20 best movies like Mamma Roma (1962)

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.

When her father, Giancarlo is transferred to Rome from the small country town of Montalto Di Castro, Caterina, a 12 years old girl, will discover her new classmates, a totally new world, an ambient extremely divided politically.

Two parallel tales of redemption, a century apart. In the New York storyline, Edge hunts for Angela's gold to pay back a debt, and gradually grows closer to her. In the Macedonian story, the brothers end up fighting for opposite sides of a revolution, with the religious Elijah taking up sides with the Ottoman sultan and gunslinger Luke joining "the Teacher" , a Macedonian rebel.

The story of four friends Giulio, Gemma, Paolo, Riccardo, told over forty years, from 1980 to today, from adolescence to adulthood. Their hopes, their disappointments, their successes and failures are the intertwining of a great story of friendship and love through which Italy and the Italians are also told. A large fresco that tells who we are, where we come from and also where they will go and who our children will be. It is the great circle of life that repeats itself with the same dynamics despite the fact that years and even different periods pass in the background.

Seven short films - each one focused on the plight of a different child protagonist.

Rome, 1984, Aria is nine-year-old girl. On the verge of divorce, Aria's infantile and selfish parents are too preoccupied with their careers and extra-marital affairs to properly tend to any of Aria's needs. While her two older sisters are pampered, Aria is treated with cold indifference. Yet she yearns to love and to be loved. At school, Aria excels academically but is considered a misfit by everyone. She is misunderstood. Aria finds comfort in her cat - Dac and in her best friend - Angelica. Thrown out of both parents' homes, abandoned by all, even her best friend, Aria finally reaches the limit of what she can bear. She makes an unexpected decision in her life.

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.

In Havana, Raul dreams of escaping to Miami. Accused of assault, he appeals to Elio to help him reach the forbidden world 90 miles across the ocean. One night, full of hope, they face the biggest challenge of their lives.

A hyperactive boy and his best friend, a slow-witted youth with an affinity for horses, start collecting scrap metal for a shady dealer.

An acclaimed novelist struggles to write an analysis of love in one of three stories, each set in a different city, that detail the beginning, middle and end of a relationship.

A gay couple living in San Francisco takes in two strangers traveling from Italy to start a new life in America, discovering each other and forming the most unlikely of relationships along the way.

The final film in Rossellini's war film trilogy (the first two being Rome, Open City and Paisà). Germany Year Zero takes place in post-war Germany, unlike the others, which take place in German-occupied Rome and post-war Italy, respectively. The story follows a twelve-year-old boy, Edmund Kohler, who is mainly left to his own devices in order to survive and to help his family do the same.

A gangster known as "Samurai" wants to turn the waterfront of Rome into a new Las Vegas. All the local mob bosses have agreed to work for this common goal. But peace is not to last long.

Meet Joel Goodson, an industrious, college-bound 17-year-old and a responsible, trustworthy son. However, when his parents go away and leave him home alone in the wealthy Chicago suburbs with the Porsche at his disposal he quickly decides he has been good for too long and it is time to enjoy himself. After an unfortunate incident with the Porsche Joel must raise some cash, in a risky way.

Harry, a charming house thief, gets more than he bargains for during an attempted burglary when he stumbles upon Daisy and decides to save her from herself, sending both of them into a darkly comedic journey of self discovery and love.

An artist falls for a married young woman while he's commissioned to paint her portrait. The two invest in the risky tulip market in hopes to build a future together.

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.

Two young boys, Valerio and Christian, form a powerful friendship over the summer.

An American couple drift toward emptiness in postwar North Africa.

In seeking her own redemption from the one man of whom she is most afraid, 10-year-old Cadi Forbes discovers a secret sin haunting her community of Welsh immigrants in 1850s Appalachia.

Young teenager Bo (Anders Agensø) is too sensitive for the hothouse atmosphere of a boarding school run by a cold, unfeeling would-be man of the cloth (an uncharacteristically grim Ove Sprogøe). Lonely and scared, he finds a soul mate in the headmaster's son (Peter Bjerg) and the two boys form a bond that slowly grows into a sexual relationship. Frank and unadorned, this Danish film concluded director Lasse Nielsen's youth-oriented trilogy that began with La' Os Være (1975) and continued with Måske Ku' Vi (1976). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

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

Paul reflects on the summer he met Angèle and Frédéric as he watches his friend being laid to rest.

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.

