Best movies like The Time to Live and the Time to Die
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Time to Live and the Time to Die Starring Yu An-Shun, Tien Feng, Mei Fang, Ru-Yun Tang, and more. If you liked The Time to Live and the Time to Die then you may also like: The Wood, Never Cry Wolf, Joshua Then and Now, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Brooklyn Rules 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.
An autobiographical film based on Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's memories of his youth growing up in Taiwan after emigrating from mainland China.
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Never Cry Wolf
A scientific researcher, sent on a government study: The Lupus Project, must investigate the possible "menace" of wolves in the north. To do so, he must survive in the wilderness for six months on his own. In the course of these events, he learns about the true beneficial and positive nature of the wolf species. Based on the book and true story by Farley Mowat.
Joshua Then and Now
Based on a novel by Mordecai Richler, allegedly his autobiography, it tells the story of a Jewish writer, from his life as a young boy in Montreal to his more complicated grown-up life.
Brighton Beach Memoirs
Eugene, a young teenage Jewish boy, recalls his memoirs of his time as an adolescent youth. He lives with his parents, his aunt, two cousins, and his brother, Stanley, whom he looks up to and admires. He goes through the hardships of puberty, sexual fantasy, and living the life of a poor boy in a crowded house.
Brooklyn Rules
Brooklyn, 1985. With the mob world as a backdrop, three life-long friends struggle with questions of love, loss and loyalty.
A City of Sadness
The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror", mainland China's political repression that was wrought on the Taiwanese people by the Kuomintang government in the late 1940s.
Crown Heights
When Colin Warner was wrongfully convicted of murder, his best friend Carl King devoted his life to proving his innocence.
This Is Where I Leave You
When their father passes away, four grown, world-weary siblings return to their childhood home and are requested -- with an admonition -- to stay there together for a week, along with their free-speaking mother and a collection of spouses, exes and might-have-beens. As the brothers and sisters re-examine their shared history and the status of each tattered relationship among those who know and love them best, they reconnect in hysterically funny and emotionally significant ways.
Flight of the Red Balloon
The first part in a new series of films produced by Musée d'Orsay, 'Flight of the Red Balloon' tells the story of a French family as seen through the eyes of a Chinese student. The film was shot in August and September 2006 on location in Paris. This is Hou Hsiao-Hsien's first Western film. It is based on the classic French short The Red Balloon directed by Albert Lamorisse.
White Bird in a Blizzard
In 1988, a teenage girl's life is thrown into chaos when her mother disappears.
Digging to China
Precocious young Harriet and her older sister Gwen live at their mother's motel in small-town New Hampshire. Harriet dreams of a life beyond her inattentive family and the stultifying town. A mentally disabled man named Ricky comes to stay at the motel, and Harriet finds him kinder and more interesting than anyone she has ever met. After tragedy strikes, Harriet and Ricky cling to each other ever more tightly.
The Grass Harp
Based on the novel by Truman Capote, this often-witty coming-of-age drama looks at a young man growing up with an unusual family in the Deep South in the 1940s. Becoming an orphan in 1935, Collin moves to his dad's cousins Verena and Dolly. Verena is a rich, bossy businesswoman. Dolly, Collin and the maid revolt, moving to a tree house.
You Are the Apple of My Eye
A group of close friends who attend a private school all have a debilitating crush on the sunny star pupil, Shen Jiayi. The only member of the group who claims not to is Ke Jingteng, but he ends up loving her as well.
Dummy
A coming of age drama about two young brothers whose lives are thrown into turmoil when their mother dies suddenly, leaving them to fend for themselves. While Danny loses himself in music, sex and drugs, his younger brother Jack transforms a life size mannequin into a brand new mum for him to talk to. Jack's obsession leads to both comic misunderstandings and bitter antagonism as the pair battle through grief, anger and denial.
The Lifeguard
A former valedictorian quits her reporter job in New York and returns to the place she last felt happy: her childhood home in Connecticut. She gets work as a lifeguard and starts a dangerous relationship with a troubled teenager.
Man About Town
A top Hollywood talent agent finds his cushy existence threatened when he discovers that his wife is cheating on him and that his journal has been swiped by a reporter out to bring him down.
Marrowbone
A young man and his three younger siblings are plagued by a sinister presence in the sprawling manor in which they live.
The Puppetmaster
In the first half of this century, young Li Tienlu joins a travelling puppet theatre and subsequently makes a career as one of Taiwan's leading puppeteers.
On Happiness Road
Chi earned her American dream after persevering with her studies in Taiwan. Following her grandmothers’ death, Chi returns to her family on Happiness Road, where she begins to feel nostalgic about her childhood and starts to contemplate the meaning of “life” and “home”. What is happiness? Will Chi find her own happiness?
The Farewell
A headstrong Chinese-American woman returns to China when her beloved grandmother is given a terminal diagnosis. Billi struggles with her family's decision to keep grandma in the dark about her own illness as they all stage an impromptu wedding to see grandma one last time.
