Best movies like Where Life Begins

At her husband's funeral, Pearl, Jewish mother of two divorced and antagonistic daughters, meets an old Italian friend of her husband, whose advice years previously had stopped the husband leaving home. For 23 years he, now a widower, has secretly loved Pearl...

A put-upon Jewish deli owner in Brooklyn dreams of getting out from underneath the thumb of his domineering father and his haughty fashion-model girlfriend by buying his own restaurant in midtown Manhattan.

Montreal 1948. On Rosh Hashanah, Chaim (a Yiddish writer) is forced to think of his religion when he's asked to be the tenth in a minyan. As he sits in the park, he suddenly sees an old friend whom he hasn't seen since they quarrelled when they were yeshiva students together. Hersh, a rabbi, survived Auschwitz and his faith was strengthened by his ordeal, while Chaim escaped the Nazis, but had lost his faith long before. The two walk together, reminisce, and argue passionately about themselves, their actions, their lives, their religion, their old quarrel, and their friendship.

The story of a rabbi and his talking cat, a sharp-tongued feline philosopher brimming with scathing humor and a less than pure love for the rabbi's teenage daughter.

In Shakespeare's classic play, the Montagues and Capulets, two families of Renaissance Italy, have hated each other for years, but the son of one family and the daughter of the other fall desperately in love and secretly marry.

After World War II, Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, go back to their Dutch hometown, where Antonia's late mother has bestowed a small farm upon her. There, Antonia settles down and joins a tightly-knit but unusual community. Those around her include quirky friend Crooked Finger, would-be suitor Bas and, eventually for Antonia, a granddaughter and great-granddaughter who help create a strong family of empowered women.

Aging small-time conman Augusto works with two younger men: Roberto, who desires to become the Italian Johnny Ray, and Bruno, nicknamed Picasso. Through a series of mishaps and personal entanglements, things go badly for Augusto.

A city cop is sent out to the country to go undercover and bust up a ring of moonshiners run by a woman and her three hot teenage daughters.

Esther, the beautiful queen of Persia, intervenes to save the Jewish people from a bloody massacre.

After leaving her family's farm to study nursing in the city, a young woman finds herself on an unexpected path towards politics.

Phony backwoods preacher Amos T. Huxley stays in a small North Carolina town long enough to fleece his congregation, swindle the profits from a moonshine still, and seduce dumb blonde Mary Lou. Mary Lou's ex-boyfriend becomes suspicious of the preacher and gets the local police to investigate his actions.

In this riot of frantic disguises and mistaken identities, Victor Pivert, a blustering, bigoted French factory owner, finds himself taken hostage by Slimane, an Arab rebel leader. The two dress up as rabbis as they try to elude not only assasins from Slimane's country, but also the police, who think Pivert is a murderer. Pivert ends up posing as Rabbi Jacob, a beloved figure who's returned to France for his first visit after 30 years in the United States. Adding to the confusion are Pivert's dentist-wife, who thinks her husband is leaving her for another woman, their daughter, who's about to get married, and a Parisian neighborhood filled with people eager to celebrate the return of Rabbi Jacob.

Drama focusing on a family of Southern aristocrats who are trying to deal with the dissolution of their clan and the loss of its reputation, faith, fortunes and respect.

When a Tango dancer asks a Rabbi to enter a dance competition, there’s one big problem—due to his Orthodox beliefs, he’s not allowed to touch her! But the prize money would save his school from bankruptcy, so they develop a plan to enter the competition without sacrificing his faith, and the bonds of family and community are tested one dazzling dance step at a time in this lighthearted fable.

While escaping from Nazis during the WWII, a Jewish man dug suitcases full of things dear to his heart in the ground two. The war deprived him of his family, and afterwards he endlessly turns over the soil of Antwerp to find the suitcases, which makes him look obsessed. He keeps checking old maps and keeps digging, trying to find, in fact, those he lost. His daughter Chaya is a beautiful modern girl looking for a part-time job. She finds a place as a nanny in the strictly observant Chassidic family with many children, although her secular manners clearly fly in the face of many commandments. One of the reasons she is accepted is that mother of the family is absolutely overburdened by the household, so she stays despite the resistance of the father, normally - an indisputable authority in the family. She develops a special bond with the youngest of the boys, four-year old Simcha, so far incapable of speaking.

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.

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.

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?

Puglia, southern Italy, around 1400. A convent is invaded by the Tarantula cult, whose fanatical and crazed members desecrate the sacred place by committing obscene and bloody acts.

A young daughter of poor farmers is forced by her mother to ditch her young boyfriend in order to marry an old rich neighbor but the girl rebels by becoming the town's harlot.

