Best movies like To Live to Sing

24 City chronicles the dramatic closing of a once-prosperous state-owned factory in Chengdu, southwest China and its conversion into a sprawling luxury apartment complex. Three generations, eight characters : old workers, factory executives and yuppies, their stories melt into the History of China.

A group of performing art troupe members each face their own trials and tribulations in Chengdu; from escaping a family scandal to dealing with unrequited love, each experiences rejection that shapes their lives.

A workman finds a singing frog in the cornerstone of an old building being demolished. But when he tries to cash in on his discovery, he finds the frog will sing only for him, and just croak for the talent agent and the audience in the theater he's spent his life savings on.

The circus comes to town, and the town's orphans are treated to a day at the circus. The circus troupe's 'Jinx' girl causes so many problems for the performers and performances that, to escape punishment, she has to run away. She mingles with the orphans and runs away to join an orphanage.

An account of the many tribulations that Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his subversive art and political activism, endured between 2008 and 2011, from his rise to world fame via the Internet to his highly publicized arrest due to his frequent and daring confrontations with the Chinese authorities.

Time-lapse photography showing the one month-long demolition of the Star Theatre in New York.

Abandoned by his prostitute mother in 1920, Douzi was raised by a theater troupe. There he meets Shitou and over the following years the two develop an act entitled "Farewell My Concubine" that brings them fame and fortune. When Shitou marries Juxian, Douzi becomes jealous, the beginnings of the acting duo's explosive breakup and tragic fall take root.

Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry. Addicted to gambling, Fugui loses everything. In the years that follow he is pressed into both the nationalist and communist armies, while Jiazhen is forced into menial work.

Four independent stories set in modern China about random acts of violence.

China's rapid changes from the late-1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

Carol Anne has been sent to live with her Aunt and Uncle in an effort to hide her from the clutches of the ghostly Reverend Kane, but he tracks her down and terrorises her in her relatives' appartment in a tall glass building. Will he finally achieve his target and capture Carol Anne again, or will Tangina be able, yet again, to thwart him?

For generations the Zhao family has wielded power, until their mortal enemy TU’AN GU slaughters the entire clan, determined to wipe out their influence forever. But one Zhao baby survives hidden by CHENG YING the doctor who delivered him. When Tu’an Gu learns of the baby’s escape he seizes every infant in the city, vowing to kill them all unless the Zhao baby is surrendered. As the tyrant’s soldiers arrive at Cheng Ying’s home the frantic doctor hides his wife with their own baby whilst surrendering the Zhao child as his own. But his family is discovered; his baby is presumed to be the Zhao heir and murdered along with his wife for harboring the infant. Now set on revenge Cheng Ying enrolls the Zhao orphan into the service of the Tu’an Gu household, plotting to use him as an instrument of vengeance when he comes of age.

Two young farm workers, who like millions of others, leave their village to seek their fortunes in the city. Each chose a vastly different path to make it and become embroiled in misunderstandings, gangster brawls and police raids.

Luke Skywalker and Han Solo battle evil Imperial forces to help Chewbacca reach his imperiled family on the Wookiee planet - in time for Life Day, their most important day of the year!

In old Shanghai, two sisters, a prostitute and a singer, try to escape from the local scoundrels with the help of a trumpet player and a newspaper seller.

The film follows several disaffected youth in the fictional Thirteen Princess High School in Chengdu. Feng, the film's protagonist, is a short-haired tomboy who has a love affair with the jock, Taotao. With the arrival of Bao, a student from Beijing, Feng finds herself gravitating to the new presence.

The Andrews Sisters headline this musical. They play the lead act at a popular nightclub. The trouble begins when they hire a few students from a financially foundering dance school for their newest production. One of the dancers, a rich young socialite, desperately wants to be in it too, but her prurient maiden aunts refuse to allow her to disgrace their family by becoming a common chorine. She and the club owner (who must have the aunt's permission because the girl is underage) try to convince them, but it's not easy.

The young adult life of Hong Yunsheng, nicknamed Little Brother, is seen as somewhat of a failure by those that know him. A Chinese national, he stowed away on a boat to the United States, where he worked as a dishwasher in the restaurant of a family from his hometown back in Fujian province. After two years in the States and after fathering an illegitimate child there named Fusheng, the child's mother Xuhui who is the restaurateur's daughter, he was deported back to China. Since, he has been floundering in life, which has caused a rift between himself and his older brother, who, with his wife, operate a street front diner and can't have children of their own. Little Brother relies on his new girlfriend, a woman he barely knows named Wu Ruifang who is a performer in a touring opera troupe, for emotional support. Despite Little Brother being the local poster boy for not stowing away, his friend named Monkey tried to do the same, but died on the voyage over due to exposure to toxic ..

