20 best movies like Core of the World (2018)

Oleg is a young gifted paramedic. His wife Katya works as a nurse at the hospital emergency department. She loves Oleg, but is fed up with him caring more about patients than her. She tells him she wants a divorce. The new head of Oleg’s EMA department is a cold-hearted manager who’s got new strict rules to implement. Oleg couldn’t care less about the rules – he’s got lives to save; his attitude gets him in trouble with the new boss. The crisis at work coincides with the personal life crisis. Caught up between their patients, alcohol-fueled off-shifts, and an evolving health care system, Oleg and Katya have to find the binding force that will keep them together.

The drama based on hidden implicit faith in miracle unfolds between the members of the family with an unhappy love story of a desolate teenage girl who tries to withstand this family madness after their devotee grandmother came to their flat from upcountry.

Antonina, an artist from Saint Petersburg, follows her husband, a political prisoner, to the deep north province of Russia. As she starts teaching art in a local school, she finds herself opposed by a twelve-year-old boy, Misha, whose brother is a feared local gang leader.

Christopher Robin, the boy who had countless adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood, has grown up and lost his way. Now it’s up to his spirited and loveable stuffed animals, Winnie The Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, and the rest of the gang, to rekindle their friendship and remind him of endless days of childlike wonder and make-believe, when doing nothing was the very best something.

Judas, a seasoned thief, finds himself in the market square where Christ is giving a sermon and his apostles are collecting alms. He follows them and steals their money, only to be caught red-handed. Nevertheless, the Teacher forgives him. What is more, He invites the thief to become one of His followers and offers him a position as the group’s treasurer. Shocked by Christ’s unexpected offer, Judas decides to join the apostles, if only to figure out what is going on. He gradually starts to comprehend Christ’s message, but feels that the apostles are blindly following their teacher. Judas argues with them, and tries to defend his right to divine the truth of God. But when he fails to make them understand, he realizes that Christ’s teachings may sink into oblivion without benefiting humanity. His solution is to betray Christ. “By killing a man, have I not saved a God?”

Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears...

Igor, a Russian oligarch gets into a heated argument with Eva, his estranged daughter whilst traveling on his private jet. Igor orders the plane to land. As the plane touches down Eva disappears into the Goan jungle. Thus begins Igor's desperate search for his only daughter. A search that will bring him and Eva into contact with various characters who in turn are trying to find their own paths through life. Makar, a guy from Novosibirsk, who is desperately searching for enlightenment. Alexey and Kristina are ending their marriage here, while Dimon and Lenya are raising hell and pushing Goa to its partying limits. Kosmos the Guru ("just don't call him that") dispenses the chemicals that in a bat of an eyelid will take you to an alternate reality. There are different destinies here. There are a myriad of people. But all of them have one Motherland, which is easy not to love as long it is close to you

Anya, a young academic raised in an orphanage, is on the cusp of success when she’s accused of drug possession. While in limbo hiding from the police, she hits the road with Kristina, another orphan several years Anya’s junior, in search of her possibly mythical grandmother.

Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation. A man is wrongly accused of collaboration. Desperate to save his dignity, he faces an impossible moral choice.

The volatile intersections of contemporary Moscow and the intimate lives of five people.

A French policeman, a wine grower from Georgia, a couple of young actors in London, an Italian priest. Four stories of change in people through the prism of a drink that accompanies human passions for 8000 years.

In the Russian provinces life seems to have frozen since the 1990s. Here you can hide from the worries of the big world, and heal the wounds of the soul. Thus argues Mila, having decided to return home to the mother’s house after an unsuccessful attempt “to conquer Moscow”. Mila’s sister Galya also wants happiness without thinking about the price. The passion that is aroused in the women by Rustam, a young handsome man from Central Asia, disrupts the family peace. A terrible enlightenment awaits the participants of this family drama.

Young Oksana puts her newly born Denis in a baby box. Sixteen years later she steals him away from a children's home, intent on making amends for her maternal neglect, and to exploit him to earn money in a corrupt legal system.

Vladimir is reaching the end of his life and decides to leave his wealth to his only daughter, cutting out his wife and her son from his will.

