20 best movies like The Chess Game (1994)

Normandy, 1819. Jeanne is a young woman full of childish dreams and innocence when she returns home after finishing her schooling in a convent. She marries a local Viscount, Julien de Lamare, who soon reveals himself to be a miserly and unfaithful man. Little by little Jeanne’s illusions are stripped away.

Chloé, a fragile young woman, falls in love with her psychoanalyst, Paul. A few months later she moves in with him, but soon discovers that her lover is concealing a part of his identity.

26 year-old Karl Marx embarks with his wife, Jenny, on the road to exile. In 1844 in Paris, he meets Friedrich Engels, an industrialist’s son, who has been investigating the sordid birth of the British working class. Engels, the dandy, provides the last piece of the puzzle to the young Karl Marx’s new vision of the world. Together, between censorship and the police’s repression, riots and political upheavals, they will lead the labor movement during its development into a modern era.

The story of the women and relationships that define a family across a century.

France, around 1900. Coming from the vibrancy of Paris, pert Célestine is procured as a chambermaid in Normandy. In the Lanlaire's villa she encounters the lecherous man of the house and his asexual, tyrannical and jealous wife. Célestine is determined to avoid the fate suffered by the cook Marianne who has already secretly killed one child born out of wedlock and now despairingly realises she is pregnant again. The lively maid is intrigued by what the mysterious manservant Joseph is up to: he distributes anti-Semitic leaflets and suggests that she could work for him as a prostitute in Cherbourg…

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.

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.

It all starts at daybreak, three young surfers on the raging seas. A few hours later, on the way home, an accident occurs. Now entirely hooked up to life-support in a hospital in Le Havre, Simon’s existence is little more than an illusion. Meanwhile, in Paris, a woman awaits the organ transplant that will give her a new lease on life.

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.

Simon, a young orphan, has an extraordinary power : he can take on the appearance of people he’s already touched. When his best friend dies in an accident, there is no witness. Simon decides to steal his place in his family. Ten years later, the truth will get more and more difficult to bear and to hide...

A mother attempts to keep her family safe as war rages and a sniper lies in wait outside her home.

A housewife struggles with her husband after he is possessed by a ghost.

Kate and Matt discover that a part of their house can grant wishes. In the wake of several miscarriages, what they want most is a child.

A timid young grad student madly in love with her scientist boss offers her body to his research.

A foster family in South Central a few weeks before the city erupts in violence following the verdict of the Rodney King trial in 1992.

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.

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

A boy in New York is taken in by a wealthy family after his mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In a rush of panic, he steals 'The Goldfinch', a painting that eventually draws him into a world of crime.

They loved each other with the ardor of thirteen-year-old boys. Rebellion and curiosity, hopes and doubts, girls and dreams of glory – they shared it all. Paul was rich, Emile poor. They went skinny-dipping, drank absinthe, starved, only to overeat. Sketched models by day, caressed them by night... Now, Paul is a painter and Emile a writer. Glory has passed Paul by. But Emile has it all: fame, money, the perfect wife, whom Paul once loved. They judge each other, admire each other, confront each other. They lose touch, meet up again, like a couple who cannot stop loving each other.

In the last days of the Nazi-occupied France, writer Marguerite Duras awaits the return of her husband, Robert Antelme, arrested for being a Resistance fighter and then deported, while she maintains a tense relationship with her ambiguous lover and a dangerous game with a French collaborationist. Even when the Liberation arrives, she must still endure the unbearable pain of waiting.

Doctor Knock is a former thug who has become a doctor and arrives in the small village of Saint-Maurice to make his fortune according to a particular method. It will make the villagers believe that they are not as healthy as they might think. It is thus that he will find in each one an imaginary symptom, or not, and thus will be able to exercise his profession lucratively. Under his seductive looks and after gaining the confidence of the village, Knock is on the verge of achieving his ends. But his past catches up with him and an old acquaintance disrupts the doctor's plans.

Philippe Mars wants to please everyone. He wants to be a good father, a friendly ex-husband, a helpful colleague and an understanding brother. Unfortunately, his little world goes out of its planned orbit. His son becomes a hardcore vegetarian, his daughter a compulsive swot, whilst his sister exhibits giant paintings of their naked parents. At the office he must face the rampages of his mentally unstable colleague Jerôme who one night turns up at his door with a young woman in tow who has just been released from a clinic.

For twenty years, Bruno and Malik have lived in a different world—the world of autistic children and teens. In charge of two separate nonprofit organizations (The Hatch & The Shelter), they train young people from underprivileged areas to be caregivers for extreme cases that have been refused by all other institutions. It’s an exceptional partnership, outside of traditional settings, for some quite extraordinary characters.

The story of Henry, a stand-up comedian with a fierce sense of humor and Ann, a singer of international renown. In the spotlight, they are the perfect couple, healthy, happy, and glamourous. The birth of their first child, Annette, a mysterious girl with an exceptional destiny, will change their lives.

Set against the badlands of colonial Australia where the English rule with a bloody fist and the Irish endure, Ned Kelly discovers he comes from a line of Irish rebels—an uncompromising army of cross dressing bandits immortalised for terrorising their oppressors back in Ireland. Nurtured by the notorious bushranger, Harry Power and fuelled by the unfair arrest of his mother, Kelly recruits a wild bunch of warriors to plot one of the most audacious attacks of anarchy and rebellion the country has ever seen.

Franck is a firefighter in Paris. He saves people. He lives at the station with his wife, who is about to have twins. He’s happy. During a call out to a fire, be puts himself in danger, to save his men. He’s going to have to learn to live again and accept to be the one being saved, this time.

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.

In the menacing inferno of the old American West, Liz is a genuine survivor who is hunted by a vengeful preacher for a crime she didn’t commit.

Emile is fifteen. He lives in Montargis, between a sweet-crazy father and a mother who has always dyed his hair blond, because, it seems, he is more beautiful like that. When the girl who pleases him more than anything invites him to Venice for the holidays, he is overjoyed. Only problem, his parents decide to accompany him - This is the story of a teenager born into an unclassifiable family, the story of a first love, miraculous and fragile. This is the story of an initiatory and incredible journey where life often takes unawares, but where Venice, it will be at the rendezvous.

Bahar, the commanding officer of the Daughters of the Sun, a battalion made up entirely of Kurdish female soldiers, is on the cusp of liberating their town, which has been overrun by ISIS extremists.

The story of a 20-year-old Daniel who experiences a spiritual transformation while living in a Youth Detention Center. He wants to become a priest but this is impossible because of his criminal record. When he is sent to work at a carpenter’s workshop in a small town, on arrival he dresses up as a priest and accidentally takes over the local parish. The arrival of the young, charismatic preacher is an opportunity for the local community to begin the healing process after a tragedy that happened there.

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.

An adaptation of Milena Agus' eponymous novel set after WWII, "Mal de Pierres" ("Mal di Pietre") spans 20 years, following the destiny of a passionate, free-spirited woman who is in a loveless marriage and falls for another man.

Azize finds herself with her 3 children and mother-in-law in a difficult fight. She raises her children while fighting the difficulties of the war period and her husband's absence whom she loves more than anything. It's about war, love, greed, treason and sacrifice.

Claire, a 50-year-old divorced teacher, creates a fake Facebook profile of a 24-year-old woman. She finds a photo of a pretty young brunette and uses it. She has created an entirely fictional character, but why?

In the midst of the Balkan wars, a squad of Navy SEALs attempts to unravel a long-forgotten mystery after discovering an enormous treasure trove hidden at the bottom of a lake in Serbia.

In 1971, Carole and Delphine meet and fall in love in Paris. When Carole follows Delphine back to her family farm in Limousin, the two find lesbianism and feminism are not as easy in the countryside.

Christmas 1999, in a peaceful little village in the Ardennes. The life of a young boy named Antoine will soon be devastated by three tragic events : the death of a dog, the vanishing of a child, and a big ravaging storm.

Barents Sea, August 12th, 2000. During a Russian naval exercise, and after suffering a serious accident, the K-141 Kursk submarine sinks with 118 crew members on board. While the few sailors who are still alive barely manage to survive, their families push for accurate information and a British officer struggles to obtain from the Russian government a permit to attempt a rescue before it is late. But general incompetence are against all their efforts.

A man, a woman. A prison director, his inmate. An impossible love, a true story.

World Chess Champion Akiva Liebskind (Michel Piccoli) faces his former pupil Pavius Fromm (Alexandre Arbatt), who defected to the West from the Soviet Union five years earlier, for the World Chess Championship in Geneva, Switzerland. The tension and strategies between the players draw parallels to the political conflicts and ideologies between East and West during the Cold War.

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.

Professor James Murray begins work compiling words for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid 19th century, and receives over 10,000 entries from a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Dr. William Minor.

Famed but tormented artist Vincent van Gogh spends his final years in Arles, France, painting masterworks of the natural world that surrounds him.

Villagers find their situation growing increasingly desperate when their community becomes engulfed in an endless winter.

France, 1940. In the first days of occupation, beautiful Lucile Angellier is trapped in a stifled existence with her controlling mother-in-law as they both await news of her husband: a prisoner of war. Parisian refugees start to pour into their small town, soon followed by a regiment of German soldiers who take up residence in the villagers' own homes. Lucile initially tries to ignore Bruno von Falk, the handsome and refined German officer staying with them. But soon, a powerful love draws them together and leads them into the tragedy of war.

Widower Edouard Pierson (Jeremy Irons) fought for Australia in World War Two, but he was born (and married) in Belgium. For the past twelve years, he has been living in Australia with his daughter. His occupation as a wool merchant is in keeping with his family's tradition. He is determined to remain in Australia, and is equally determined to keep his daughter (Danielle Lyttleton) from learning much about her mother, whom she never knew. Nonetheless, when his brother (Tcheky Karyo) calls urgently from Belgium, requesting his help in saving the family's business there, he returns to his hometown of Verviers. In addition to saving the family business, he comes to have second thoughts about returning to Australia after he has a brief affair with a Belgian woman (Fanny Ardant). Meanwhile, his daughter has made contact with her grandmother (Helene Surgere), and is beginning to learn about her mother.

Toby, a cynical advertising director finds himself trapped in the outrageous delusions of an old Spanish shoe-maker who believes himself to be Don Quixote. In the course of their comic and increasingly surreal adventures, Toby is forced to confront the tragic repercussions of a film he made in his idealistic youth.

An Irish undertaker profits when outlaws take over a peaceful town, but his own family come under threat as the death toll increases dramatically.

Every year, Bruno makes a tour of all the wine stands, without setting foot outside the Show’s premises and without ever finishing his wine trail. This year, his father suggests they finish it together, but a real wine trail, across the French countryside. Accompanied by Mike, a young, quirky taxi driver, they set off in the direction of France’s major wine regions. Together, they are going to discover not only the wine trails, but also the road that leads back to Love.