20 best movies like A Short Film About Love (1988)

A stylish suspense thriller that confounds the audience while presenting them with an extraordinary and elusive mystery. Max is a former playboy who has decided to settle down by marrying his current love, Muriel. However, during a business trip, Max catches a glimpse of the great lost love of his life, reviving his wanderlust and sending him off on a chase of the elusive Lisa, whom he had overheard suggesting to a friend that her lover, Daniel, had killed someone for her. Soon, Max is trying to unravel the mystery behind the suspicious death of Daniel's wife, which he hopes will lead him closer to Lisa.

The tale of an outlaw who escapes from prison and sets out across the Texas hills to reunite with his wife and the daughter he has never met.

Coleman Silk is a worldly and admired professor who loses his job after unwittingly making a racial slur. To clear his name, Silk writes a book about the events with his friend and colleague Nathan Zuckerman, who in the process discovers a dark secret Silk has hidden his whole life. All the while, Silk engages in an affair with Faunia Farley, a younger woman whose tormented past threatens to unravel the layers of deception Silk has constructed.

Véronique is a beautiful young French woman who aspires to be a renowned singer; Weronika lives in Poland, has a similar career goal and looks identical to Véronique, though the two are not related. The film follows both women as they contend with the ups and downs of their individual lives, with Véronique embarking on an unusual romance with Alexandre Fabbri, a puppeteer who may be able to help her with her existential issues.

Rick is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. While successful in his career, his life feels empty. Haunted and confused, he finds temporary solace in the decadent Hollywood excess that defines his existence. Women provide a distraction to his daily pain, and every encounter brings him closer to finding his place in the world.

Hoping to leave behind troubled days in the Baltimore city police department, Nate Burns journeys to Alaska, where he takes up a quiet life as a small-town sheriff and begins a romance with spirited bush pilot Meg Galligan). But when Meg's father turns up dead, Burns finds himself thrust into the limelight of a dangerous murder investigation.

A disfigured concentration-camp survivor, unrecognizable after facial reconstruction surgery, searches ravaged postwar Berlin for the husband who might have betrayed her to the Nazis.

Anna, a young novitiate in 1960s Poland, is on the verge of taking her vows when she discovers a family secret dating back to the years of the German occupation.

Based on the literary classic by Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd is the story of independent, beautiful and headstrong Bathsheba Everdene, who attracts three very different suitors: Gabriel Oak, a sheep farmer, captivated by her fetching willfulness; Frank Troy, a handsome and reckless Sergeant; and William Boldwood, a prosperous and mature bachelor. This timeless story of Bathsheba's choices and passions explores the nature of relationships and love – as well as the human ability to overcome hardships through resilience and perseverance.

A young man, whose only possession is a motorcycle, spends his time riding around the city looking for empty apartments. After finding one, he hangs out for a while, fixing himself something to eat, washing laundry or making small repairs in return. He always tries to leave before the owners get back but in one ostensibly empty mansion he meets the abused wife of a rich man and she escapes with him...

Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.

Young writer Richard Collier is met on the opening night of his first play by an old lady who begs him to "Come back to me". Mystified, he tries to find out about her, and learns that she is a famous stage actress from the early 1900s. Becoming more and more obsessed with her, by self-hypnosis he manages to travel back in time—where he meets her.

A futuristic 'Brief Encounter', a love story in which the romance is doomed by genetic incompatibility.

The tale of the cigarette-maker Carmen and the Spanish cavalry soldier Don Jose is translated into a modern-day story of a parachute factory worker and a stalwart GI named Joe who is about to go to flying school. Conflict arises when a prize-ring champ captures the heart of Carmen after she has seduced Joe and caused him to go AWOL.

Clarence marries hooker Alabama, steals cocaine from her pimp, and tries to sell it in Hollywood, while the owners of the coke try to reclaim it.