In cities like Paris there are countless people from Eastern Europe who have forsaken their homelands because they can see no future there. Lucia and her little daughter Marussia are two such people. They have been thrown out by the Russian acquaintances they were staying with and must tramp the streets with their trolley suitcases searching for somewhere else to live. A Russian Orthodox priest offers them their first night's shelter. They spend the second night in a homeless hostel and party through the third with a chance acquaintance. On the fourth night they sleep clandestinely in a cinema and on the fifth with a Russian artist in a hotel … Lucia is good-looking, dresses elegantly and is certainly not shy of men. This serves the mother and her daughter well. In spite of all the uncertainties in their lives, the two frequently share tender moments.

A long time ago, Prometheus was cursed by the God's for bringing fire to mankind. Today, Fedor finds himself in Moscow for the first time and falls in love with Masha.

With her the husband and her mother Katya lives in a small provincial town and works at the local factory. The mother suddenly falls ill and decides to transfer her property to her son, Katya’s brother. Katya feels this decision to be unjust, and begins to fight for her inheritance. In pursuit of imaginary material well-being Katya decides on a most desperate act.

The fates of two people - adult and teenager - are crossing paths when both of them are on a crossroads of their lives.

A saleswoman from the fish store Polina Schukina is going through a difficult life period. By the grace of an extravagant grandmother, she finds herself in the fairy-tale world of princesses, where, as it turns out, everything is subordinated to bureaucracy, and in a lot of echoing corridors and government offices there are queues of girls eager to discover the princess. Pauline has to go through a series of tests that will reveal her personal qualifications in a very competitive profession.

Sergei and Kira were considered the most beautiful bohemian couple among cinema lovers of Saint Petersburg in the early 90’s. Their fantastic love affair ended with Kira leaving town, fleeing for new life, new relationship. Sergei has died shortly after. Only after a few years does Kira realize that she never stopped loving Sergei. And that she’s doomed to stay in a neverending dialogue with a dead lover.

A star of hunting videos strives to bond with his 12-year-old son on a wilderness trip but learns familial connections can't be forced.

After a story of Tamara Tinberg, "Seventh Symphony". The Leningrad block. February 1942. Ends the worst blockade winter. Nina Voronova completely desperate. Her three-year-old son, Mitya, has weakened, and the ration cards have already been delivered two days in advance. Last hope - evacuation. But with small children do not take. Then the woman goes to a monstrous step - is evacuated, leaving her son alone in a frozen apartment. During the raid, the boy is saved by a teenage girl Katya Nikonorova. The girl gives Mitya for her brother and promises herself to do everything so that Mitya survived. No matter what.

Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor, father and husband, is 35 years old and still trying to find a purpose for his life. He and his wife are barely getting by financially and Aidan passes his time by fantasizing about being the great futuristic Space-Knight he'd always dreamed he'd be as a little kid. When his ailing father can no longer afford to pay for private school for his two kids and the only available public school is on its last legs, Aidan reluctantly agrees to attempt to home-school them. Through teaching them about life his way, Aidan gradually discovers some of the parts of himself he couldn't find.

A story of a young girl Claudia who works as a security guard on a slowly dying metal plant.

Ten-year-old Jojo lives with his father, a security guard with a volatile personality who drinks to manage the unspoken despair he feels about his wife's absence, which he refuses to discuss with his son. In the midst of so much uncertainty, Jojo finds comfort and happiness in caring for an abandoned baby bird, a jackdaw, who is even more vulnerable than himself.

The film follows a man with an unwanted gift for healing who meets a teenager with cancer who helps him to find himself.

An aging, booze-addled father takes a trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim what he believes to be a million-dollar sweepstakes prize.

At a picturesque lakeside estate, a love triangle unfolds between the legendary diva Irina, her lover Boris, and the ingénue Nina.

The Humorist is a film about a week in the life of Boris Arkadiev, a fictional Soviet stand-up comedian. Boris is tormented not only by external oppression and censorship but also by his own insecurities that poison all his relationships.

Elena Mihailovna, having worked all her life in the only school of a provincial town, lives modestly in retirement. Unexpectedly she learns of a fatal diagnosis, which can at any moment end her life. Instead of an unbearable anticipation, she resolutely begins the preparation for her own death, in order to simplify the procedure for her son. She has not seen her only son for over five years because he worrks in the capital. Oleg is constantly busy, and he does not have time for his lonely mother. At the same time with all the new problems, the heroine receives as a gift a huge carp, which changes her life.

