20 best movies like Joyless Street (1925)

Touko Laaksonen, a decorated officer, returns home after a harrowing and heroic experience serving his country in World War II, but life in Finland during peacetime proves equally distressing. He finds peace-time Helsinki rampant with persecution of the homosexual and men around him even being pressured to marry women and have children. Touko finds refuge in his liberating art, specialising in homoerotic drawings of muscular men, free of inhibitions. His work – made famous by his signature ‘Tom of Finland’ – became the emblem of a generation of men and fanned the flames of a gay revolution.

Forced out of their apartment due to dangerous works on a neighboring building, Emad and Rana move into a new flat in the center of Tehran. An incident linked to the previous tenant will dramatically change the young couple’s 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.

Fueled by cheap whiskey, greed and hatred, Willie Soke teams up with his angry little sidekick, Marcus, to knock off a Chicago charity on Christmas Eve. Along for the ride is chubby and cheery Thurman Merman, a 250-pound ray of sunshine who brings out Willie's sliver of humanity. Issues arise when the pair are joined by Willie's horror story of a mother, who raises the bar for the gang's ambitions, while somehow lowering the standards of criminal behavior.

In a Turkish village, five orphaned sisters live under strict rule while members of their family prepare their arranged marriages.

Sinan is passionate about literature and has always wanted to be a writer. Returning to the village where he was born, he pours his heart and soul into scraping together the money he needs to be published, but his father’s debts catch up with him.

In November 2009, French security van driver Toni Musulin makes off with nearly 12 million euros, then turns himself over to the authorities a week later.

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.

When 30-ish rich kid Lenny has to take care of 15-year-old David, who’s suffering from heart disease, it’s the beginning of a wild adventure. Lenny fearlessly breaks all the rules to fulfill his young friend’s every wish.

A washed up Vegas lounge singer, Jack Satin (Hamilton von Watts), has no money, no job, and delusional aspirations of fame. When Jack is forced to leave Vegas, he packs up his old Cadillac and hits the road for Atlantic City. But his car dies in the desert and Jack is left stranded in the small town of Lost Springs. There, Jack meets jazz legend turned mechanic, Doc Bishop (Robert Guillaume), who helps him with his car trouble. Although Jack is far from the stage, he begins to find himself feeling at home in the small town. When he meets local bar owner, Lauren Wells (Melissa Joan Hart), Jack starts to see there is more to life than chasing fame and fortune. Doc encourages Jack to explore his true love of music, while Lauren provides the audience he has always wanted. But as Jack realizes this town has more to offer him than the bright lights of the big city, his Vegas past catches up with him -- what unfolds is comedy at the crossroads of life.

Charting the rise and fall of three corrupt real estate agents who accumulate absurd wealth in no time but fall into a vortex of fraud, greed and drugs.

During a weekend, two shady businessmen flee to the Cayman Islands to avoid federal prosecution. But their escape ignites a chain reaction that leads a British native to commit a crime that changes the nation.

Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.

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

A young boy whose parents just divorced finds an unlikely friend and mentor in the misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic, war veteran who lives next door.

Coming-of-age tale set aboard a shipping freighter traveling America's Great Lakes. Dale is an Ivy League college student who briefly joins a world-weary crew. Exposed to a seafaring lifestyle which falls short of his literary visions, Dale instead finds the experience rich in unexpected ways. The men's bravado and comical posturing gives way as their lively story-telling reveals more about their mythologized view of life than about what actually may have happened.

Based on life of Patna-based mathematician Anand Kumar who runs the famed Super 30 program for IIT aspirants in Patna.

1921 New York. An immigrant woman is tricked into a life of burlesque and vaudeville until a dazzling magician tries to save her and reunite her with her sister who is being held in the confines of Ellis Island.

A poor North Korean fisherman finds himself an accidental defector, and is groomed to be a spy by an ambitious South Korean military officer.

On the set of a playwright's new project, a love triangle forms between his wife, her ex-lover, and the call girl-turned-actress cast in the production.

An aspiring actress makes a pact with her fiancé to take a job as an exotic dancer to care for her cancer stricken father. Once the pact the couple made is broken, their lives are changed forever.

A recent college graduate sets out to win back the girl of his dreams.

A satirical drama reflecting our times — about the sense of community, moral courage and the affluent person’s need for egocentricity in an increasingly uncertain world.

Hope, the third film in the PARADISE TRILOGY, tells the story of the 13-year-old Melanie. While her mother (Teresa) travels to Kenya, Melanie spends her holiday in the Austrian countryside at a strict diet camp for overweight teenagers. Under the supervision of a tattooed trainer and a creepy doctor, the teenagers attempt to do sports during the day and secretly get drunk in the evening. Between physical education and nutrition counseling, pillow fights and her first cigarette, Melanie falls in love with the doctor who is 40 years her senior.

Most Beautiful Island is a chilling portrait of an undocumented young woman's struggle for survival as she finds redemption from a tortured past in a dangerous game.

26 year-old Karl Marx embarks with his wife, Jenny, on the road to exile. In 1844 in Paris, he meets Friedrich Engels, an industrialist’s son, who has been investigating the sordid birth of the British working class. Engels, the dandy, provides the last piece of the puzzle to the young Karl Marx’s new vision of the world. Together, between censorship and the police’s repression, riots and political upheavals, they will lead the labor movement during its development into a modern era.