After being estranged for 15 years, flamboyant actress Becky del Paramo re-enters her daughter Rebecca's life when she comes to perform a concert. Rebecca, she finds, is now married to one of Becky's ex-lovers, Manuel. The mother and daughter begin making up for lost time, when suddenly, a murder occurs...

A lighthouse keeper and his wife living off the coast of Western Australia raise a baby they rescue from an adrift rowboat.

A coming of age dramedy where infidelity, real estate, and Lyme disease have two families falling apart on Long Island in the early eighties. Scott, 15, is at the point in his life when he finds out that the most important people around him, his father, his mother, and his brother, are not exactly who he thought they were. They are flawed and they are human.

In the Yorkshire countryside, working-class tomboy Mona meets the exotic, pampered Tasmin. Over the summer season, the two young women discover they have much to teach one another, and much to explore together.

In the not so distant future, Theodore, a lonely writer purchases a newly developed operating system designed to meet the user's every needs. To Theodore's surprise, a romantic relationship develops between him and his operating system. This unconventional love story blends science fiction and romance in a sweet tale that explores the nature of love and the ways that technology isolates and connects us all.

The story of a husband who suspects his wife of adultery, and sets out to track down the other man in her life.

Harry Caine, a blind writer, reaches this moment in time when he has to heal his wounds from 14 years back. He was then still known by his real name, Mateo Blanco, and directing his last movie.

A New Jersey guy dedicated to his family, friends, and church, develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to find happiness and intimacy with his potential true love.

Susan is a scientist searching for answers to important questions. So important that she has given up on other things, like love - until she meets Micheal. Susan and Michael find themselves embarking on a sensual adventure while the world around them seems to be falling apart. A life-affirming look at what it means to love and be loved in turbulent times.

This remake of the 1946 movie of the same name accounts an affair between a seedy drifter and a seductive wife of a roadside cafe owner. This begins a chain of events that culminates in murder. Based on a novel by James M. Cain.

The interwoven stories of three couples which are forced to make life altering decisions in the face of a disastrous war. Inspired and sometimes blinded by their love, Len, Mia, Andy, Esther, Anna and Erik are as flawed and beautiful as any of the billions who are facing this human-made biological disaster.

In the near future, due to a breakthrough scientific discovery by Dr. Thomas Harbor, there is now definitive proof of an afterlife. While countless people have chosen suicide to reset their existence, others try to decide what it all means. Among them is Dr. Harbor's son Will, who has arrived at his father's isolated compound with a mysterious young woman named Isla. There, they discover the strange acolytes who help Dr. Harbor with his experiments.

On Manhattan's gilded Upper East Side, a young gay painter is torn between an obsession with his infamous best friend and a promising new romance with an older foreign pianist.

A disenfranchised 16-year-old girl connects to an older man on the internet and after a brief one-sided affair descends into obsession and anorexia.

Based upon the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, a chess grandmaster travels to Italy in the 1920s to play in a tournament and falls in love.

Head On is German director Fatih Akin’s story of the alcoholic Cahit and Turkish Sibel. Akin tells the story of a love that can never be between two people who are too alike to not be together.

How was it possible that a single man influenced contemporary world so significantly? This film is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of a common man’s metamorphosis into a charismatic leader — an attempt to see how a Gdansk shipyard electrician fighting for workers’ rights awakened a hidden desire for freedom in millions of people.

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), man of the people, autodidact and revolutionary sculptor - the most brilliant of his era. At 42, Rodin meets Camille Claudel, a young woman desperate to become his assistant. He quickly acknowledges her as his most able pupil, and treats her as an equal in matters of creation.

The wife of a British Judge is caught in a self-destructive love affair with a Royal Air Force pilot.

John Arnold DeMarco is a man who believes he is Don Juan, the greatest lover in the world. Clad in a cape and mask, DeMarco undergoes psychiatric treatment with Dr. Jack Mickler to cure him of his apparent delusion. But the psychiatric sessions have an unexpected effect on the psychiatric staff and, most profoundly, Dr Mickler, who rekindles the romance in his complacent marriage.

