20 best movies like Somewhere in Palilula (2012)

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.

While working in the US on a temporary visa as a caretaker, Mara, a 30 year-old single mother from Romania, marries Daniel, an American. After the arrival of her son Dragos, everything seems to have fallen perfectly into place. When the process of getting a green card veers unexpectedly off course, however, Mara is faced with abuses of power on every level and forced to answer a dark question about herself – how far would you go to get what you want?

With the future of the human race at stake, a group of young men and women -- bred for intelligence and obedience -- embark on an expedition to colonize a distant planet. When they uncover disturbing secrets about the mission, they defy their training and begin to explore their most primitive natures. As life on the ship descends into chaos, they soon become consumed by fear, lust and an insatiable hunger for power.

While traveling abroad, a guy falls for a Romanian beauty whose unreachable heart has its origins in her violent, charismatic ex.

The story of a long-lost book that mysteriously reappears and connects an old man searching for his son with a girl seeking a cure for her mother's loneliness.

Set during World War II, somewhere in Eastern Europe. A German soldier is found dead near the village. The local authorities must find the culprit, or they will be all shot by the Nazis the morning after. There's no way to find the guilty one, but there's Ipu, the madman of the village, whom they promise a hero's funeral if he will claims responsibility and agrees to die in their place. He must decide, and time is running out.

American professor Robert Traum embarks on an adventurous and amusing journey through Bucovina to find Sami the projectionist, the only person alive that can tell him anything about his Romanian Jewish descent. His symbolic journey is filled with danger, the unknown and the surreal, but finally rewarded with a double love: on the one hand he finds romantic love, on the other the passion for old cinema, nomad, popular, naive and generous.

Toma and Ana meet as students in the literature faculty, and quickly fall in love. But, because of Ana's mental illness, their relationship slowly collapses.

Together, a filmmaker and her characters venture into a personal research project about intimacy. On the fluid border between reality and fiction, Touch Me Not follows the emotional journeys of Laura, Tómas and Christian, offering a deeply empathic insight into their lives. Craving for intimacy yet also deeply afraid of it, they work to overcome old patterns, defense mechanisms and taboos, to cut the cord and finally be free. Touch Me Not looks at how we can find intimacy in the most unexpected ways, at how to love another without losing ourselves.

Romeo Aldea, a physician living in a small mountain town in Transylvania, has raised his daughter Eliza with the idea that once she turns 18, she will leave to study and live abroad. His plan is close to succeeding. Eliza has won a scholarship to study psychology in the UK. She just has to pass her final exams – a formality for such a good student. On the day before her first written exam, Eliza is assaulted in an attack that could jeopardize her entire future. Now Romeo has to make a decision. There are ways of solving the situation, but none of them using the principles he, as a father, has taught his daughter.

Robert Beck failed as a musician and works frustrated as a teacher - until he learns about his gifted student Rauli. A musical genius: He sings and plays guitar like a young god. Beck is motivated to help Rauli to become a successful and published musician to fulfill his own long-held dreams of a music career.

Oregon, 1851. Hermann Kermit Warm, a chemist and aspiring gold prospector, keeps a profitable secret that the Commodore wants to know, so he sends the Sisters brothers, two notorious assassins, to capture him on his way to California.

Cristian, a young idealistic prosecutor whose career is on the rise, tries to crack a case against a senior colleague accused of corruption. The dilemma of choosing between his career and the truth weighs heavily on his shoulders. Looking further to solve the case, he enters a danger zone paved with unexpected and painful revelations.

A caravan escorts an elderly and dying Sheikh trough the Moroccan Atlas. His last wish is to be buried with his loved ones. But death does not wait. The caravaneers, fearful of the mountain pass, refuse to continue transporting the corpse. Ahmed and Said, two rogues traveling with the caravan, promise to take the body to its destiny. But do they really know the way? - In another world, parallel and remote, Shakib is chosen to travel to the mountains where the caravan is. His assignment is clear: he has to help the improvised caravaneers to reach their destination. Shakib also doubts, this is his first mission.

Luca (20) seduces girls then leaves them in the hands of his friends at the Black Sea port of Constanta. Luca falls in love with Veli, one of his potential victims. It's summer down the Danube river, in Harsova. The music is loud, the cars are fancy, the girls are tanned and Veli runs away from home in Luca's bed. First love has never felt more dangerous.

Child's Pose is a contemporary drama focusing on the relationship between a mother and her 32-year-old son. After the accidental killing of a boy in a car crash, the mother tries to prevent her son being charged for the death, and she refuses to accept that her son is a grown-up man.

John, a 35-year-old window cleaner, has dedicated his life to bringing up his 4-year-old son, Michael, after the child's mother left them soon after giving birth. When John is given only a few months left to live, he attempts to find a new, perfect family for Michael, determined to shield him from the terrible reality of the situation.

A drama centered on the friendship between two young women who grew up in the same orphanage; one has found refuge at a convent in Romania and refuses to leave with her friend, who now lives in Germany.

Zander Raines, a dazzling and tempestuous young choreographer, gives the break of a lifetime to two hopeful artists when he casts a stunning contemporary dancer, Barlow, and innovative pianist, Charlie, in New York’s most-anticipated new Broadway show: Free Dance. But the move throws off the show’s delicate creative balance when Charlie falls hard for Barlow, while Zander embraces her as his muse.

Marius is a divorced man in his late thirties. His five year-old daughter Sofia lives with her mother, which causes Marius a deep frustration. On the day Marius arrives to take his daughter on their annual holiday, he is told that she is ill but he doesn't believe it and insists to take her with him. The situation soon gets out of control with all the family taking part in a web of humor, violence, childish songs, police interventions and love statements.

Bucharest, 2009. Twenty years after Romanian Revolution, Tavi Ionescu, a nice but quite immature guy for his late 30's finds out from his Securitate (Romanian Secret Police) file that he could be the father of a son he didn't know about. Starting his own secret investigation, Tavi is caught by a complicated past that now comes to reveal ugly hidden truths, messing up his life and the life's of the ones close to him. For the first time in his life, Tavi is forced to take really mature decisions.