Best movies like Young Light

A coming of age story set in 1975 working-class Brooklyn, in which two teenage brothers living with their abusive father and their well-meaning but ineffective mother are caught up in a life of petty crime. Older brother Danny concocts a daring scheme to steal enough money for the two to escape, timed around the chaos of an upcoming Rolling Stones concert. The sensitive younger brother, Brian, ultimately has a choice: remain loyal to the brother with whom he shares a powerful love-hate bond, or use his hidden talent as an artist as his own ticket out of their dead-end existence.

A young couple ventures into the woods to capture footage of the elusive Bigfoot.

Ten-year-old Jack has to take care of his little brother, six-year-old Manuel, every day from the time he gets up to the time he goes to bed. When Manuel suffers an accident, their lives change forever.

Maria is a student at the university of Essen, Germany, living and working in a gray, unpleasant, and anonymous environment. While she has little problem finding someone for a one night stand, she rebuffs her lovers in such a rude way that they actually don't know what's going on. But what seems to be a negative attitude at first glance is in fact much worse: Maria is suffering from borderline syndrome, a serious psychotic disease that makes her fail to develop a continuous, reliable personality, from her own perspective as well as from the perspective of those she meets. Then one day, she bumps into Jan, a student who falls in love with her without delay. He's awaiting a hard time when he has to learn how hard it is to stay loyal and faithful to a person who, in her own words, "has a different world inside of her head" and who feels that "there is something inside of me that eats me up."

25-year-old Michael has been released from prison after a five-year sentence. He moves into a big apartment block, filled with young women who gladly have sex with him.

A major work of the celebrated Berlin School, the debut of Ulrich Köhler (In My Room) is a mesmerizing portrait of a young German soldier named Paul who goes AWOL and returns to his childhood home in the countryside. Over a few summer days, Paul evades the responsibilities of everyday life and falls in love with his brother’s girlfriend, disrupting the lives of everyone in his circle. With Köhler’s penchant for deadpan humor and subtle performances, Bungalow becomes a quiet mockery of militarism, familial estrangement, and youthful ennui.

A strange family: 17-year-old Phil lives with his mother and twin sister in an old mansion on the outskirts of town. When he returns from summer camp, the mood in the mansion has soured somehow. Phil doesn’t worry about it, hanging out with his best friend Kat instead. When he starts to feel attracted to a mysterious new student at school, Phil is plunged into emotional turmoil only exacerbated by the trouble at home.

In a small North German village a drama played out during and shortly after the Second World War about duty versus individual conscience and morality.

We’re in the middle of a heat-wave in Fenland England. Goob Taylor has spent each of his sixteen summers helping Mum run the transport cafe and harvest the surrounding beet fields. When Mum shacks up with swarthy stock-car supremo and ladies’ man gene Womack, Goob becomes an unwelcome side thought. However Goob’s world turns when exotic beet picker Eva arrives. Fuelled by her flirtatious comments, Goob dreams of better things.

At some point in the not-so-distant future, an unnamed European city has evolved into a bizarre dystopian metropolis, whose residents inhabit towering utopian high-rises and work, collectively, in a single compound.

In a town where half the men die down the coalpit, Margaret MacNeil is quite happy being single in her small Cape Breton island town. Until she meets Neil Currie, a charming and sincere bagpipe-playing, Gaelic-speaking dishwasher. But no matter what you do, you can't avoid the spectre of the pit forever.

Germany in the early 19th century. "Die Vermessung der Welt" follows the two brilliant and eccentric scientists Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss on their life paths.

After spending 12 years in prison for keeping his mouth shut, notorious safe-cracker Dom Hemingway is back on the streets of London looking to collect what he's owed.

Zobel and Karl are a long time gay couple who live together in a trailer home with Lizzie, Zobel's spunky daughter from a heterosexual misadventure. Together these three form a team of thieves who eke out an existence as pickpockets. After a botched job, Karl becomes unable to work, forcing Zobel and Lizzie to seek out a new partner. Lizzie recruits Rudolf, the boyishly charming town misfit. Reluctantly, Zobel allows Rudolf to join them but warns him to never break the golden rule: "No exchanging of bodily fluids within the team." This dictum becomes increasingly difficult to live by as Lizzie's cravings and Zobel's own passions toward Rudolf intensify. Eventually, the golden rule is broken by Lizzie...and then again by Zobel (unbeknownst to Lizzie, of course). An intricate love triangle soon develops amongst the three that is shaped by deception, desire, and betrayal.

The story of a son who is afraid of everything. Overwhelmed by his dull life, one day he decides to flee. He starts a journey to nowhere, living other lives. And he finds out that if one day you no longer want to grow, it's not all that bad. You just have to learn to fly, to fly far away. It's a story about taking important decisions; and about how each time we make a choice, somewhere within us we make exactly the opposite one.

Two young men, Johann and Robin, take a trip into the countryside. The more they walk the forests of Brandenburg, the stranger their adventure becomes. Bikes disappear, maps prove useless – and each gets to know a new side of the other.

