20 best movies like Bicycle Thieves (1948)

List of the best movies like Bicycle Thieves (1948): Detachment, Nobody Owns Me, How Green Was My Valley, Angela's Ashes, Beasts of the Southern Wild, George Washington, Stromboli, Great Expectations, Il Posto, Thursday Till Sunday.

Tags: movies similar to Bicycle Thieves (1948) - full list

Markimdb: 7.7
Genredrama
CountryUSA
Duration01:38

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

Markimdb: 6.8
Genredrama
CountrySweden

The story of a lone father's relationship with his daughter, of the destructive power of alcohol, of a child's vulnerability, but also of love, betrayal and socialist politics in 1970s Sweden. A unique and moving story freely based on Åsa Linderborg's best-selling novel.

Markimdb: 7.7
Genredrama, family
CountryUSA
Duration01:58

At the turn of the century in a Welsh mining village, the Morgans (he stern, she gentle) raise coal-mining sons and hope their youngest will find a better life.

Markimdb: 7.3
Genredrama, biography
CountryUSA, Republic of Ireland
Duration02:14

Based on the best selling autobiography by Irish expat Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes follows the experiences of young Frankie and his family as they try against all odds to escape the poverty endemic in the slums of pre-war Limerick. The film opens with the family in Brooklyn, but following the death of one of Frankie's siblings, they return home, only to find the situation there even worse. Prejudice against Frankie's Northern Irish father makes his search for employment in the Republic difficult despite his having fought for the IRA, and when he does find money, he spends the money on drink.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genrefantasy, drama
CountryUSA
Duration01:31

Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink in 'the Bathtub', a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe—for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack—temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama
CountryUSA

Set in the landscape of a rural southern town, "George Washington" is a stunning portrait of how a group of young kids come to grips with a hard world of choices and consequences. During an innocent game in an abandoned amusement park, a member of the group dies. Narrated by one of the children, the film follows the kids as they struggle to balance their own ambitions and relationships against a tragic lie.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama
CountryItaly, USA
Duration01:41

After the end of World War II Karen, a young displaced woman from Lithuania, marries Italian fisherman Antonio to get away from her internment camp. But the life on Antonio's island, Stromboli, threatened by its volcano, is a tough one and Karen cannot get used to it.

Markimdb: 6.4
Genremelodrama, drama
CountryUnited Kingdom, USA
Duration02:08

Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster who wears an old wedding dress and lives in the dilapidated Satis House, asks Pip's "Uncle Pumblechook" (who is actually Joe's uncle) to find a boy to play with her adopted daughter Estella. Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with whom he falls in love,then Pip a humble orphan suddenly becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor.

Markimdb: 7.9
Genredrama
CountryItaly

With his family mired in financial troubles, Domenico moves to Milan, Italy, from his small town to get a job in lieu of furthering his education. A lack of options forces him to take a position as a messenger at a big company, where he hopes to receive a promotion soon. There, Domenico meets Antonietta, a young woman in a similar situation as himself. The two form a tentative relationship, but the soulless nature of their jobs threatens to keep them apart.

Markimdb: 6.4
Genredrama
CountryChile, Netherlands
Duration01:36

As she and her family embark on a short vacation, a Chilean teenager slowly comes to the realization that her parents might be splitting up.

Markimdb: 7.7
Genrefantasy, comedy, drama
CountryItaly
Duration01:40

Once upon a time an old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Toto, enters an orphanage. Toto leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. The squatters discover oil in the land and Toto sees a vision of the old woman who gives him a magic dove that will grant him anything he wishes.

Markimdb: 7.1
Genrethriller, drama, adventure, crime, detective
CountryUnited Kingdom, Brazil, Germany
Duration01:54

Set in Brazil, three kids who make a discovery in a garbage dump soon find themselves running from the cops and trying to right a terrible wrong.

Markimdb: 7.9
Genredrama
CountryFrance
Duration02:00

An inexperienced, sickly priest shows up in the rural French community of Ambricourt, where he joins the community's clergy. But the locals don't take kindly to the priest, and his ascetic ways and unsociable demeanor make him an outcast. During Bible studies at the nearby girls school, he is continually mocked by his students. Then his attempt to intervene in a family feud backfires into a scandal. His failures, compounded with his declining health, begin to erode his faith.

Markimdb: 7.5
Genredrama
CountryJapan, Netherlands, Hong Kong

Ryûhei Sasaki is keeping a secret from his wife, Megumi and his two teenage sons. Even though he leaves the house every day, he's not really going to work. He's going to an employment office. He recently lost his job due to outsourcing, but is determined to find another position, all while supporting an old friend who is also out of work. But when Megumi accidentally finds out Ryûhei's secret and doesn't tell him, her trust in him, and their marriage, suffers.

Markimdb: 7.9
Genredrama, family
CountryUnited Kingdom

A young, English working-class boy spends his free time caring for and training his pet falcon.

