20 best movies like Sand Storm (2016)

Two young men, one Israeli and one Palestinian, discover they were accidentally switched at birth.

From the perspective of two Palestinian men who are preparing to perform a suicide attack in Israel, this is the first film to deal with the subject of suicide bombers.

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.

In this bittersweet family comedy, shy teenager Libby moves back to Israel to live with her hapless father Shaul, unexpectedly finding herself without a home as war breaks out around them. Shaul devises a creative solution: posing as refugees, they are taken in by a wealthy family in Jerusalem. Finally in a “normal” household, Shaul and Libby begin to build their father-daughter relationship, but their false identities can’t last forever.

A beautifully affecting love story that has rightly earned comparisons to Brokeback Mountain, Haim Tabakman's potent yet impeccably restrained tale has won awards and accolades at film festivals the world over. Aaron, a pillar in Jerusalem's Orthodox community is respected by friends and family. However, when he hires handsome runaway student Ezri to assist with his business, sexual tensions bristle and the pair cautiously embark on a love affair. Meanwhile, a neighbouring shopkeeper persists in seeing a man of her own choosing, even though she's been promised by her father to another. As forbidden truths come to the fore, these lovers are forced to either confront or relent in the face of a centuries-old religious community, with startling results.

Before the war, in Berlin, Adam was an entertainer- cabaret impresario, magician, musician-loved by all until he finds himself in a concentration camp, confronted by Commandant Klein. Adam survives the camp by becoming the Klein's "dog", entertaining him while his wife and daughter are sent off to die. "Adam Resurrected" is the story of a man who once was a dog who meets a dog who once was a boy.

HANNAH ARENDT is a portrait of the genius that shook the world with her discovery of “the banality of evil.” After she attends the Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Arendt dares to write about the Holocaust in terms no one has ever heard before. Her work instantly provokes a furious scandal, and Arendt stands strong as she is attacked by friends and foes alike. But as the German-Jewish émigré also struggles to suppress her own painful associations with the past, the film exposes her beguiling blend of arrogance and vulnerability — revealing a soul defined and derailed by exile.

The film captures the daily duality of three young Palestinian women in Tel Aviv, caught between hometown tradition and big city abandon, and the price they must pay for a lifestyle that seems obvious to many: the freedom to work, party, fuck, and choose.

From his childhood in Poland to his adolescence in Nice to his years as a student in Paris and his tough training as a pilot during World War II, this tragi-comedy tells the romantic story of Romain Gary, one of the most famous French novelists and sole writer to have won the Goncourt Prize for French literature two times.

A young Israeli man absconds to Paris to flee his nationality, aided by his trusty Franco-Israeli dictionary.

A young Arab is caught between cultures as he is sent to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Israel in the 1980s.

In an old apartment building on the wrong side of the tracks, two women, unknown to each other, live across the hall on the second floor. Galia is an assassin involved against her will with the local sex-traffic mafia. All she wants is to reunite with her little daughter that she left back home in Russia. Eleanor is a grocery store cashier and a battered wife. She dreams of winning the lottery and running away from her abusive husband. Galia and Eleanor don't know each other, but as neighbors they share two things: an adjoining wall and a strong need to plan their escape. As Galia disobeys her latest contract, a woman target, and Eleanor discovers that she's pregnant, the two women decide to take action against their oppressors in a fight for survival and freedom.

Michael and Daphna receive terrible news about their soldier son, who serves in a desolate checkpoint in the middle of nowhere.

The story of mime Marcel Marceau as he works with a group of Jewish boy scouts and the French Resistance to save the lives of ten thousand orphans during World War II.

Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.

An Hungarian youth comes of age at Buchenwald during World War II. György Köves is 14, the son of a merchant who's sent to a forced labor camp. After his father's departure, György gets a job at a brickyard; his bus is stopped and its Jewish occupants sent to camps. There, György find camaraderie, suffering, cruelty, illness, and death. He hears advice on preserving one's dignity and self-esteem. He discovers hatred. If he does survive and returns to Budapest, what will he find? What is natural; what is it to be a Jew? Sepia, black and white, and color alternate to shade the mood.

In 1951, Marcus Messner, a working-class Jewish student from New Jersey, attends a small Ohio college, where he struggles with anti-Semitism, sexual repression, and the ongoing Korean War.

Salam, an inexperienced young Palestinian man, becomes a writer on a popular soap opera after a chance meeting with an Israeli soldier. His creative career is on the rise - until the soldier and the show's financial backers disagree about how the show should end, and Salam is caught in the middle.

Two young men — a Palestinian grad student and an Israeli lawyer — meet and fall in love amidst personal and political intrigue in this striking debut feature from Israeli director Michael Mayer.

Eighteen-year-old Shira is the youngest daughter of the Mendelman family. She is about to be married off to a promising young man of the same age and background. It is a dream come true, and Shira feels prepared and excited. On Purim, her twenty-eight-year-old sister, Esther, dies while giving birth to her first child, Mordechay. The pain and grief that overwhelm the family postpone Shira's promised match. Everything changes when a match is proposed to Yochay-Esther's late husband-to a widow from Belgium. Yochay feels it's too early, although he realizes that sooner or later he must seriously consider getting married again. When the girls' mother finds out that Yochay may marry the widow and move to Belgium with her only grandchild, she proposes a match between Shira and the widower. Shira will have to choose between her heart's wish and her family duty. She will find out that the void which she must choose exists only within her heart.

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.

Palermo, Sicily, 1980. Mafia member Tommaso Buscetta decides to move to Brazil with his family fleeing the constant war between the different clans of the criminal organization. But when, after living several misfortunes, he is forced to return to Italy, he makes a bold decision that will change his life and the destiny of Cosa Nostra forever.