1998, Nalchik. A Jewish family is in trouble: the youngest son and his bride do not come home, and in the morning, a ransom note arrives. The ransom is so high that the family is forced not only to sell its small business, but also to seek help from its fellow tribesmen.

This film presents a contemporary view on modern Russian upper-class youth. The film genre is a social drama. The main five characters of the movie are financially secured and socially successful - producing, managing and hosting a popular TV show. They are beautiful, happy and satisfied with their lives. They are good friends to each other and the others. The glass world they surrounded themselves by is full of love and smiles... Until one day something happens to the leading character and suddenly they all face the real world. The glass shatters. Their lives are changed forever. They will never be the same

Paris 1930. Paul has only ever had one and the same horizon: the high walls of the orphanage, an austere building in the Parisian working class suburbs. Entrusted to a joyful country woman, Célestine, and her husband, Borel, the rather stiff gamekeeper of a vast estate in Sologne, the city child, recalcitrant and stubborn, arrives in a mysterious and disturbing world, that of a soverign and wild region. The huge forest, misty ponds, heaths, and fields all belong to the Count de la Fresnaye, an elderly taciturn man who lives alone in his manor.

Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis falls in love with a fishmonger while working for him as a live-in housekeeper.

The film is a journey through the amazing life of Alekseyev. He drank tea with Tarkovsky, got into the KGB because of Gagarin, competed with Kalashnikov and Vysotsky. One day, he will learn more about himself than he knew and could have imagined: about his talent, about the mark that he left in the destinies of other people. You can live your life again if someone loves you.

A young Asian immigrant worker in Moscow tried to track down her baby, whom she abandoned at the hospital.

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.

Two lovers escape into the woods after committing a crime

Lena is a talented midwife and gynaecologist, her husband Serezha is an actor at a provincial drama theatre. They are close and gentle with each other, but there is no sex. Lena suspects that Serezha has an affair, but she worries quietly and does not reveal her jealousy. Instead of sorting out her relationship with her husband, Lena starts to betray him with chance acquaintances. Gradually Lena’s parallel life gets out of control and changes her original life.

September of 1944, a few days before Finland went out of the Second World War. A chained to a rock Finnish sniper-kamikadze Veikko managed to set himself free. Ivan, a captain of the Soviet Army, arrested by the Front Secret Police 'Smersh', has a narrow escape. They are soldiers of the two enemy armies. A Lapp woman Anni gives a shelter to both of them at her farm. For Anni they are not enemies, but just men.

A historical drama that illustrates Russian author Leo Tolstoy's struggle to balance fame and wealth with his commitment to a life devoid of material things. The Countess Sofya, wife and muse to Leo Tolstoy, uses every trick of seduction on her husband's loyal disciple, whom she believes was the person responsible for Tolstoy signing a new will that leaves his work and property to the Russian people.

A childless couple bury a box in their backyard, containing all of their wishes for an infant. Soon, a child is born, though Timothy Green is not all that he appears.

A manager of an orphanage in India is sent to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he discovers a life-altering family secret.

The popular rapper comes on tour in St. Petersburg. His fans adore and wait, he is at the peak of fame, he is confident in himself. Together with the star, his manager, musicians and a girl come. Suddenly an attempt is made on a musician. He miraculously manages to escape death, but his manager decides to hire a security guard. It turns out that the guard is ... a girl. She is a professional in her field, but in the brutal world of rap, a woman has a difficult time.

Four novels: "Spring", "Summer", "Autumn", "Winter" - four very different love stories...

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.

When her husband abruptly ends their marriage, empty nester Kate embarks on a solo second honeymoon in Africa, finding purpose and potential romance.

Set in post-WWII Leningrad as two female soldiers return from war and attempt to rebuild their lives in the ravaged city.

Napoleon's tumultuous relations with Russia including his disastrous 1812 invasion serve as the backdrop for the tangled personal lives of two aristocratic families.

A woman must fly back to her hometown when her Alzheimer's-stricken mother wanders into a blizzard. The return home forces her to confront her past.