20 best movies like The Last Day (2004)

Lu and Feng are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. He finally returns home only to find that his beloved wife no longer remembers him.

A 15-year-old discovers the joys and heartaches of first love with an older teen, but in the ensuing years, cannot seem to move past their breakup.

A girl dying of leukemia compiles a list of things she'd like to do before passing away. Topping the list is her desire to lose her virginity.

Based on a controversial French novel, Lila Says tells the story of a quiet young poet named Chimo who develops a crush on the pretty, blond Lila, a girl who recently moved into his Arab ghetto with her aunt. When the leader of a rival gang also falls for Lila, the ensuing love triangle initiates a journey of sexual discovery -- and sets off a chain of devastating events.

In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.

A hard-partying high school senior's philosophy on life changes when he meets the not-so-typical "nice girl."

The tragic story of the many lives of Father Dinis, his dark origins and his pious works, and the different fates of all those who, trapped in a sinister web of love, hate and crime, cross paths with him through years of adventure and misfortune in the convulsed Europe of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

An American girl on holiday in the English countryside with her family finds herself in hiding and fighting for her survival as war breaks out.

Jessica knows exactly what her life is supposed to look like and where it takes her. But then she meets Danny. He has a complicated past and could confuse all their plans. Jessica has to decide.

Araf is the story of Zehra and Olgun whose lives are caught in a vacuum. The world in which they live and work is a place of throwaway culture and constant change. They too are waiting for a chance to change and escape from their empty, monotonous lives.

The tale of an individualist proletarian in a time marked by the rise of mass political movements. In early 20th-century Italy, illiterate sailor Martin Eden seeks fame as a writer while torn between the love of a bourgeois girl and allegiance to his social class.

Ethan Wate just wants to get to know Lena Duchannes better, but unbeknownst to him, Lena has strange powers. As Lena's 16th birthday approaches she might decide her fate, to be good or evil. A choice which will impact her relationship forever.

Forest fires burn in Sumatra; a smoke covers Kuala Lumpur. Grifters beat an immigrant day laborer and leave him on the streets. Rawang, a young man, finds him, carries him home, cares for him, and sleeps next to him. In a loft above lives a waitress. She sometimes provides care and attention. More violence seems a constant possibility. They find another man abandoned on the street, paralyzed. They carry him. While no one speaks to each other, sounds dominate: coughing, cooking, coupling, opening bags; music and news reports on a radio, the rattle and buzz of a restaurant. It's dark in the city at night. We see down hallways, through doors, down alleys. Who sleeps with whom?

During WWII, the United States set up army bases in Great Britain as part of the war effort. Against their proper sensibilities, many of the Brits don't much like the brash Yanks, especially when it comes to the G.I.s making advances on the lonely British girls. One relationship that develops is between married John, an Army Captain, and the aristocratic Helen, whose naval husband is away at war. Helen loves her husband, but Helen and John are looking for some comfort during the difficult times.

The O'Neills lived happily in their house in the Australian countryside. That was until one day fate struck blindly, taking the life of Peter, the father, leaving his grief-stricken wife Dawn alone with their four children. Among them, eight-year-old Simone denies this reality. She is persuaded that her father still lives in the giant fig tree growing near their house and speaks to her through its leaves. But the tree becomes more and more invasive and threatens the house. It must be felled. Of course, Simone won't allow it.

The night of August 24, 1572, is known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. In France a religious war is raging. In order to impose peace a forced wedding is arranged between Margot de Valois, sister of the immature Catholic King Charles IX, and the Hugenot King Henri of Navarre. Catherine of Medici maintains her behind-the-scenes power by ordering assaults, poisonings, and instigations to incest.

An Italian high school student becomes infatuated with a woman he sees outside his class window. Her fiancée is in jail for being involved in a radical movement, and she spends much time in court providing moral support. At first she resists the student's advances, but eventually begins an affair with him. Their situation is condemned by her family and his father, who is the woman's psychologist.

