Best movies like Ushpizin

The year 2000 approaches in Jerusalem's Orthodox Mea Shearim quarter, where the women work, keep house, and have children so the men can study the Torah and the Talmud. Rivka is happily and passionately married to Meir, but they remain childless. The yeshiva's rabbi, who is Meir's father, wants Meir to divorce Rivka: "a barren woman is no woman." Rivka's sister, Malka, is in love with Yakov, a Jew shunned by the yeshiva as too secular. The rabbi arranges Malka's marriage to Yossef, whose agitation when fulfilling religious duties approaches the grotesque. Can the sisters sort out their hearts' desires within this patriarchal world? If not, have they any other options?

An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.

An ancient skeleton has been discovered in Jerusalem in a rich man's tomb. Colouration of the wrist and leg bones indicates the cause of death was crucifiction. other signs, include a gold coin bearing the marks of Pontius Pilate and faint markings around the skull, lead authorities to suspect that these could be the bones of Jesus Christ. Politicians, clerics, religious extremists and those using terror as a means to an end, find their beliefs and identities tested while risking their lives to unearth the truth.....

The story of one woman's personal battle for acceptance, but also a portrait of a political movement that has forever affected millions of lives in the Middle East.

Pregnant sixteen year old Jacey's well-meaning mother forces her to keep the birth a secret and decides to raise the baby as her own.

A beautifully affecting love story that has rightly earned comparisons to Brokeback Mountain, Haim Tabakman's potent yet impeccably restrained tale has won awards and accolades at film festivals the world over. Aaron, a pillar in Jerusalem's Orthodox community is respected by friends and family. However, when he hires handsome runaway student Ezri to assist with his business, sexual tensions bristle and the pair cautiously embark on a love affair. Meanwhile, a neighbouring shopkeeper persists in seeing a man of her own choosing, even though she's been promised by her father to another. As forbidden truths come to the fore, these lovers are forced to either confront or relent in the face of a centuries-old religious community, with startling results.

In their nice Connecticut home, Agnes and Tobias have grown used to the imperfection and fragility of their marriage. Quietly nursing their grief over the death of their son, they get by well enough together. Agnes' boozy sister wanders in and out, and they allow anxiety-stricken friends to move into an upstairs room. But, when their daughter, Julia, shows up announcing her fourth divorce, long-repressed emotions come to the surface.

When Suzanne Stein has a genetic analysis done on her unborn child, she discovers that although she has a healthy baby, the child will most likely be born gay, like her brother, David. She must decide whether to keep the child, or to have an abortion. Her family enters a crisis about love and acceptance as she makes this difficult choice.

This film charts the relationship between a man imprisoned for drug smuggling and his wife and is being shot over the course of five years, a few weeks at a time.

Life as a Mormon missionary isn't what 19-year-old Brandon Allen expected: so many rules and so few successes. Los Angeles is as unrepentant as Sodom and Gomorrah. He's forced to share a small apartment with five young prank-loving missionaries and, to top it off, his first companion, 29-year-old Marcus Dalton, proves to be a harsh mentor. After only one day as a missionary, Allen is ready to hang up his necktie and go home. Allen becomes a part of the drama occurring under the everyday surface of missionary life. After only a few intense days, Allen finds faith he didn't know he had, and courage he didn't know he lacked. He learns that the time has come to put away childish things, and to become more than just a man--to become a man of God.

Vera Farmiga's directorial debut, HIGHER GROUND, depicts the landscape of a tight-knit spiritual community thrown off-kilter when one of their own begins to question her faith. Inspired by screenwriter Carolyn S. Briggs' memoir This Dark World, the film tells the story of a thoughtful woman's struggles with belief, love, and trust - in human relationships as well as in God.

Inspired by actual events in the late nineties when Hasidic Jews were recruited as mules to smuggle ecstasy from Europe into the United States.

Linda and Michael, married for ten years, desperately want a baby and turn to an adoption agency which introduces them to Lucy, a teenage girl expecting her first baby. The three agree that Linda and Michael will adopt Lucy's baby and that Lucy will sign away custody. Things don't go quite to plan however..

Zaza is a 31-year old Israeli bachelor, handsome and intelligent, and his family wants to see him married. But tradition dictates that Zaza has to choose a young virgin. She must be beautiful and from a good family, preferably rich. Zaza's parents, Yasha and Lily drag Zaza to meet potential brides and their families. Zaza has no choice. He plays along with his family, advocates of the suffocating traditions of their Georgian Jewish heritage. But Zaza always manages to somehow get out of being engaged. What his parents don't know is that Zaza is already in love. Judith is sensuous, strong and intriguing. She's also a divorcée with a 6-year-old daughter. So Zaza has kept Judith a secret from his family. He will have to choose between respect of the strict confines of family and tradition, or the love of his life.

Within Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community, a widower battles for custody of his son.

About a young woman who is married to a devout Jew and the problems that trouble their marriage because of the woman wanting something more out of her life.