East Germany, 1988: working as a state security service agent, Jürgen Kaiser is loyal to the party line, but worried about his son Marco, a punk. As he is arrested after a concert, Marco is forced to join the army, where he surprisingly identifies with socialism and believes he has to defend his country against the capitalist enemy. While Jürgen is astonished, his wife Hanna and Marco's girlfriend Anja, supporting the civil rights movement, don't like his new attitude...

Carlos is a young student, just 21. Nice or annoying as he likes, enjoys provoking and transgreding. In the night he goes out to meet his friends in the Kronen, a bar. Every situation can be taken a little farther. There are no limits, no accepted barriers. And more each time, each adventure is chained to the next, as if it were a continuous night. A long description of people: grandfather, parents, sister, girlfriend, friends. And, among that, the obscure will of living every minute as if it were the last one. But something which happens puts Carlos and his friend against a reality they have been trying to ignore.

Achim Bornhak's movie focuses on the restless life of Uschi Obermaier, the icon of the 1968 movement in Germany and groupie. At the age of 16, Uschi is bored by her job in a photo lab, but soon becomes the "it girl" of Munich's club scene. When she gets to know Rainer Langhans, they move to Berlin and live in "Kommune 1", the first politically-motivated commune in Germany. While the other occupants claim she isn't political enough, Uschi just wants to have fun, works as fashion model and leads international music stars in temptation.

During the summer of 1937, Emanuel, a young man in his early twenties, is committed to a sanatorium on the Black Sea coast for treatment of his bone tuberculosis. The treatment consists of painful spine punctures that confine him to a plaster on a stretcher-bed. Little by little, as Emanuel gets accustomed to the sadness of his new life, he discovers that inside the sanatorium there is still a life to be lived to the fullest.

The obscure philosopher Georg Hermes almost withdrew from the world to concentrate on his studies, especially Heraclitus, having no relationship since his mother's death. When he wants a new suit for a lecture (actually very minor) about his new book, he meets the sisters Franziska, Breate and Marthe, who run a boutique, share a house and have a lover each. Those invite Georg to dinner, Franziska even on dates. Falling off a boat he gets naked with her, and they become lovers. The girls all take to Hermes and get him to move in, spoiled by all and offered polygamy.

In contemporary Mannheim, Branko and Merab, two hapless hitmen, are assigned to kill a businessman for unknown reasons. Although the unsuspecting businessman offers them plenty of opportunities to kill him, the two men are prevented from carrying out their mission by the most absurd coincidences, even after taking on a new helper by the name of Carlos.

Moritz follows a boyfriend to Berlin and is soon abandoned by him. Alone in the big city, he embarks on a journey through a wide range of queer experience. Only through a new circle of queer friends does he develop his own ideas of sexuality and masculinity, leading him to a clearer self-identity.

They want to get away from each other, but they clasp each other even more firmly. They seek to save appearances at all force. The more they laugh, the quieter it gets around them. The cracks in the family picture widen until an inescapable secret reveals itself.

Simon, a young German doctor who lives and works in Marseille, goes missing. His appartment is empty. His mother Valérie is desperate. She doesn't understand the reason of his disappearance. Therefore she asks Jens, Simon's former boyfriend, to come to Marseille and help her find him.

David, a recently fired scrapyard worker and Marie, a prostitute, both about 20 years old, meet on New Year's Eve in Berlin and decide to run away together. As David's arm is plastered from an accident Marie continues to prostitute herself to finance their restless journey through the Ruhr area. Their love and their will to survive guide them though all problems.

Seventeen-year-old Lena meets 19-year-old Farid, a young Muslim. She has a clear-cut attitude towards his culture and religion: utter rejection. Despite their differences – or perhaps because of them – they fall in love.

Tommy Silver stands trial in an epic musical fantasy where he must reckon with the guilt of his mother's death before it destroys him and the one he loves. Part nightmare, part daydream - as if Kafka and Gondry made a musical.

LKA-Zielfahnderin Hanna Landauer and her new colleague Röwer travel to Montevideo to provide the couple Tezlaff. It once kidnapped an industrialist and extorted 10 million ransom. The money has since disappeared.

Violent youth gangs and a police force way out of its depth. When a police operation goes awry and two policemen die, the powder keg threatens to ignite as the SWAT team knows only one goal: revenge - irrespective of the law.

A bittersweet tale about three people - a young pianist, a moody antique dealer and a notorious thief - who are transformed by love.

After three years at boarding school, Hanna is returning home to her little village to help her father's butcher’s shop during her break. Soon she learns that she is not welcome in the village. Everyone remembers the horrific news story about her mother’s death which was followed by the discovery of three dead men in the marsh. Superstition rules the village and everyone believes her mother was a witch that lured the men into the marsh directly to their death. While struggling to make friends, she meets extroverted city girl Eva. Thinking she has finally found a friend, Hanna’s confidence, and with that her "power", starts to grow, while scary accidents begin to happen around her.