Martha and Karen graduate from college and turn an old Massachusetts farm into a school for girls. The friends are aided in their venture by local doctor Joe Cardin, who begins a relationship with Karen, and a prominent woman whose granddaughter, Mary, later enrolls in the new school. Mary soon reveals herself to be a spiteful child and tells a scandalous lie about Martha and Joe that threatens to destroy the lives of all involved.

Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature—shot entirely on location in India—is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the Bengal river around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir’s subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its people, The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.

Taking place during the full-moon night of traditional dances in August and set on the Japanese island of Amami-Oshima, the drama centers on a 14-year-old boy who finds a dead body floating in the sea. The young man enlists the help of his girlfriend to solve the mystery. The pair will learn to become adults by experiencing the interwoven cycles of life, death and love.

An epic love story centered around an older man who reads aloud to a woman with Alzheimer's. From a faded notebook, the old man's words bring to life the story about a couple who is separated by World War II, and is then passionately reunited, seven years later, after they have taken different paths.

Eliane Devries is the seemingly repressed owner of a prosperous rubber plantation in French Indochina, circa 1930. Her steely exterior, however, is only a mask intended to hide her torrid love affairs from upper class society

Zachary is 20 years old. Dark and independent, he collects amorous conquests and school failure. Sarah is 18 years old. First class, fragile, she fills her emotional gaps with perfect control of his life. Nothing should close and yet, the year of the tank, for six months, they will live a love against which nothing can be, the true, the big one that marks a life forever.

Maurice, a reticent young homeless man, somehow manages to get by in Brooklyn; he spends his nights in parked cars until he finds himself at Bizarre, an underground club renowned for its burlesque shows. Maurice is fascinated by the club’s playful revues celebrating self-determined sexuality and creative otherness, and the two female club owners both adore him. He soon becomes a part of their self-selected family, and begins to bond with introverted Luka. But Maurice turns his back on Luka’s growing affection. Running away from his true emotions he drifts aimlessly through the city. He tries to find his feet at a boxing club, where he meets Charlie. Unable to withstand the pressure of his repressed feelings, Maurice unleashes a mounting foment of emotions, pervaded by tenderness and menace.

Mia Hall, a talented young cellist, thought the most difficult decision she would ever have to make would be whether to pursue her musical dreams at prestigious Juilliard or follow her heart to be with the love of her life, Adam, a rock singer/guitarist. However, a car wreck changes everything in an instant, and now Mia's life hangs in the balance. Suspended between life and death, Mia faces a choice that will decide her future.

A privileged girl and a charismatic boy's instant desire sparks a love affair made only more reckless by parents trying to keep them apart.

Story of two gorgeous, young French boys who begin a passionate relationship that boils over and threatens to destroy both their lives. Shy Mathieu is 18-years-old and on summer vacation in the south of France. He spends his days lazily sunning himself at the beach, until he spies the handsome Cédric and falls in love. The film, like a dream, flows back and forth between the past and present, often asking us to fill the deliberate jumps in time.

Forced to move to a boring backwater town, a teenager embarks on affairs with a teacher and a stoner classmate.

Elizabeth has just been through a particularly nasty breakup, and now she's ready to leave her friends and memories behind as she chases her dreams across the country. In order to support herself on her journey, Elizabeth picks up a series of waitress jobs along the way. As Elizabeth crosses paths with a series of lost souls whose yearnings are even greater than her own, their emotional turmoil ultimately helps her gain a greater understanding of her own problems...

The story of an adult and a teenage couple during a brief summer holiday by the sea. While Nic's parents remain trapped in a precarious mutual dependency despite repeated attempts at reconciliation, their 12-year-old son tries to come to terms with his father's traumatizing violent outbursts in games with other children. He tries to teach Marie, who is of his age and suffers from her own relationship with her father, to feel nothing. In fact, both of them are transformed by their experience of the joys and pains of first love.

Capricious small-town girl Juliette and barge captain Jean marry after a whirlwind courtship, and she comes to live aboard his boat, L'Atalante. As they make their way down the Seine, Jean grows weary of Juliette's flirtations with his all-male crew, and Juliette longs to escape the monotony of the boat and experience the excitement of a big city. When she steals away to Paris by herself, her husband begins to think their marriage was a mistake.