Crutch
An autobiographical film taken from the experiences of writer-director Rob Moretti, CRUTCH is a coming-of-age tale about a young man's struggle with family problems and substance abuse. Behind a facade of suburban middle class perfection, David's home life is falling apart. As he tries to cope with the impossible situation, the troubled and impressionable teenager falls under the spell of Kenny, a georgous, thirty-something, has-been actor turned theatre coach. When Kenny's "support" escalates into seduction, David slowly decends into an abyss of drinking and drug addition from which he must escape if he is to survive. CRUTCH is a dramatic tale of the confusion of youth and the difficulties in finding oneself.
Donkeys
Alfred is 64. He's lost touch with his family and a threat to his health makes him realise he wants to make amends. The more he tries to do right, the more he does wrong, and as his past comes back to haunt him, he is forced to face up to what his life means to him. Rounding Up Donkeys is the second film in Sigma and Zentropa's three feature film concept 'Advance Party'.
18
A multi-lingual tour guide who owns multiple passports one day drives his wife and daughter to a desolate seashore town and checks in a secluded, spacious, ruins-like hotel. From that moment on, he throws himself into gambling, tossing the dice with local residents all day. Sometimes he wins big, but sometimes he loses all. Feeling neglected and uncomfortable, his wife and daughter soon leave him and return home. He stays and wanders in this fishing village and gradually immerses himself in the surroundings—a place rife with immoral vagabonds, outlaws and weirdoes.
Second Best
The difficult relationship between a british postal officer and his adoptive son.
John Apple Jack
A playboy learns to love, while a virgin learns to live -- a queer romantic comedy set inside the restaurant industry... 'John Apple Jack' brings East and West together to create one sumptuously heart-warming dish. When John discovers his sister's fiance is Jack, his childhood crush, passions ignite and his life spirals out of control... losing his job, his playboy reputation and his underwear, all while rushing to the altar to finally confess his love!
...And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him
Twelve-year-old Mexican-American Marcos (Jose Alcala) recalls the hardships of the previous year, reflecting on the arduous trek his migrant-worker family made from Texas to the Midwest during harvest season. Along the way, Marcos learns plenty about the harsh realities of bigotry and the power of family in America of the 1950s. The coming-of-age Chicano drama is based on Tomas Rivera's semiautobiographical 1971 novella.
A Flower in the Rainy Night
A girl, who was sold by her stepfather at the age of 14, has had been a prostitute for 14 years. Her family, despite enjoying a comfortable life with her help, avoids her. She thus decides to have a son of her own and succeeds by sheer determination. She is now hopeful that her son will have a life better than hers.
My Childhood
The first part of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.
Family Squares
The Worth Family has been divided for years but when the matriarch, Grandma Mabel dies suddenly, the family has to come together. The story of Family Squares takes the Worth Family on a journey discovering that not only did Grandma Mabel keep some secrets, so did everyone else. They find their way back to each other and realize that while you can’t choose your family, you can choose to be friends with them.
The Three Madeleines
Three women who share a familial bond but little more come to know each other better in this beautifully-photographed drama. Marie-Madeleine (Sylvie Drapeau) is a photographer in her mid-30s who, for the first time, has come into contact with Mado (France Arbour), her biological mother, who put her up for adoption shortly after she was born. Marie-Madeleine is to take a long road trip for a magazine assignment, and she invites Mado along. Joining the two women is Marie-Madeleine's daughter (Isadora Galwey), who has yet to meet her German father. The three women share their thoughts and ideas as they travel through an idyllic setting to photograph birds. Les Fantomes des Trois Madeleine was shown at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival as part of the Directors Fortnight series.
Cider with Rosie
A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story set in the Cotswolds during and immediately after the First World War.
Viper in the Fist
1920. Jean Rezeau and his elder brother were living happily in their family estate in Brittany, until the death of their grandmother. The return of their mother, a worthy descendant of fairytales' witches, brings an all new atmosphere to their home.
Treading Water
Mica is born smelling of fish that soap and doctors can't remove. Problems increase starting school as no one'll be his friend. He sees a therapist. His life seems doomed until he meets Laura.
June Falling Down
A young woman returns home to Wisconsin for her best friend's wedding and the one year anniversary of her father's death.
Bebia, à mon seul désir
Returning home for the funeral of her grandmother, seventeen-year-old Ariadna must cross the unspoiled Georgian countryside to connect her grandmother’s soul with her resting body in an ancient burial custom. Traversing this exhausting and raw terrain, Ariadna is forced to confront the impact that the complex, sometimes cruel matriarch had on her not-so-distant childhood.
The Wood
In the panicky, uncertain hours before his wedding, a groom with prenuptial jitters and his two best friends reminisce about growing up together in the middle-class African-American neighborhood of Inglewood, California. Flashing back to the twenty-something trio's childhood exploits, the memories capture the mood and nostalgia of the '80s era.