Markimdb: 8
Genredrama, military
CountryFrance, West Germany, Italy
Duration01:44

Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.

Markimdb: 8
Genremelodrama, drama
CountryUSA
Duration02:09

In Brooklyn circa 1900, the Nolans manage to enjoy life on pennies despite great poverty and Papa's alcoholism. We come to know these people well through big and little troubles: Aunt Sissy's scandalous succession of "husbands"; the removal of the one tree visible from their tenement; and young Francie's desire to transfer to a better school...if irresponsible Papa can get his act together.

Markimdb: 6.7
Genredrama, crime
CountryUSA
Duration01:33

A destitute 14-year-old struggles to keep his life together despite harsh abuse at his mother's hands, harsher abuse at his father's, and a growing separation from his slightly older brother.

Markimdb: 6.5
Genredrama
CountrySweden, Denmark, Germany, Norway
Duration02:02

Epic story about two families and their friendship and common destiny in Sweden's Gothenburg in the 1940s and 1950s. Told from the perspective of young Simon Larsson, who learns that he's an adopted child who has a Jewish father from Germany. After WWII Simon travels to explore his roots - a journey that leads to the basic mysteries of the human life. After the bestselling novel by Marianne Fredriksson.

Markimdb: 6.3
Genredrama, history
CountryFrance, Israel, Italy, India, USA
Duration01:52

A drama centered on an orphaned Palestinian girl growing up in the wake of the first Arab-Israeli war who finds herself drawn into the conflict.

Markimdb: 6
Genredrama
CountryUSA

Tommy and his older brother Eric live in the midst of vast remote forests. The death of their friend pushes them close to the edge. Eric doesn’t know how to channel his energy. All at once, nature’s vastness feels stifling.

Markimdb: 6.1
Genrefantastic, drama, family
CountryUSA

In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy, despite the instability surfacing in their world.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama
CountryItaly, France

A study of the friendship between a Chinese woman and a fisherman who came to Italy from Yugoslavia many years ago, who live in a small city-island in the Veneto lagoon.

Markimdb: 6.4
Genrecomedy, drama
CountryUnited Kingdom, USA

A fresh and distinctive take on Charles Dickens’ semi-autobiographical masterpiece, The Personal History of David Copperfield, set in the 1840s, chronicles the life of its iconic title character as he navigates a chaotic world to find his elusive place within it. From his unhappy childhood to the discovery of his gift as a storyteller and writer, David’s journey is by turns hilarious and tragic, but always full of life, colour and humanity.

Markimdb: 7.8
Genredrama
CountryChina
Duration02:22

In the northern Chinese city of Manzhouli, they say there is an elephant that simply sits and ignores the world. Manzhouli becomes an obsession for the protagonists of this film, a longed-for escape from the downward spiral in which they find themselves.

Markimdb: 6.4
Genredrama
CountryItaly, USA
Duration02:22

While touring in Italy, a recently-widowed American opera singer has an incestuous relationship with her 15-year-old son to help him overcome his heroin addiction.

Markimdb: 7.6
Genrecomedy, drama
CountryUnited Kingdom, USA, France
Duration01:38

A woman searches for her adult son, who was taken away from her decades ago when she was forced to live in a convent.

Markimdb: 7.4
Genreadventure, family
CountryIsrael, Germany, Poland
Duration01:30

An estranged father and son are brought together by a young crane named Karl as they trace a family of the birds on their migratory journey from Russia to Africa.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama
CountrySingapore, Japan, Taiwan, France
Duration01:39

Set in the mid 1990s in Singapore, ILOILO chronicles the relationship between a family and their maid from Ilo Ilo, a province in the Philippines.

Markimdb: 7.1
Genredrama
CountryBulgaria, Sweden

Two estranged brothers are brought together when they have opposite roles in a racist beating: while Georgi who's recently joined a neo-nazi group participates in the violence, Hristo witnesses and rescues a Turkish family. Only by reuniting will the two brothers be able to assess what they really want from life.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama
CountryFrance, Taiwan, China
Duration01:53

A seventeen-year-old country boy working in Beijing as a courier has his bicycle stolen, and finds it with a schoolboy his age.

Markimdb: 7.7
Genremelodrama, drama
CountryFrance
Duration02:42

Algeria, the 1930s. Younes is nine years old when he is put in his uncle's care in Oran. Rebaptized Jonas, he grows up among the Rio Salado youths, with whom he becomes friends. Emilie is one of the gang; everyone is in love with her. A great love story develops between Jonas and Emilie, which is soon unsettled by the conflicts troubling the country.

Markimdb: 7.4
Genredrama, musical, family
CountryUnited Kingdom
Duration02:33

Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, a classic tale of an orphan who runs away from the workhouse and joins up with a group of boys headed by the Artful Dodger and trained to be pickpockets by master thief Fagin.

Markimdb: 6.7
Genredrama
CountryUSA

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.

Markimdb: 7.9
Genrecomedy, drama
CountryItaly, France

Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.