When Johnny D. is forced to take on his family's financial troubles, he turns to the Manhattan club scene to make some fast cash. As he falls under the wing of a veteran nightlife promoter, Johnny quickly rises through the ranks - but soon finds that not everything behind the red rope is full of glitz and glamour.

A gangster on the run, sacrifices everything for his family and a woman he meets while on the lam.

After having a chance encounter with a mysterious character, Wendy, a young working class mother, discovers that she has super powers.

In the early 1980s in India, a group of con artists rob well-known businessmen and politicians by posing as officers of the Central Bureau of Intelligence or income tax officials. The gang stages fake raids during which they steal great amounts of money from their targets.

An outstanding tribute to various (art) manifestos of the nineteenth and twentieth century, ranging from Communism to Dogme, in connection with thirteen different characters, including a homeless man, a factory worker and a corporate CEO, who are all played by Cate Blanchett. A striking humorous audio-visual experience.

Vignettes weaving together the stories of six individuals in the old West at the end of the Civil War. Following the tales of a sharp-shooting songster, a wannabe bank robber, two weary traveling performers, a lone gold prospector, a woman traveling the West to an uncertain future, and a motley crew of strangers undertaking a carriage ride.

In the teeming, multicultural metropolis of modern-day London, a seemingly straightforward missing-person case launches a down-at-heel private eye into a dangerous world of religious fanaticism and political intrigue.

A Romanian police officer teams up with a small crew of bank robbers to pull off a heist by convincing everyone at the scene of the crime that they are only filming a movie.

Daniel, a successful TV journalist living life in the fast lane, has fallen into a deep depression. His seemingly perfect life suddenly collapses under him when panic attacks force him to deal with himself and his past.

THE EXTRA MAN is a sophisticated and moving comedy from filmmakers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. THE EXTRA MAN follows Louis Ives (Paul Dano), a lonely dreamer who fancies himself the hero of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. When a deeply embarrassing incident forces him to leave his job at an exclusive Princeton prep school, Louis heads to New York City to make a fresh start. He quickly finds a 9 to 5 job at an environmental magazine, where he encounters an entrancing, green-obsessed co-worker Mary (Katie Holmes).

Based on the true story of two young men, David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who won a $300 million contract from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Afghanistan.

An Algerian man's life-long dream finally comes true when he receives an invitation to take his cow Jacqueline to the Paris International Agriculture Fair.

Instead of adhering to the norms of their South Central neighborhood, a group of skater boys opt to bus into Hollywood and Beverly Hills, where they attract local rich girls - and plenty of trouble with the police, jealous boyfriends, and nervous parents.

Shifting from one pocket to another, from one man's drama to another, a lowly dollar bill, 'one buck' takes us on an odyssey through the heart of a forgotten town in Louisiana.

Christian is an extremely talented as well as unpredictable football player. After his latest screw-up, the president of his team decides to assign him a personal tutor, to help him in controlling his temper. Valerio is a shy and solitary professor, the exact opposite of the champion. Sparks will fly between the two at first, but soon their relationship will change both for the better.

Successful businesswoman Maria has achieved everything except what she wants the most - a baby of her own. She decides to deal with the matter by herself and embarks on a desperate and dangerous journey in order to make her dream come true.

Frank Castle is staying in a bad neighborhood, where he encounters a gang that terrorizes its residents.

When 17-year-old Ben visits his father Heinrich in Marrakech, it is the start of an adventurous journey through a foreign country with a picturesque charm and a rough beauty where everything appears possible — including the chance that father and son will lose each other for good, or find one another again.

Ciro's body is sinking in the dark waters of the Gulf of Naples. And as it sinks deeper and deeper, memories emerge. The sounds muffled by the water merge with the screams of fleeing people. It is 1980, the earth shakes, the palace collapses, but under the rubble you can hear the cry of a newborn baby still alive. Ten years later, we find that new-born baby as it survives as it can on the streets of Naples, nobody's son. Vivid memories of a criminal education that made him what he is: Ciro Di Marzio, the Immortal. Prequel of the "Gomorra" tv show.

At the start of the summer, Bridget has an abortion just as she lands a much-needed job in affluent Evanston, Illinois — nannying a six-year old.

Fleeing from the Russian secret police, a young Estonian fencer is forced to return to his homeland, where he becomes a physical education teacher at a local school. The past however catches up and puts him in front of a difficult choice.

In a ghetto where religion and drug trafficking rub shoulders, Dounia has a lust for power and success. Supported by Maimouna, her best friend, she decides to follow in the footsteps of Rebecca, a respected dealer. But her encounter with Djigui, a young, disturbingly sensual dancer, throws her off course.

Two bruised hearts, 8-year-old Naomi and Kabir find solace in each other. They are both lonely and nursing psychological scars and mysterious tragedy. Naomi’s mother is a drug addict-peddler and Kabir loses the only person he loves. The talkative kid-next-door becomes the reclusive pawn shop owner’s only reason to live. When her life is endangered, his soul is awakened once again.

The story of Swiss painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti.