19 best movies like The Butterfly Circus (2009)

A library assistant plods through an ordinary life in LA until a chance meeting opens his eyes to the power of creativity and ultimately, love. When this new life and love begin to fall apart, he discovers he has a lot to give. This short film proves that ordinary is no place to be.

Desperate to be rid of her toddler, a dissatisfied Beverly Hills housewife hires a stranger to babysit and ends up getting much more than she bargained for.

Every year hundreds of people - mostly women - are attacked with acid in Pakistan. Follow several of these survivors, their fight for justice, and a Pakistani plastic surgeon who has returned to his homeland to help them restore their faces and their lives.

A wealthy and powerful man is betrayed by those closest to him, and under the guidance of his trusted confidant, devises a fiery requital.

For this year's Movies Issue, The New York Times Magazine commissioned lines from an eclectic and talented group of screenwriters — writers responsible for some of the best scripts of 2013. We asked them each to write a single line for us — not a scene, a script or a scenario, but simply an intriguing, amusing or captivating line of dialogue. Then we gave these lines to one of the great movie artists of our time: the cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, a two-time Oscar winner. Kaminski used these lines as inspiration to create 11 original (very) short films. Each short evokes a style or genre of the cinematic past and stars an actor who gave an especially memorable performance in 2013.

On a business trip to Tokyo, Sebastian explores the city with a mysterious woman he keeps running into wherever he goes, discovering heartbreakingly that the truth, and the past, are as elusive as love.

A ventriloquist struggles to survive with no audience while he becomes lonely- his only friend his puppet.

At the lowest point of his life, Richie gets a call from his estranged sister, asking him to look after his nine-year old niece, Sophia, for a few hours.

A hot young hustler finds himself in uncharted waters when he spends the night with a client who's far from the "johns" he's used to servicing.

Fifteen-year-old Alice has always been a good Catholic, but when an innocent AOL chat turns unexpectedly racy, she finds herself suddenly obsessed with sex.

In a small supermarket in a blue collar town, a black man smiles at a 10 year old white boy across the checkout aisle. This innocuous moment sends two gangs into a ruthless war that ends with a shocking backlash.

Evgeniy's hobby is to send fake letters to real countries. He has collected a letter from every country except New Zealand, and he sends a letter there. Things turn worst when he actually receives a letter from someone there.

The story of five girls and one epic night. The girls will find love, lust, girl-fights, rock and roll, and a whole lot of stoned sorority girls.

INOCENTE is a personal and vibrant coming of age story about a young artist's determination never to surrender to the bleakness of her surroundings. At 15, Inocente refuses to let her dream of becoming an artist be caged by being an undocumented immigrant forced to live homeless for the last nine years. Color is her personal revolution and its sweep on her canvases creates a world that looks nothing like her own dark past. INOCENTE is both a timeless story about the transformative power of art and a timely snapshot of the new face of homelessness in America: children. The challenges are staggering, but the hope in her story proves that the hand she has been dealt does not define her, her dreams do.

In a self-effacing attempt to save his father from a death by deterioration, a young man enlists his curmudgeonly boss and Kelis to perform a song, and a miracle.

When an elderly man discovers he's won $156 million in the lottery while shopping at a convenience store, a young man decides to make his own odds. The store manager and a married couple are also mixed up in the game. Who will make it out of the store alive?

A young mother in a Harlem housing project realizes the arrival of two uniformed soldiers brings news she can't bring herself to accept.

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.

A gentleman deals with the consequences of a car accident, which has left him with a spinal injury that means he has a permanent smile on his face.