Markimdb: 6.4
Genredrama
CountryFinland, Sweden, Denmark
Duration01:36

A 14-year-old boy in a stifling Helsinki slum takes some unwise life lessons from his soon-to-be-incarcerated older brother, in Finnish master Pirjo Honkasalo’s gorgeously stylized and emotionally devastating work about what we pass on to younger generations, and the ways we do it.

Markimdb: 7.3
Genredrama, biography
CountryUSA
Duration01:55

In 1957, a son and mother flee the East and an abusive boyfriend to find a new life, and end up in Seattle, where the mother meets a polite garage mechanic. The boy continually gets into trouble by hanging out with the wrong crowd. The mom marries the mechanic, but they soon find out that he's an abusive and unreasoning alcoholic, and they struggle to maintain hope in an impossible situation as the boy grows up with plans to escape the small town by any means possible. Based on a true story by Tobias Wolff.

Markimdb: 7.5
Genredrama
CountryFrance
Duration01:50

Bilal is 17 years old, a Kurdish boy from Iraq. He sets off on an adventure-filled journey across Europe. He wants to get to England to see his love who lives there. Bilal finally reaches Calais, but how do you cover 32 kilometers of the English Channel when you can't swim? The boy soon discovers that his trip won't be as easy as he imagined... The community of struggling illegal aliens in Calais

Markimdb: 7.2
Genremelodrama, drama
CountryUSA
Duration01:38

A gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama, crime
CountryItaly, France
Duration01:51

The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.

Markimdb: 6.9
Genredrama, crime
CountrySpain
Duration01:48

In the harsh post-war years' Catalan countryside, Andreu, a child that belongs to the losing side, finds the corpses of a man and his son in the forest. The authorities want his father to be made responsible of the deaths, but Andreu tries to help his father by finding out who truly killed them. In this search, Andreu develops a moral consciousness against a world of adults fed by lies. In order to survive, he betrays his own roots and ends up finding out the monster that lives within him.

Markimdb: 5.2
Genredrama
CountryUSA
Duration01:35

Set at a Southern college during the 1950s, three co-eds (Ally Sheedy, Virginia Madsen and Phoebe Cates) re-assess their values in light of the burgeoning civil rights movement.

Markimdb: 7
Genredrama
CountryFrance
Duration01:32

An outer suburb of Paris, 1972. Gilles and Christine, both sixteen, are classmates and lovers who have become frustrated with the aloofness of their families and the general monotony of their lives. When the pair are caught shoplifting, Christine's father ships her off to a home for emotionally disturbed children, temporarily putting space between her and Gilles. Luckily for them, though, she escapes and the couple contemplate running away together.

Markimdb: 7.1
Genredrama
CountryItaly, Germany, France, USA
Duration01:45

Meeting his handicapped son for the first time, a young father attempts to forge a relationship with the teenager.

Markimdb: 7.7
Genredrama
CountryUSA
Duration02:54

A young Anatolian Greek, entrusted with his family's fortune, loses it en route to Istanbul and dreams of going to America

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama
CountryUSA
Duration02:03

A River Runs Through is a cinematographically stunning true story of Norman Maclean. The story follows Norman and his brother Paul through the experiences of life and growing up, and how their love of fly fishing keeps them together despite varying life circumstances in the untamed west of Montana in the 1920's.

Markimdb: 8.3
Genremelodrama, drama, crime
CountryTaiwan
Duration03:57

A boy experiences first love, friendships and injustices growing up in 1960s Taiwan.

Markimdb: 7.6
Genredrama, military
CountrySpain
Duration01:36

The film centres on Moncho and his coming-of-age experience in Galicia in 1936. Moncho develops a close relationship with his teacher Don Gregorio who introduces the boy to different things in the world. While the story centres on Moncho's ordinary coming-of-age experiences, tensions related to the looming Spanish Civil War periodically interrupt Moncho's personal growth and daily life.

Markimdb: 6.9
Genredrama
CountryUnited Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy

A morality tale of xenophobia, religious prejudice, mob violence, poverty, and their effect on two children in Liverpool during the Depression. When a shipyard closes, Liam and Teresa's dad loses his job. Liam, who's about 8, making his first Holy Communion, gets a regular dose of fire and brimstone at church. Teresa, about 13, has a job as a maid to the Jewish family that owns the closed shipyard. The lady of that house is having an affair, and Teresa becomes an accomplice. Liam stutters terribly, especially when troubled. Dad comes under the sway of the Fascists, who blame cheap Irish labor and Jewish owners. A Molotov cocktail brings things to a head.

Markimdb: 6.9
Genredrama
CountryUSA
Duration01:46

When David Greene receives a football scholarship to a prestigious prep school in the 1950s, he feels pressure to hide the fact that he is Jewish from his classmates and teachers, fearing that they may be anti-Semitic. He quickly becomes the big man on campus thanks to his football skills, but when his Jewish background is discovered, his worst fears are realized and his friends turn on him with violent threats and public ridicule.




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