The story of a gentle-hearted beast in love with a simple and beautiful girl. She is drawn to the repellent but strangely fascinating Beast, who tests her fidelity by giving her a key, telling her that if she doesn't return it to him by a specific time, he will die of grief. She is unable to return the key on time, but it is revealed that the Beast is the genuinely handsome one. A simple tale of tragic love that turns into a surreal vision of death, desire, and beauty.

Made of four short tales, linked by a story filmed by Wim Wenders. Taking place in Ferrara, Portofino, Aix en Provence and Paris, each story, which always a woman as the crux of the story, invites to an inner travel, as Antonioni says "towards the true image of that absolute and mysterious reality that nobody will ever see".

A philosophy teacher restless with the need to do something with his life meets a young woman suspected of driving an artist to his death. He finds the very simple Cecilia irritating but develops a sexual rapport with her. Obsessed with the need to own and tormented by her inability to respond to him, he becomes increasingly violent in a quest he can't name - a quest that slowly begins to undermine his certainties.

A headstrong young teacher in a private school in 1930s Edinburgh ignores the curriculum and influences her impressionable 12 year old charges with her over-romanticized world view.

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.

15-year-old deep-thinking Welsh schoolboy, Oliver Tate struggles to initiate and maintain a relationship with Jordana, his devilish, dark-haired classmate at their Swansea high school. As his parents' marriage begins to fall apart, similar problems arise in his relationship with Jordana.

A sweeping romantic epic set in Japan in the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

Two guys at a college prep school make wagers on seducing naive young girls, and then meet their match when they agree to see which one can seduce the most popular and devious girl who has her own agenda to everything.

Malik has a lot on his plate when he returns home to Tunisia after living in France. He's processing his father's death, he can't come out to his mother, and his childhood anxieties have resurfaced. But all of Malik's problems seem to fade away when he falls for Bilal, the dreamy houseboy at his mother's bourgeois estate.

A strong, human tale about a boy growing up with an alcoholic father, but also an energetic story about teenage lust, pain and passion – about liberation and redemption.

Fourteen years after the events of the first film, a series of encounters between people in Britain reminds us that in these different times Love, actually exists.

Maureen Trant and her younger sibling Dani share a strong connection, but local boy Court Foster threatens to throw their bond off balance. Dani and Court meet first and have a flirtatious rapport -- but when he meets Maureen, he falls hard and they begin a passionate affair. The new couple try to keep their love hidden from Dani, but she soon learns the truth, disavowing her sister. But a heartbreaking accident later reunites the girls.

In this captivating Depression-era melodrama, impetuous veterinary student Jacob Jankowski joins a celebrated circus as an animal caretaker but faces a wrenching dilemma when he's transfixed by angelic married performer Marlena.

Marianne leaves Abel for Paul, his best friend and the father of her unborn child. Eight years later, Paul dies and Marianne returns to Abel. However, things have changed for the both of them and feelings of jealousy surround their new relationship.

A young unemployed man finds work at a nuclear power plant and begins an illicit affair with the fiancée of one of his senior workmates.

After a one-night stand a couple is faced with the terrifying possibility of what they really want.

A mistaken delivery in Mumbai's famously efficient lunchbox delivery system (Mumbai's Dabbawallahs) connects a young housewife to a stranger in the dusk of his life. They build a fantasy world together through notes in the lunchbox. Gradually, this fantasy threatens to overwhelm their reality.

In Verona, bad blood between the Montague and Capulet families leads to much bitterness. Despite the hostility, Romeo Montague manages an invitation to a masked ball at the estate of the Capulets and meets Juliet, their daughter. The two are instantly smitten but dismayed to learn that their families are enemies. Romeo and Juliet figure out a way to pursue their romance, but Romeo is banished for his part in the slaying of Juliet's cousin, Tybalt.

Three lives of three young people intersect over the course of one summer. A rich student and a young working-class man accidentally destroy a diner when their impromptu road race takes a disastrous turn. Ordered by a judge to spend the summer repairing the building, they find themselves becoming rivals for the affections of the owner's daughter.