Noemi, the studious, devoutly religious daughter of a prominent rabbi, convinces her father to postpone her marriage for a year so that she might study at a Jewish seminary for women in the ancient Kabalistic seat of Safe.

An intimate look at life in the ghetto: Johnny Williams is a house painter who moonlights as a poet, struggling to financially and emotionally support his cancer-ridden wife Mattie. But times are tough and the poverty-troubled streets are even tougher, and it takes every ounce of Johnny's love and courage for the couple to make it through their strife, finding redemption in the River Niger.

Pete, an eight-year-old Catholic boy growing up in the suburbs of Chicago in the mid-1970s, attends Catholic school, where as classes let out for the summer, he's admonished by a nun to follow the path of the Lord, and not that of the Devil. Perhaps taking this message a bit too seriously, Pete decides it's his goal for the summer to help someone get into heaven - by trying to convert a Jew to Catholicism.

A successful American family retreat to their summer home on the banks of Lake Erie to find meaning in life, illness, loss, and change this Christmas. With a successful career in the wine business, and two amazing children, what more can a family ask for. But this Christmas will change the Austin family forever with Suzie falling ill. With Andrew struggling over his wife's ill health and the children trying to find peace and solace on their own, only a miracle can help them through this Christmas.

Eighteen-year-old Shira is the youngest daughter of the Mendelman family. She is about to be married off to a promising young man of the same age and background. It is a dream come true, and Shira feels prepared and excited. On Purim, her twenty-eight-year-old sister, Esther, dies while giving birth to her first child, Mordechay. The pain and grief that overwhelm the family postpone Shira's promised match. Everything changes when a match is proposed to Yochay-Esther's late husband-to a widow from Belgium. Yochay feels it's too early, although he realizes that sooner or later he must seriously consider getting married again. When the girls' mother finds out that Yochay may marry the widow and move to Belgium with her only grandchild, she proposes a match between Shira and the widower. Shira will have to choose between her heart's wish and her family duty. She will find out that the void which she must choose exists only within her heart.

In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.

In a 1940s New York, two Jewish teenage boys are determined to remain friends despite the deep differences between their two families.

Based on the true story of a successful couple, Maggie and Aaron who are preparing for the arrival of their first child.

A portrait of various gay Orthodox Jews who struggle to reconcile their faith and their sexual orientation.

A family in Jerusalem is torn apart by the mysterious disappearance of their father after a tragic a car accident.

When a pastor is shaken by the visible faith of a street-corner preacher, he is reminded that true belief always requires action. His response ignites a journey that impacts everyone it touches in ways that only God could orchestrate.

The trial story of Viviane Amsalem's five year fight to obtain her divorce in front of the only legal authority competent for divorce cases in Israel, the Rabbinical Court.

A family man becomes obsessed with looking at his own life out of context.

A handsome Washington, D.C. doctor and a young New York woman fall in love at an unusual time...after they get married. Leah Lever is married to an Orthodox rabbi, Benjamin Lever, whose brother, Jake is a successful cardiologist and a non-practicing Jew. Jake is stunned when Benjamin dies suddenly, but not as stunned as when he is told that, under an ancient Jewish Law, he is expected to marry the childless Leah to carry on Benjamin's name.

Mary, Mother of Jesus is a 1999 made-for-television Biblical film that retells the story of Jesus through the eyes of Mary, his mother.

Four friends reunite for a dinner to catch up on each other's lives. As the night progresses, it devolves into a whirlwind of jealousy, lies and big revelations. This dramatic story unfolds in real time.

A young boy fighting cancer writes letters to God, touching lives in his neighborhood and inspiring hope among everyone he comes in contact. An unsuspecting substitute postman, with a troubled life of his own, becomes entangled in the boy's journey and his family by reading the letters. They inspire him to seek a better life for himself and his own son he's lost through his alcohol addiction.

Beautiful and precocious Rivka is a twelve-year-old Jewish girl who believes in Jesus. She and her father attend a Messianic Jewish congregation in their community. But when her father suddenly dies, Rivka's life changes forever. She ends up moving in with her traditional Jewish relatives and attending their synagogue. From her stormy relationship with her uncle, to a meeting with the synagogue’s senior rabbi, to the attention of the cutest boy in the synagogue, Rivka learns life lessons that stir her faith to new levels, touching the hearts of those whose lives she has reluctantly impacted. "The Sound of the Spirit" is the never-before-told story of a young girl caught in the crossfire of strong feelings between two faith communities. It’s told with humor, compassion, and grace.

"My Father My Lord" is an intimate and deeply disturbing story of the conflict between a father's love and his deep devotion to religion. A respected Orthodox Rabbi dotes on his only son but his religious strictures leave an emotional gap between the impish child and the stern father. When the father's all-consuming obsession with observing religious ritual inadvertently leads to tragedy, his previously subservient wife rages against both her husband and God. A dramatic retelling of the story of Abraham.