20 best movies like Portrait of a Beauty (2008)

Painter Francisco Goya faces a scandal involving his muse, who is labeled a heretic by a monk.

Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.

After finding a sexually liberated boyfriend, a divorced woman gets sued over daughter's custody, by her ex, who claims that her lover has a bad influence on the kid.

A portrait of the brilliant, extravagant Kristina of Sweden, queen from age six, who fights the conservative forces that are against her ideas to modernize Sweden and who have no tolerance for her awakening sexuality.

Queen Victoria strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young Indian clerk named Abdul Karim.

The story of Polish pedagogue Janusz Korczak and his dedication to protecting Jewish orphans during the war.

An exceptionally talented face reader becomes entangled in a bloody power struggle between a child king and his uncle who plans to usurp the throne.

Docudrama about American poet Hart Crane, who committed suicide in April 1932 at the age of 32 by jumping off the steamship SS Orizaba.

Born out of wedlock early in the last century, Violette Leduc meets Simone de Beauvoir in postwar Saint-Germain-des-Près. An intense lifelong relationship develops between the two women authors, based on Violette's quest for freedom through writing and on Simone's conviction that she holds in her hands the destiny of an extraordinary writer.

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.

The true story of Soldier’s Girl, which takes place in Fort Campbell, KY, tells the heart-wrenching story of the life and tragic death of soldier Barry Winchell. His love for Calpernia Addams, a beautiful transgendered nightclub performer was misunderstood by fellow soldiers and eventually leads to his brutal death.

A story of love, friendship, survival and triumph spanning five decades from the Texas Revolution through the Civil War, Reconstruction and beyond.

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Civil Rights Act.

Oasis is a love story of two young people abandoned by families. A young man released from prison visits the widow of the man he killed drunk-driving. There he meets her daughter, wheelchair bound with cerebral palsy. Will these two lost people find a way to make their relationship work?

Simple Italian postman learns to love poetry while delivering mail to a famous poet; he uses this to woo local beauty Beatrice.

A chronicle of Gertrude Bell's life, a traveler, writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer, and political attaché for the British Empire at the dawn of the twentieth century.

An aspiring young physician, Robert Merivel found himself in the service of King Charles II and saves the life of someone close to the King. Merivel joins the King's court and lives the high life provided to someone of his position. Merivel is ordered to marry his King's mistress in order to divert the queens suspicions. He is given one order by the king and that is not to fall in love. The situation worsens when Merivel finds himself in love with his new wife. Eventually, the King finds out and relieves Merivel of his position and wealth. His fall from grace leaves Merivel where he first started. And through his travels and reunions with an old friend, he rediscovers his love for true medicine and what it really means to be a physician.

Set in the 17th-century, an Italian nobleman weds an impoverished countess, who is wooed by the King of Piedmont and faces pressure from his entire court to succumb to his wishes.

The story of journalist, Edward R Murrow's stand against Senator McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts in the early 1950s.

The Theory of Everything is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde.

Chronicles a single day in the summer of 1989 when the future president of the United States, Barack Obama, wooed his future First Lady on an epic first date across Chicago's South Side.

King Henry II of England has trouble with the Church. When the Archbishop of Canterbury dies, he has a brilliant idea. Rather than appoint another pious cleric loyal to Rome and the Church, he will appoint his old drinking and wenching buddy, Thomas Becket, technically a deacon of the church, to the post. Unfortunately, Becket takes the job seriously and provides abler opposition to Henry.

Waldemar Nods, a young man from Suriname, meets the older Dutch woman Rika van der Lans and they fall in love. In pre-WWII Netherlands they could not be more different. The one black, the other white, 17 years between them and on top of that Rika already has four children with another man. They love each other, but then Rika appears to be pregnant...

A look at the relationship between Marie Antoinette and one of her readers during the final days of the French Revolution.

A look at the life of Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, with a focus on the price she paid for power.

Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.

The story of Joseon's tyrant king Yeonsan who exploits the populace for his own carnal pleasures, his seemingly loyal retainer who controls him and all court dealings, and a woman who seeks vengeance.

A re-imagined account of the early life of Maria Anna 'Nannerl' Mozart, five years older than Wolfgang and a musical prodigy in her own right.

The story of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham, who uncovers one of the most significant social scandals in recent times – the forced migration of children from the United Kingdom. Almost singlehandedly, Margaret reunited thousands of families, brought authorities to account and worldwide attention to an extraordinary miscarriage of justice.

The true story of Ivan Sanchin, the KGB officer who was Stalin's private film projectionist from 1939 until the dictator's death. Told from Sanchin's view, the sympathetic but tragically flawed hero maintains unwavering faith in his "Master" despite the arrest of his neighbors and his involvement with their daughter, his wife's affair with the chilling State Security chief Lavrentii Beria and her tragic decline, and the deadly political machinations within the Kremlin he witnesses firsthand. Written by Martin H. Booda

The controversial true story of a gay activist who rejects his homosexuality and becomes a Christian pastor.

The story of Aung San Suu Kyi as she becomes the core of Burma's democracy movement, and her relationship with her husband, writer Michael Aris.

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

Thirteen-year-old Heo Yeon Woo, the daughter of a high-ranking official, accompanies her mother to the royal palace to attend her brother, Heo Yeom's civil service examination congratulatory ceremony. By chance, she comes across Crown Prince Lee Hwon. They fall in love, and Yeon Woo is chosen as the Crown Princess of Joseon. Before they can marry, the Dowager Queen secretly orders her death, in order to secure more power for herself. Yeon Woo becomes cursed and is stricken with an illness. All believe her to be dead, including the Crown Prince Lee Hwon. Heartbroken, he refuses to love another. Eight years later, the young king meets a shaman named Wol. He can’t help but find similarities between her and Yeon Woo and begins investigating Yeon Woo’s death.

The film focuses on the little-known love affair of the terrorist Fanny Kaplan with the brother of Vladimir Lenin, Dmitriy Ilyich Ulyanov, and questions whether she really tried to assassinate Lenin in 1918.

The love story who transformed Juana I de Castilla, Queen of Spain, into Juana "The mad". The tragic fate of a Queen madly in love to an unfaithful husband, Felipe el Hermoso, Archduke of Austria.

From Academy Award® winners Graham King and Martin Scorsese, along with the makers of Gosford Park and The Departed, comes the story of Queen Victoria’s early rise to power. From an object of a royal power-struggle to her romantic courtship and legendary marriage to Prince Albert, Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) gives a stunning performance as the young Victoria. Packed with drama, romance, breath-taking cinematography, lavish costumes and featuring an outstanding British cast including Jim Broadbent, Harriet Walter, Mark Strong, Paul Bettany, Miranda Richardson, and Rupert Friend, The Young Victoria has captivated British audiences, and is the film that Company magazine called “an epic British film, which will sweep you up in her remarkable story.”

The inspiring true story of Seretse Khama, the King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments. Seretse and Ruth defied family, Apartheid and empire - their love triumphed over every obstacle flung in their path and in so doing they transformed their nation and inspired the world.

The true story of William Wilberforce and his courageous quest to end the British slave trade. Along the way, Wilberforce meets intense opposition, but his minister urges him to see the cause through.

When a romance between a widow and a notorious libertine takes an unexpected turn, Mademoiselle de Joncquières becomes instrumental to one lover’s plans for revenge.