20 best movies like Novitiate (2017)

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.

A college student starts to experience extreme seizures while studying at a university in Oslo, Norway. She soon learns that the violent episodes are a symptom of inexplicable, and often dangerous, supernatural abilities.

Suzanne Simonin describes her life of suffering in letters. As a young woman she is sent to a convent against her will. Since her parents cannot afford the dowry required for a marriage befitting her rank they decide she must instead become a nun. Although a kind and understanding Mother Superior helps her to learn the convent’s daily routine, Suzanne’s desire for freedom remains unabated. When the Mother Superior dies, Suzanne finds herself faced with reprisals, humiliation and harassment at the hands of the new Abbess and the other Sisters. For many years, Suzanne is subjected to bigotry and religious fanaticism. (Berlinale.de)

In the midst of a marital crisis, a High Court judge must decide if she should order a life-saving blood transfusion for a teen with cancer despite his family's refusal to accept medical treatment for religious reasons.

In every generation, a torch passes from father to son. And that timeless dynamic is the beating heart of Tommy's Honor - an intimate, powerfully moving tale of the real-life founders of the modern game of golf.

Jared, the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, is outed to his parents at age 19. Jared is faced with an ultimatum: attend a gay conversion therapy program – or be permanently exiled and shunned by his family, friends, and faith.

The lives of four women intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail.

Madeline has become an integral part of a prestigious physical theater troupe. When the workshop's ambitious director pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation rips out of the rehearsal space and through all three women's lives.

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.

High school athlete Cyd Loughlin lives alone with her depressive father in South Carolina, perpetually longing to get away from it all. When her aunt, famous novelist Miranda Ruth, agrees to host her for a few weeks during the summer, Cyd jumps at the opportunity. While there, she falls for a girl in the neighborhood, even as she and her aunt gently challenge each other in the realms of sex and spirit.

In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.

A young Scottish singer, Rose-Lynn Harlan, dreams of making it as a country artist in Nashville after being released from prison.

When Astrid Lindgren was very young something happened that affected her profoundly, and this combination of both miracle and calamity came to shape her entire life. It was an event that transformed her into one of the most inspiring women of our age and the storyteller a whole world would come to love. This is the story of when a young Astrid, despite the expectations of her time and religious upbringing, decided to break free from society's norms and follow her heart.

A sex therapist goes through puberty after the successful removal of a benign tumor resting against his pituitary gland. He experiences all the changes and effects of puberty over a three-week period.

Madrid, Spain. The bedroom of Sofía, a luxury escort. Her new client, who has introduced himself as Hugo and appears to be an educated businessman, discovers that she has a name tattooed on her leg: Diana. Hugo cannot help asking her who Diana is.

Reeling from his mother’s death and his father’s abandonment, Zach, an All-State athlete, finds glory on the football field, working to earn a college scholarship and the brothers’ ticket out of town. When a devastating injury puts Zach—and his dreams—on the sidelines, David laces up his track cleats to salvage their future and point Zach toward hope.

A social drama about four marginalized prostitutes in Marrakech and their complex relations with their families and society at large.

The most famous Museum in Vienna appears in the film as a mysterious intersection where the characters explore their own lives, the city and how art reflects the world.

Anthony Keller, star of his NYC high school basketball team, is riding his way to Cornell on a sports scholarship. But he can only maintain his popular jock facade for so long, as his troubled father Lee has a gambling addiction that threatens to derail his dreams both on and off the court.

A pastor of a small church in upstate New York starts to spiral out of control after a soul-shaking encounter with an unstable environmental activist and his pregnant wife.

In 1993, teenager Cameron is sent to a gay conversion therapy center after getting caught with another girl in the back seat of a car on prom night. Run by the strict and severe Dr. Lydia Marsh and her brother, Reverend Rick, the center is built upon repenting for "same sex attraction." In the face of intolerance and denial, Cameron meets a group of fellow sinners including the amputee stoner Jane, and her friend, the Lakota Two-Spirit, Adam. Together, this group of teenagers form an unlikely family as they fight to survive.

As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes.

Lucy, a small-town girl from Ohio, discovers the delightfully bizarre films of legendary filmmaker Federico Fellini and sets off on a journey across Italy to find him.

In the prehistoric past, Keda, a young and inexperienced hunter, struggles to return home after being separated from his tribe when bison hunting goes awry. On his way back he will find an unexpected ally.

Female born, Teena Brandon adopts his male identity of Brandon Teena and attempts to find himself and love in Nebraska.

Lee, a former Western film icon, is living a comfortable existence lending his golden voice to advertisements and smoking weed. After receiving a lifetime achievement award and unexpected news, Lee reexamines his past, while a chance meeting with a sardonic comic has him looking to the future.

Dissatisfied with the dishonesty they see in dating, strangers Naima and Sergio make a pact to spend 24 straight hours together in an attempt to fast forward their relationship.

A mother/daughter relationship is thrown off balance when the mother (Marcia Gay Harden) discovers that her "good girl" daughter (Alexis Dziena) is part of a group who are engaging in sexual activities with multiple partners. Such activity results in an outbreak of sexually transmitted diseases.