During World War I, a home care nurse treats a man who lost one leg on the front lines. A strong bond arises between them and evolves into a passionate love affair.

A group of friends at a Jerusalem retirement home build a machine for self-euthanasia in order to help their terminally ill friend. When rumors of the machine begin to spread, more and more people ask for their help, and the friends are faced with an emotional dilemma

Katja's life falls apart in the blink of an eye when two neo-Nazis kill her husband and 6-year-old son in a bomb attack. Her quest for justice soon pushes her to the edge as the two suspects stand trial for murder.

A 40-year-old writer returns to his family house where he was raised and that he escaped after half a lifetime - to face his brother who stayed instead, inherited their family bakery and married the woman who they both loved.

By a little bay near Marseille lies a picturesque villa owned by an old man. His three children have gathered by his side for his last days. It’s time for them to weigh up what they have inherited of their father’s ideals and the community spirit he created in this magical place. The arrival, at a nearby cove, of a group of boat people will throw these moments of reflection into turmoil.

After 11-year-old Zachary Cowan strikes his classmate across the face with a stick after an argument, the victim's parents invite Zachary's parents to their Brooklyn apartment to deal with the incident in a civilized manner.

Simon, a young German doctor who lives and works in Marseille, goes missing. His appartment is empty. His mother Valérie is desperate. She doesn't understand the reason of his disappearance. Therefore she asks Jens, Simon's former boyfriend, to come to Marseille and help her find him.

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.

Salma Zidane, a widow, lives simply from her grove of lemon trees in the West Bank's occupied territory. The Israeli defence minister and his wife move next door, forcing the Secret Service to order the trees' removal for security. The stoic Salma seeks assistance from the Palestinian Authority, Israeli army, and a young attorney, Ziad Daud, who takes the case. In this allegory, does David stand a chance against Goliath?

A financial schemer finds himself in the middle of an international scandal after he becomes a political adviser to the new Prime Minister of Israel.

Bank manager Frank and writer Patrizia meet by coincidence again and again at the airport. They commute between Dusseldorf and Paris, but behind their travels are two fateful stories. Frank wants to complete the business of his life, Patrizia visits her lover, who is in a coma since a car accident. For both life comes out of joint and they each suffer heavy losses. What connects them is the search for hold, a listener, the need to be needed and the hope that there is a beginning in each end.

During the marijuana bonanza, a violent decade that saw the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia, Rapayet and his indigenous family get involved in a war to control the business that ends up destroying their lives and their culture.

Luo Hongwu returns to Kaili, the hometown from which he fled many years ago. He begins the search for the woman he loved, and whom he has never been able to forget.

Follows the journey of sisters who are believed to possess the supernatural ability to connect with ghosts. They cross paths with a visionary French producer while performing in Paris.

In Majdal Shams, the largest Druze village in Golan Heights on the Israeli-Syrian border, the Druze bride Mona is engaged to get married with Tallel, a television comedian that works in the Revolution Studios in Damascus, Syria. They have never met each other because of the occupation of the area by Israel since 1967; when Mona moves to Syria, she will lose her undefined nationality and will never be allowed to return home. Mona's father Hammed is a political activist pro-Syria that is on probation by the Israeli government. His older son Hatten married a Russian woman eight years ago and was banished from Majdal Shams by the religious leaders and his father. His brother Marwan is a wolf trader that lives in Italy. His sister Amal has two teenager daughters and has the intention to join the university, but her marriage with Amin is in crisis. When the family gathers for Mona's wedding, an insane bureaucracy jeopardizes the ceremony.

Victor, a disillusioned sexagenarian, sees his life turned upside down on the day when Antoine, a brilliant entrepreneur, offers him a new kind of attraction: mixing theatrical artifices and historical reconstruction, this company offers his clients a chance to dive back into the era of their choice. Victor then chose to relive the most memorable week of his life: the one where, 40 years earlier, he met the great love.

In 1982, André Bamberski learns about the death of his 14 year-old daughter, Kalinka, while she was on vacation with her mother and stepfather in Germany. Convinced that Kalinka’s death was not an accident, Bamberski begins to investigate. A botched autopsy report raises his suspicions and leads him to accuse Kalinka’s stepfather, Dr Dieter Krombach, as the murderer. Unable to indict Krombach in Germany, Bamberski attempts to take the trial to France, where he will dedicate his life to Kalinka’s justice and the imprisonment of Krombach.

Zahira, 18, is close to her family until her parents ask her to follow Pakistani tradition to choose a husband. Torn between family customs and her western lifestyle, the young woman turns for help to her brother and confidant Amir.

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.

Before Dawn charts the years of exile in the life of famous Jewish Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, his inner struggle for the "right attitude" towards the events in war torn Europe and his search for a new home.

To spice up a dinner party, old friends agree to share every private message that pops up on their phones -- with disastrous results.

A married young academic falls under the sexual thrall of a much older man whose air of jaded ennui conceals a secret desire for vengeance.

A tale of friendship between two men, one Jewish and the other Arab, as the state of Israel is being created.

Alex is an 11-year old boy who, during WWII, hides in the Jewish ghetto from Nazis after all the relatives have been sent to the concentration camp. The movie portrays the ghetto through his eyes.

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...

The trial story of Viviane Amsalem's five year fight to obtain her divorce in front of the only legal authority competent for divorce cases in Israel, the Rabbinical Court.

A seemingly ideal marriage is thrown into embarrassing turmoil in Patrice Chéreau's period drama, based on the short story The Return by Joseph Conrad.

Toshio hires Yasaka to work in his workshop. But then this old acquaintance, who has just been released from prison, begins to meddle in Toshio’s family life…