angry determination of a man out for revenge.

Sword of the Avenger

Roberto Balagtas is falsely arrested for treason and sent to prison where he is tortured. He escapes with other prisoners, but only Batagtas survives the escape, carrying with him a treasure map left by one of the others. He crosses paths with Ming Tang (Strong) and a group of Chinese smugglers, with whom he finds the treasure. The booty makes him extremely wealthy, and he changes his name to Don Diego Sebastian. He then goes back to the Philippines to seek his revenge.

Jologs

Jologs portrays the intersecting stories of various working-class people who are all tied to one coffee shop and are struggling to make ends meet in the Philippines.

Rakenrol

Odie and his best friend Irene are two outsiders who find a second home in the Philippine underground music scene. The two decide to form a band and put together an unlikely crew that consists of the school bully, an ex-punk-turned-barista, and a former-childstar-turned-band-manager. The film follows their misadventures as they face satanic S&M bands, samurai swindlers, narcissistic rockstars, the pretentious Philippine art community and the freakiest music video auteur ever.

Unli Life

A guy is given a chance to mend the breakup with his girlfriend by going back in time through the help of a magic whiskey, called “wishkey.”

Milyonaryong Mini

A case of mistaken identity which shows the Philippines' social classes between the rich and the poor. A sitcom remake was aired ten years later in 2006.

Slingshot

A tribute to the real potential of digital cinema, Slingshot is a slum epic on steroids. It weaves stories left and right into a shocking tableau about life for the lowest of the low in the Philippines poorest and most crime-ridden districts. National elections are coming up so in the usual attempt to appear “tough-on-crime”, The Big Boys have been sent into crack down on the the local squatters, thieves and miscreants who litter the film like broken bottle. And since no sweep is ever a clean sweep, the cops brutal shock-force tactics quickly ripple outwards with jagged repurcussions.

Black Power: America's Armed Resistance

Filmmaker Dan Murdoch spent last summer documenting clashes between a resurgent Ku Klux Klan, and a growing Black Power movement. Now in a follow up to 'KKK: The Fight for White Supremacy' he returns to America to revisit some of the people he met from the KKK and also meet members of the Black Liberation Movement: to find out what black power means, what their motivations are and why their movement seems to be gaining traction. With rare access to members of the Black Liberation Movement, Murdoch quickly finds himself in the midst of an armed black militia, outraged at the treatment of black people at the hands of police, patrolling the streets of their communities and calling for change.

Virgin Forest

A story set in the Philippine Republic in the 1900s where a lass, a Spanish mestizo, and a fisherman are caught up by Macabebe soldiers who are trying to capture Emilio Aguinaldo.

Quezon's Game

The film centers around Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon and his plan to shelter Jews in the Philippines who were fleeing from Nazi Germany during the World War II era.

Season of the Devil

In the late 70s, a gang of militias, under the control of the military, terrorizes a remote village in the Philippines. The terror being inflicted on the populace is not just corporal but intensely psychological as well. They were constantly fed with apocryphal tales about the village leader. A few souls are not giving up. They are fighting. The poet/teacher/activist, Hugo Haniway, decides to find out the truth about the disappearance of his wife. A love story set in the darkest period of Philippine history, the Marcos Dictatorship. The narrative and the characters are a composite of real events and real people that happened and existed during the period. A Filipino rock opera.

White Slavery

Three poor girls from the provinces of the Philippines are lured to the big city. In Manila they are tricked to work in the sex trade.

Empty by Design

Two people find themselves back in the Philippines after years of being away. Feeling like outsiders in a place that's supposed to be home, this story follows how a lack of connection with your culture and home can truly make one feel isolated and lonely.

Shadow Behind the Moon

The armed conflict between the Philippine military and the communist resistance at the beginning of the 1990s forms the backdrop to this study of three individuals who, for different reasons, are trying to resolve an untenable situation.

A Tale of Filipino Violence

With the imminent death of his autocratic grandfather, coinciding with the burgeoning oppressive regime of Ferdinand Marcos, Servando Monzon III, inheritor of the hacienda and businesses of his powerful clan, agonizes on becoming the new feudal lord and capitulating with Marcos’ designs to control the Philippines. He is aware of his clan’s long history of violence; he knows the very violent history of his county; and he foresees a very violent future with the Marcos dictatorship.

Mana

Amidst the vast sugar plantations of Negros in Southern Philippines, a matriarch lies in the throes of death. Her children rush home to confront the crisis as news of the impending death of their well-loved mother spreads among the community. There, in their ancestral house, the siblings are forced to deal with the issues of inheritance, tradition and the family legacy. It is a familiar tale. After all, every family has its story. And to each one, its own deserved secrets.

Bola

Lester, the star player of their community basketball team who dreams of playing at the country's premier league, but encounters a problem on the way to PBA (Philippine Basketball Association). He meets Pandy (Arnel Ignacio), a couturier who is smitten by Lester's looks. Pandy becomes the team's manager and helps him become part of the college's varsity team. Pandy is obviously in love with Lester, a straight guy devoted to his childhood sweetheart Denise (Sofia Valdez). Lester is at a loss when Pandy's love for him turns into an obsession.

Closer to Home

Closer to Home weaves a universal, haunting tale of two people inexorably drawn together for vastly different reasons. Dalisay struggles to journey from the Philippine countryside to New York City to marry Dean, a disillusioned ex-merchant marine. She's hoping to buy a cure for her dying sister and, ultimately, a future for her debt-ridden family, while he hopes to escape his disintegrating American family through love and a family of his own. A powerful, controversial film that quietly builds to a shattering collision of aspirations and cultures.

Manny

From abject poverty to becoming a ten-time boxing world champion, congressman, and international icon, Manny Pacquiao is the true definition of a Cinderella story. In the Philippines, he first entered the ring as a sixteen-year-old weighing ninety-eight pounds with the goal of earning money to feed his family. Now, almost twenty years later, when he fights, the country of 100 million people comes to a complete standstill to watch. Regarded for his ability to bring people together, Pacquiao entered the political arena in 2010. As history’s first boxing congressman, Pacquiao now fights for his people both inside and outside of the ring. Now at the height of his career, he is faced with maneuvering an unscrupulous sport while maintaining his political duties. The question now is, what bridge is too far for Manny Pacquiao to cross?

Manoro

The mountain-dwelling Aetas have been forced to settle in the lowlands by the sudden eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. With their settlements being closer to the government-funded schools of the Kapampangan townships, the Aeta children now have the opportunity to study. Jonalyn, one of the elementary school graduates of the ceremony depicted in the confused introduction and an Aeta, seeks to teach her elders to read and write a day before the National Elections. With Jonalyn's effort, the Aetas, for the very first time, have participated in the democratic process that has existed in the Philippines since the early part of the 20th century.

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