Adapted from the 1951 non-fiction account by psychoanalyst Georges Devereux, “Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian,” the film follows the true story of Picard (Del Toro), a Plains Indian of the Blackfeet nation, as he returns from WWII and begins experiencing unexplainable symptoms shortly thereafter. He travels to the famous Winter Hospital in Topeka, Kansas, where he meets Devereux (Amalric), thus beginning a professional and personal friendship guided by compassion and understanding of Native American culture.

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.

During the Blitz of World War II, a female screenwriter (Gemma Arterton) works on a film celebrating England's resilience as a way to buoy a weary populace's spirits. Her efforts to dramatise the true story of two sisters (Lily Knight and Francesca Knight) who undertook their own maritime mission to rescue wounded soldiers are met with mixed feelings by a dismissive all-male staff.

When troubled musical prodigy Charlotte seeks out Elizabeth, the new star pupil of her former school, the encounter sends both musicians down a sinister path with shocking consequences.

An extraordinary look at the lives of a middle-aged couple in the midst of the wife's breast cancer diagnosis.

14-year-old Joe is the only child of Jeanette and Jerry — a housewife and a golf pro — in a small town in 1960s Montana. Nearby, an uncontrolled forest fire rages close to the Canadian border, and when Jerry loses his job (and his sense of purpose) he decides to join the cause of fighting the fire, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves.

When a retiring assassin realizes that he is the target of a hit, he winds up back in the game going head to head with a gang of younger, ruthless killers.

Two popular teen boys, best friends since childhood, discover their lives, families, and girlfriends dramatically upended after an unexpected incident occurs on the night of a 17th birthday party.

At an isolated log cabin in the harsh wilderness of Indiana circa 1817, the rhythms of love, tragedy, and the daily hardships of life on the developing frontier shaped one of our nation’s greatest heroes: Abraham Lincoln. Abe is a thoughtful and quiet boy who spends his days at the side of his beloved mother while learning to work the land from his stern father. When illness takes his mother, Abe's new guardian angel comes in the form of his new stepmother, who sees the potential in the boy and pushes for his further education.

A world-weary college professor is given a life-changing diagnosis and decides to throw all pretense and conventions to the wind and live his life as boldly and freely as possible with a biting sense of humor, a reckless streak and a touch of madness.

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

This film is based on the actual events that took place in 1971 when Stanford professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo created what became one of the most shocking and famous social experiments of all time.

A young Korean-American man works to reconcile his obligations to his struggling immigrant family with his burgeoning sexual desires in the underground world of gay hookups at Korean spas in Los Angeles.

Four children in their attic hideaway make up a fantastic story, while downstairs their parents weave a drunken intrigue of their own.

Lucinda Price is sent to a reform academy under the assumption that she has killed a boy. There, she meets two mysterious boys, Cam and Daniel, to whom she feels drawn to both. But as the love triangle unfurls, it is Daniel that Luce cannot keep herself away from, and things begin to take a darker turn when she finds out his true identity.

The year is 1890 and Bible professor Russell Carlisle has written a new manuscript entitled "The Changing Times". His colleague, Dr. Norris Anderson, believes that what Carlisle has written could greatly affect the future of coming generations and, using his secret time machine, Anderson sends Carlisle over 100 years into the future, offering him a glimpse of where his beliefs will lead.

The story of a precocious six year-old and her ragtag group of friends whose summer break is filled with childhood wonder, possibility and a sense of adventure while the adults around them struggle with hard times.

A group of friends uncover an otherworldly object in a rural field, which they soon discover holds greater secrets than they could imagine.

An oil drilling team struggles to survive after a plane crash strands them in the wilds of Alaska. Hunting them is a pack of wolves that sees them as intruders.

Shy and reserved, Claire Decker, 30ish, is a part-time investigator for Social Services. Typically, she solves cases where senior citizens have died alone, leaving no indication of who must handle their estate. This time however, Claire is reluctantly drawn into a puzzling murder case. The local police have been unable to solve the horrific crime, or even decipher the victim's true identity. A beautiful and enigmatic young blond, known only as "The White Orchid," has been brutally murdered. As Claire is drawn deeper and more intimately into the dead woman's life, she finds herself taking dangerous chances and pushing personal and professional boundaries. As she gets closer to the truth, Claire must effectively become the charismatic "White Orchid" in order to solve the mysterious crime.

Mike Hoolihan is an unconventional New Orleans cop investigating the murder of renowned astrophysicist Jennifer Rockwell, a black hole expert found shot to death in her observatory. As Mike tumbles down the rabbit hole of the disturbing, labyrinthine case, she finds herself grappling with increasingly existential questions of quantum mechanics, parallel universes, and exploding stars. The hunt for a killer draws a detective into an even larger mystery: the nature of the universe itself.

After freak climate and weather events destroy the world around them, a group of rogue scientists attempt to reverse the deadly new ice age.