Three young guys like wine and women. They tested wine with pleasure, but the second they have never been able to taste. Under the guise of a wine tour, the three plans a trip to Spain to finally have sex. Nothing will stop them. Certainly not the fact that the first guy is blind, the second is in a wheelchair and the third is completely paralyzed.

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.

Gino, a drifter, begins an affair with inn-owner Giovanna as they plan to get rid of her older husband.

Nono, a Dutch kid lacking two days being thirteen, runs away from problems at home and, disguised as a girl, takes up with the world's cleverest thief, who unbeknownst to Nono, may hold the bizarre key to his true identity.

Orphaned and alone except for an uncle, Hugo Cabret lives in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. Hugo's job is to oil and maintain the station's clocks, but to him, his more important task is to protect a broken automaton and notebook left to him by his late father. Accompanied by the goddaughter of an embittered toy merchant, Hugo embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of the automaton and find a place he can call home.

In turn-of-the-century Mississippi, an 11-year-old boy comes of age as two mischievous adult friends talk him into sneaking the family car out for a trip to Memphis and a series of adventures.

This coming-of-age drama deals with a young man, realizing who he really is and which things he will never do...

When Sam learns his mother cannot afford to send him to another school after he is kicked out, he and his friends start their own escort service for mature women to pay for his tuition.

A God-fearing bluesman takes to a wild young woman who, as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, is looking everywhere for love, but never quite finding it.

Overburdened and stuck in a greying marriage, Giovanna takes to caring for a Jewish Holocaust survivor her husband brings home. As she begins to reflect on her life, she turns to the man who lives across from her.

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).

A group of friends come of age in the asphalt desert of the San Fernando Valley, as set to a blazing soundtrack and endless drinking, drugs and sex.

Frenchman Abel Tiffauges is a naive man who lives a simple life working as a mechanic. Falsely accused of being a child abuser, he is recruited as a soldier when World War II begins, but is captured soon and taken to the heart of Nazi Germany.

My Mother's Castle (Le chateau de ma mere) is a sequel and companion piece to My Father's Glory (La Gloire de Mon Pere), both based on the childhood recollections of Marcel Pagnol. Like its predecessor, the movie explores the adventures of the young Marcel (Julien Ciamaca) during his summers at the family summer home in Provence.

After being sent to a youth detention centre, 18-year-old Andrej has to fight for his place within the group of inmates while getting closer to Željko, their informal leader, and struggling to keep his repressed secret in the dark.

Six children at a summer camp embark on a mission to save a buffalo herd from slaughter.

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.

The classic Charles Dickens' Christmas ghost tale told in musical form.

A realistic portrayal of the underground resistance in Italy in 1945. The film has strong impacting imagery with its mix of fiction and reality that strengthened Italian Neo-realism and the film industry.

When a secret marriage is planned between Othello, a Moorish general, and Desdemona, the daughter of Senator Brabantio, her old suitor Roderigo takes it hard. He allies himself with Iago, who has his own grudge against Othello, and the two conspire to bring Othello down. When their first plan, to have him accused of witchcraft, fails, they plant evidence intended to make him believe Desdemona is unfaithful.

Bitter about being double-crossed by the women he loved, (and with the police after him to boot), Bill vows to seduce the next woman he sees, then throw her away. His brother Dennis, meanwhile, is equally determined to track down their long lost father, a revolutionary who has been in hiding for 20 years. For different reasons, both leave New York and head for Long Island, out of money, and short on ideas.

A young boy trying to deal with his mother's heroin addiction befriends a waitress who helps him cope with the tough situation.

A virtually plotless, gaudy, impressionistic portrait of Rome through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens.

Young boy leaves the Oklahoma farm to travel with his country musician uncle who is trying out for the Grand Ole Opry. Set during the Great Depression.

Prime numbers are divisible only by one and themselves. These numbers are solitary and incomprehensible to others. Alice and Mattia are both "prime", both haunted by the tragedies that have marked them in childhood: a skiing accident for Alice which has caused a defect in her leg, and the loss of his twin sister for Matthew.

A young Brooklyn boy witnesses the brutal murder of his mother and grows up obsessed with finding her killer. Thus begins his life as a quiet, straight-A student by day and a self-appointed hero at night. But what is a real hero? And who decides what is right or wrong? As the boundaries blur, Sean's dual life wears on his psyche and his two worlds careen dangerously close to colliding. Like a graphic novel you can't put down, Boy Wonder challenges morality, distorting perceptions of what is right and what is justified, as it races to its shocking conclusion.