20 best movies like Chronicle of My Mother (2011)

Margherita, a director in the middle of an existential crisis, has to deal with the inevitable and still unacceptable loss of her mother.

A headstrong Chinese-American woman returns to China when her beloved grandmother is given a terminal diagnosis. Billi struggles with her family's decision to keep grandma in the dark about her own illness as they all stage an impromptu wedding to see grandma one last time.

Jenny Farrell is getting married. But how will her straight-laced family react when they find out that the woman they thought was their daughter’s roommate is actually her fiancée? As the old-fashioned Farrells attempt to come to terms with the prospect of a surprise daughter-in-law, they face a difficult choice: either adapt with the times or risk being left behind.

A young Englishman plots revenge against his mysterious, beautiful cousin, believing that she murdered his guardian. But his feelings become complicated as he finds himself falling under the beguiling spell of her charms.

Gloria is a free-spirited divorcée who spends her days at a straight-laced office job and her nights on the dance floor, joyfully letting loose at clubs around Los Angeles. After meeting Arnold on a night out, she finds herself thrust into an unexpected new romance, filled with both the joys of budding love and the complications of dating, identity, and family.

The story of American poet Emily Dickinson from her early days as a young schoolgirl to her later years as a reclusive, unrecognized artist.

A lady has her prim and proper life turned upside down after discovering her husband's affair.

An aging Latin lover gets dumped by his sugar mama and must fend for himself in a harsh world.

Pennsylvania, 1956. Frank Sheeran, a war veteran of Irish origin who works as a truck driver, accidentally meets mobster Russell Bufalino. Once Frank becomes his trusted man, Bufalino sends him to Chicago with the task of helping Jimmy Hoffa, a powerful union leader related to organized crime, with whom Frank will maintain a close friendship for nearly twenty years.

I (Takumi Kitamura) am a high school student. I happen to find a diary by my classmate Sakura Yamauchi (Minami Hamabe) that reveals she is suffering from a pancreatic disease. I spent time with Sakura, but she dies. 12 years later, due to Sakura’s words, I (Shun Oguri) am now a high school teacher at the same school where I graduated from. While I talk with my student, I remember several months I spent with Sakura. Meanwhile, Kyoko (Keiko Kitagawa), who was Sakura’s friend, is soon to marry. Kyoko also recalls the days she spent with me and Sakura.

The true story of the 1973 tennis match between World number one Billie Jean King and ex-champ and serial hustler Bobby Riggs.

Ted Kennedy's life and political career become derailed in the aftermath of a fatal car accident in 1969 that claims the life of a young campaign strategist, Mary Jo Kopechne.

An aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online.

A traumatized, alcoholic Dan Torrance meets Abra, a kid who also has the ability to "shine." He tries to protect her from the True Knot, a cult whose goal is to feed off of people like them in order to remain immortal. Doctor Sleep is a sequel to Stephen King's 1977 novel "The Shining". Doctor Sleep is set several decades after the events of the first "Shining".

The life of celebrated but reclusive author, J.D. Salinger, who gained worldwide fame with the publication of his novel, The Catcher in the Rye.

Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.

The love affair between poet Percy Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin resulted in the creation of an immortal novel, “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.”

A luminously beautiful biopic of the celebrated eighteenth-century Italian poet, essayist and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi, who created immortal verse whilst struggling with a debilitating illness.

Ryota is an unpopular writer although he won a literary award 15 years ago. Now, Ryota works as a private detective. He is divorced from his ex-wife Kyoko and he has an 11-year-old son Shingo. His mother Yoshiko lives alone at her apartment. One day, Ryota, his ex-wife Kyoko, and son Shingo gather at Yoshiko's apartment. A typhoon passes and the family must stay there all night long.

A story that revolves around three sisters who live in their grandmother's home and the arrival of their 13-year-old half sister.

Poland, 1945. Mathilde, a young French Red Cross doctor, is on a mission to help the war survivors. When a nun seeks for her help, she is brought to a convent where several pregnant sisters are hiding, unable to reconcile their faith with their pregnancy. Mathilde becomes their only hope.

In New York, a struggling actress and a successful writer sing about their failed marriage from two perspectives.

Shigemori is a lawyer tasked with defending Misumi in a murder trial. Misumi has previous convictions for murder and has confessed to the crime, but evidence in the case leads to Shigemori having doubts about what really happened.

The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.

The story of the five-day interview between Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky and acclaimed novelist David Foster Wallace, which took place right after the 1996 publication of Wallace's groundbreaking epic novel, 'Infinite Jest.'

The daughter of a Scottish farmer comes of age in the early 1900s.

During the Japanese colonial era, roughly 400 Korean people, who were forced onto Battleship Island (‘Hashima Island’) to mine for coal, attempt to escape.

Paris in the 1920s. Marguerite Dumont is a wealthy woman with a passion for music and the opera. For years, she has performed regularly for a circle of guests. But Marguerite sings tragically out of tune and no one has ever told her. Her husband and her close friends have always encouraged her in her illusions. Things become very complicated the day she gets it into her head to perform in front of a genuine public, at the Opera.

A failed novelist's inability to pay the bills strains relations with his wife and leads him to work at an escort service where he becomes entwined with a wealthy woman whose husband is a successful writer.

A couple is going through marital troubles made worse when a previously unknown grandson shows up.

James White is a troubled twentysomething trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. As he retreats further into a hedonistic lifestyle, his mother's battle with a serious illness faces a series of setbacks that force him to assume more responsibility. With the pressure on him mounting, James must find new reserves of strength or risk imploding completely.

Fifteen-year old John Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it. He’s obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn’t want to become one. Terrible impulses constantly tempt him, so for his own sake, and the safety of those around, he lives by rigid rules to keep himself “good” and “normal”. However, when a real monster shows up in his town he has to let his dark side out in order to stop it – but without his rules to keep him in check, he might be more dangerous than the monster he’s trying to kill.

In 1987, during the austere days of Thatcher’s Britain, a teenager learns to live life, understand his family, and find his own voice through the music of Bruce Springsteen.

A young girl is raised in a dysfunctional family constantly on the run from the FBI. Living in poverty, she comes of age guided by her drunkard, ingenious father who distracts her with magical stories to keep her mind off the family's dire state, and her selfish, nonconformist mother who has no intention of raising a family, along with her younger brother and sister, and her other older sister. Together, they fend for each other as they mature in an unorthodox journey that is their family life.

Pio Amato, a 14 year-old member of a small Romani community in southern Italian town of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, is in a hurry to grow up. Pio follows his older brother Cosimo everywhere and from him he learns how to hustle and how to navigate the streets of his hometown. One night Pio sets out to prove to his brother that he is as good or better than him but, when things go wrong, a series of events will forever change the way he sees the world.

Everyone hates Ward’s wife and wants her dead, Ward (Donald Faison) most of all. But when his friends’ murderous fantasies turn into an (accidental) reality, they have to deal with a whole new set of problems — like how to dispose of the body and still make their 3 p.m. tee time. Scott Foley's directorial debut, also starring Foley, Patrick Wilson, Amy Acker, and Nicolette Sheridan, is a blackly comic caper about helping a friend out of a bad relationship by any means necessary.

The Wild West, circa 1870. Samuel Alabaster, an affluent pioneer, ventures across the American frontier to marry the love of his life, Penelope. As his group traverses the west, the once-simple journey grows treacherous, blurring the lines between hero, villain and damsel.

A blind woman's relationship with her husband changes when she regains her sight and discovers disturbing details about themselves.

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.

After one of their shoplifting sessions, Osamu and his son come across a little girl in the freezing cold. At first reluctant to shelter the girl, Osamu’s wife agrees to take care of her after learning of the hardships she faces. Although the family is poor, barely making enough money to survive through petty crime, they seem to live happily together until an unforeseen incident reveals hidden secrets, testing the bonds that unite them.

In a small town in California's San Joaquin Valley, 14-year-old Homer Macauley is determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger anyone has ever seen. His older brother has gone to war, leaving Homer to look after his widowed mother, his older sister and his 4-year-old brother, Ulysses. And so it is that as spring turns to summer, 1942, Homer Macauley delivers messages of love, hope, pain... and death... to the good people of Ithaca. And Homer Macauley will grapple with one message that will change him forever - from a boy into a man. Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Saroyan's 1943 novel, The Human Comedy, ITHACA is the quintessential wartime tale of the Home Front. It is a coming-of-age story about the exuberance of youth, the sweetness of life, the sting of death and the modesty and sheer goodness that lives in each and every one of us.

Fed up with the hectic, senseless world he lives in, Teddy decides to settle down alone in Siberia, in the midst of winter, in a hut by the shore of Lake Baikal. After an initial period of elation in front of the splendor and magic of unspoiled nature, Teddy soon finds himself confronted with the less glossy side of things : solitude, extreme cold, the necessity to find food, danger... One night Teddy gets lost in a blizzard and would be doomed to a certain death, were it not for Aleksei, a Russian convict living hidden away in the forest nearby, who rescues him in extremis. Friendship soon blossoms between the two men...

Sentaro runs a small bakery that serves dorayaki pastries filled with sweet red bean paste (“an”). When an old lady, Tokue, offers to help in the kitchen he reluctantly accepts. She will soon prove to have magic in her hands…

Claire is a midwife and has devoted her life to others. At a moment when she is preoccupied by the imminent closure of the maternity clinic where she works, her life is further turned upside down when Béatrice, her father's former mistress, turns up on the scene. Béatrice is a capricious and selfish woman, Claire's exact opposite.

From Danish director and actor Paprika Steen comes a caustic comedy about the deep-rooted grievances that can rip families apart -- and the ties that bind them together.

The separation of a long married couple goes awry when they fall for each other again.

A shy teenager living on the Isle of Wight dreams of pop stardom. With the help of an unlikely mentor, she enters a singing competition that will test her integrity, talent, and ambition.

The story of Swiss painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

A traumatised veteran, unafraid of violence, tracks down missing girls for a living. When a job spins out of control, Joe's nightmares overtake him as a conspiracy is uncovered leading to what may be his death trip or his awakening.

A boy growing up in Dublin during the 1980s escapes his strained family life by starting a band to impress the mysterious girl he likes.