The daughter of iconic actor John Barrymore is reunited with her father after a ten year estrangement and engages in his self-destructive lifestyle.

32nd generation Chinese Shaolin Fighting Monk Li Bao Xin must immigrate to New York City to look after young Janie, his six-year-old niece. Struggling to make a new life, Li Bao will face challenges that test his character more than his physical strength. Through it all, his mind remains filled with the heroic stories of the Shaolin Temple, a great tradition that defines him, but also makes his assimilation to western culture more difficult. While in China he was a venerated master, in America he is nobody. To make a life for him and Janie, Li Bao must contend with a modern society, where his great fighting skills and heroic lineage have little meaning. He will have to decide which is more important, his dreams or his family.

World War II: a cholera epidemic ravages the streets of Beijing. A crack team of Chinese intelligence agents kidnap a Japanese general and biochemist who may hold the antidote.

A theatre troupe finds escape from the realities of incarceration through the creativity of putting on a play in this film based on a real-life rehabilitation programme and featuring a cast that includes former inmates.

As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father's death but paralyzed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.

On a 1980s evening, the topmost clown-actor of the 20th century Sichuan opera, Qiu Fu passes away in an accident and half-unwillingly sets off for the Ghost City under the escort of two underworld officials. Along the way, he meets old friends. As they recall the past, a history of the living is conjured up.

Set in China in the 1930s, the film is about the unsettling relationship between three characters, each involved with a performance of the opera Fleeing by Night in a local theatre.

The story tells about a 35-year old woman who has been struggling in the city for over 10 years. She meets a younger woman who dreams of a life in the city and a 7-years younger colleague and with the help of the two, her family and friends, she gradually finds her way back to herself again.

Riley Burdett, the artistic director of the Onota Theatre in Massachusetts, learns that the theatre’s Scrooge-like owner Regina is preparing to close. So, she calls upon the ghosts of Regina’s past, present, and future to change her mind. Meanwhile, Riley casts a big TV star, Sam Palmer, who has moved to the area to escape, as Bob Cratchit in “A Christmas Carol.”

A man is murdered on a bus for trying to stop a pickpocket; no one lifts a finger to help him. He returns as a ghost and questions the empathy of the onlookers.

A recording of the Beijing Opera version of The Red Detachment of Women filmed by the August First Film Studio in 1972. Toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, the ballet version was adapted into this Beijing opera.

The ambiguities of Verdi’s theatre are particularly clear in his baritone roles, among which is that of Boccanegra, corsair turned doge of Genoa and the troubled observer of the conflicts that tore apart 14th century landowners and peasants. An eminently political opera in which power struggles are interwoven with family conflicts, Simon Boccanegra echoes the life of its composer – the man who championed the cause of Italian unification and overcame the loss of his wife and children.

The Long March Suite

An orphan (Eight-year-old boy soprano Bobby Breen) gets a chance to sing opera in New York.

In the later stage of the Liberation War, with the victory of the three major battles over, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Chairman Mao Zedong made strategic decisions, ordering Liu Bocheng (played by Fu Xuecheng) and Deng Xiaoping (played by Lu Qi) to lead a group of the Second Field and Fourth Field to advance towards Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, and Sichuan, and annihilate the remaining enemies in the southwest. On his way south, Deng Xiaoping asked railway experts he met about the construction of the Chengdu Chongqing Railway and gave political education classes to the troops heading south in a timely manner, implementing Chairman Mao's great teachings of "carrying out the revolution to the end"...

The film "The Salt Caravan," adapted from the novel, tells the story of the Artesian Salt Caravan in southern Sichuan, 1936, passing through the ancient salt horse road of the Southern Silk Road and going through difficulties and dangers to deliver salt to the front line of the defense of western Yunnan.

The Deadly Strands is a 2013 Chinese horror film directed by Zhao Xiaoxi. It stars Leon Dai, Zak Zhai and Kong Qianqian. The film is released in China on 5th July. A radio talk show host and his family fall on troubled and terror-filled times when the ghost of his suicidal ex-wife finds a mysterious way to seek revenge on her cheating husband and find vindication with the children from his previous marriage. One by one strange accidents begin to occur, and bodies begin to pile up. The only common denominator between the deaths? The talk show host, his daughter, and a long beautiful wig.