Set in rural England in the 1950s Eva (Samantha Morton) fantasises about her handsome, worldly cousin Joseph Lees (Rupert Graves), with whom she fell in love as a girl. However, stuck in a closed community she becomes the object of someone else's fantasy, Harry (Lee Ross). When Harry learns that Eva is planning to leave the village in order to live with and look after the injured Lees, he devises a gruesome scheme in order to force her to stay and look after him.

In 1943, an Italian American fighter pilot is hidden for his own safety in an olive farm in Salento, Italy. He begins to fall in love with the farmer's daughter and starts to understand the culture of his new home through its traditional dance, the pizzicata.

Jacob is tired of living on the family farm, submitting to the rules of his father. One day he demands an early inheritance from his father, who shocks his young son by agreeing to give it to him. So, he heads to the big city doing things his way without restraint, and for a while he does well-surprisingly well. He takes huge business risks and converts his small fortune into a big fortune, despite his extremely flamboyant lifestyle that attracts the wrong women, including seductive Laura, whose rich boyfriend Frank is often dangerously nearby. Jake had it all: money, ladies, prestige-but then-he loses it all and just when he things he's hit bottom the bottom drops some more- until he is eating out of dumpsters and eventually ends up living in a literal pig pen. Coming to his senses he heads home, determined to work in an entry level position for his dad, who surprises him once again by running to him-but is it to kiss him or kill him?

An opus in three parts, Iraq In Fragments offers a series of intimate, passionately-felt portraits: A fatherless 11-year-old is apprenticed to the domineering owner of a Baghdad garage; Sadr followers in two Shiite cities rally for regional elections while enforcing Islamic law at the point of a gun; a family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the US presence, which has allowed them a measure of freedom previously denied. American director James Longley spent more than two years filming in Iraq to create this stunningly photographed, poetically rendered documentary of the war-torn country as seen through the eyes of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

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 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.

Sandrine, a woman in her thirties gets tired of life in Paris and decides to leave her work in computers and become a farmer. She takes the required practice for two years, and after that she buys an isolated farm from Adrien, an old farmer who decides it's time to retire. However, Adrien wants to stay a few more months before moving away from the farm, and the rough winter finds them together...

Nat Silver has been engaged 7 times already. This time, his 8th, he's really going to get married. But a visitor shows up, Shirley's old boyfriend. With a gun ! He'll kill himself unless he can have Shirley back, and Nat graciously gives in. According to Nat's mother, his Uncle Shya was unlucky at love but lucky as a matchmaker, and Nat is just like Shya. Nat tells his family he's going to Italy. But he remains in New York and sets himself up with a new name and new business, Nat Gold, Advisor in Human Relations...

Handsome Prince George arrives on board his ship in Japan. Youthful, immaculate in naval uniform and smiling broadly, he goes through the complicated formalities of being greeted by a host nation. But housed with the Ambassador and his family, the Prince finds the atmosphere stuffy and dull; he longs for freedom and, for once, rebels against his upbringing with all its constraints and responsibilities, escaping for a week of romance, and unexpected drama…

In time of war, a man must survive to make a journey to fulfill a promise made and discover the truth. After a terrible battle, a man sees his great friend perish, leaving him one request – that he visit the king, father of the deceased, to give him the news of his death. Tied promise on his deathbed friend, the warrior part for the meeting with the monarch, an old man and convalescent, who lost his only heir. The king demands that the warrior’s serve, but the man is tired of war and want a place to live in peace. When the warrior goes in search of tranquility, his path crosses that of a beautiful young woman, chased by soldiers. He saves her and discovers she is a witch. With the Inquisition coming to the kingdom and a new love in his chest, the warrior must regain their weapons to prevent more blood from the people he loves spill.

Assisi, 1211. Chiara is eighteen years old and one night she runs away from home to join her friend Francesco: from that moment on her life changes forever. With charisma and conviction, she breaks free from her family's constraints and stands up to the Pope himself. She fights for herself, for the women who join her and for her dream of freedom. The story of a Saint. The story of a girl and her revolution.

When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.

After a long marriage, Maria and Jeffrey are now in crisis. Trying to keep the family together, she tries to convince their children to attend the birthday of the old grandmother Assunta, owner of the beautiful house in which they live. But their children are going through a rough patch. Francesco is a writer who is ashamed of having achieved fame with a book of literary shoddy, why his wife has lost respect. Marco is a doctor and is happy with his family, but his wife is determined to throw it all away for that to become an actress. Meanwhile, Miriam, a young emancipated, discovers she is pregnant, but does not know which of her lovers is the father.

The fight for power in an isolated village. Two families have been enemies for so long they cannot even remember why. The only hope for peace between the feuding families is lost when an arranged marriage agreement is broken. Some days later, the groom, Karamat, returns with a brand new minibus. But a fierce competition for passengers break out when the bride, Mehrbanou, decides to do the same.