When new kid in town Ed Wallis is given an assignment to interview an older person, he turns to his mysterious neighbor, Ashby Holt for help. That new connection leads to unexpected journeys for both of them, as Ashby – who turns out to be a retired CIA assassin – deals with a terminal prognosis, and Ed deals with adjusting to life with his newly single mom and developing relationship with a brainy classmate, Eloise.

Martinón is the last inhabitant of Auzal, a village in the mountains where he lives in communion with nature. He only goes down to the valleys twice a year to trade and to buy provisions. But one day he’s convinced to take a wife, a decision intended to soften his calloused soul—but in some ways his real struggle is only just beginning.

Gloria is a 58-year-old divorcée. Her children have all left home but she has no desire to spend her days and nights alone. Determined to defy old age and loneliness, she rushes headlong into a whirl of singles’ parties on the hunt for instant gratification – which only leads to repeated disappointment and enduring emptiness. But when Gloria meets Rodolfo, an ex-naval officer seven years her senior, she begins to imagine the possibility of a permanent relationship.

Kuba attends an art opening with his girlfriend of two years and bumps into Mikal. The connection between these two young men is instantaneous and intoxicating, and despite opposition from all sides, he allows Mikal into his life. The results go beyond anything he could have imagined. This intimate and bold second feature from Polish director Tomasz Wasilewski captures the often-complicated consequences of finding love where others do not want it.

Two married couples find only trouble and heartache as their complicated lives unfold. After 40 years of marriage, Alfie leaves his wife to pursue what he thinks is happiness with a call girl. His wife, Helena, reeling from abandonment, decides to follow the advice of a psychic. Sally, the daughter of Alfie and Helena, is unhappy in her marriage and develops a crush on her boss, while her husband, Roy, falls for a woman engaged to be married.

A mistaken delivery in Mumbai's famously efficient lunchbox delivery system (Mumbai's Dabbawallahs) connects a young housewife to a stranger in the dusk of his life. They build a fantasy world together through notes in the lunchbox. Gradually, this fantasy threatens to overwhelm their reality.

A dashing young Italian in Poland finds himself caught between two women — a novitiate nun and a ruthless corporate ladder-climber — in this lacerating vision of contemporary Poland from master filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi.

Three magazine employees head out on an assignment to interview a guy who placed a classified ad seeking a companion for time travel.

Two strangers become dangerously close after witnessing a deadly accident. On a beautiful cloudless day a young couple celebrate their reunion with a picnic. Joe has planned a postcard-perfect afternoon in the English countryside with his partner, Claire. But as Joe and Claire prepare to open a bottle of champagne, their idyll comes to an abrupt end. A hot air balloon drifts into the field, obviously in trouble. The pilot catches his leg in the anchor rope, while the only passenger, a boy, is too scared to jump down. Joe and three other men rush to secure the basket. But fate has other ideas...

The O'Neills lived happily in their house in the Australian countryside. That was until one day fate struck blindly, taking the life of Peter, the father, leaving his grief-stricken wife Dawn alone with their four children. Among them, eight-year-old Simone denies this reality. She is persuaded that her father still lives in the giant fig tree growing near their house and speaks to her through its leaves. But the tree becomes more and more invasive and threatens the house. It must be felled. Of course, Simone won't allow it.

A man and a woman meet in the ruins of post-war Poland. With vastly different backgrounds and temperaments, they are fatally mismatched and yet drawn to each other.

Based on Evelyn Waugh's 1945 classic British novel, Brideshead Revisited is a poignant story of forbidden love and the loss of innocence set in England prior to the Second World War.

A romantic drama set in Germany just before WWI and centered on a married woman who falls in love with her husband's teacher. Separated by the war, they pledge their devotion to one another.

After a painful breakup, Leah seems to meet the perfect guy. But she soon discovers his violent side that disrupts her life.

Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.