Realism
see all genres ›Character development and emotional themes are key to the dramatic film. Though generally serious, dramas range widely in tone and scale. Intimate relationships and social issues are perennial subjects.
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Genres / Drama / Realism
SUB-GENRES · Pseudodocumentary · Docudrama · Social Realism · Neo-realism · Magic Realism · Pseudorealism
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A Film Unfinished
At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film, having sat undisturbed in an East German archive, was discovered. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply "Ghetto," this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw...Watch Movie
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Wendy and Lucy
Named to over sixty "Best of 2008" lists (and even many "Best of the Decade" lists), WENDY AND LUCY solidified filmmaker Kelly Reichardt's reputation for films that are (according to the New York Times) "a touchstone of the new realism in American cinema." Drifting upwards to Alaska like a 21st...Watch Movie
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Fitzcarraldo
Werner Herzog's most epically-scaled film was inspired by an actual historical incident of stranger-than-fiction curiosity. In the late 1800s Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald had an entire steamship laboriously transported over a mountain in order to open a trade passage from rubber-rich...Watch Movie
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Elles
Director Malgorzata Szumowska's ELLES paints an unromantic picture of upper-crust domesticity. ELLES stars the fearless Juliette Binoche (CHOCOLAT) as Anne, a well-off Parisian journalist investigating the lives of two student prostitutes (Joanna Kulig and AnaпїЅs Demoustier) for a magazine...Watch Movie
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Oasis
Hailed as the seminal film of the Korean new wave, acclaimed director Lee Chang-dong’s OASIS tells the story of two societal misfits and their struggle to find love and acceptance amidst the hypocrisy of modern Korean life. Fate helped bring them together, family fought to keep them apart.Watch Movie
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In the City of Sylvia
A young artist searches the winding streets of Strasbourg for an old love in Jose Luis Guerin's acclaimed and exceedingly beautiful IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA. During a languid summer, a young man spends his afternoons sketching in an outdoor café. He is looking for a woman he met...Watch Movie
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Concrete Night
A stunning, dream-like odyssey through a beautiful and otherworldly Helsinki over the course of one evening, CONCRETE NIGHT follows the impressionable fourteen-year-old Simo as he keeps his soon-to-be incarcerated brother company. The official Finnish submission to the Academy Awards® for Best...Watch Movie
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Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating...Watch Movie
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Edi
Winner of several international film festival awards and the Polish submission to the Academy Awards®, EDI is a touching and highly involving portrait of marginal characters who manage to confront their misery and, at least briefly, somehow triumph over it. The film tells a story of two scrap...Watch Movie
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Putty Hill
A beautifully realized portrait of a close-knit community on the outskirts of Baltimore, PUTTY HILL is the second feature from celebrated young filmmaker Matt Porterfield. At a neighborhood karaoke bar, friends and family gather to remember a young man who passed away. Knowing little about his...Watch Movie
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7P., cuis., s. de b.
An unusual visit to a large, empty apartment. But is it empty or not? Maybe a family has lived there or is going to live there. Maybe a young girl is going to escape from there. Maybe some of the old-timers who lived there never left. The walls themselves tell the stories of...Watch Movie
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Dreams of a Life
Nobody noticed when thirty-eight year old Joyce Vincent died in her apartment in North London in 2003. Three years later when her skeleton was discovered, her heating and television were still on. Who was Joyce Vincent and how could her death have gone unnoticed for so long?...Watch Movie
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On the Bowery
ON THE BOWERY chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York's skid row, the Bowery. When the film first opened it 1956, it exploded on the screen, burning away years of Hollywood artifice, jump-starting the post-war American independent...Watch Movie
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Neighboring Sounds
One of the most acclaimed films of the year, NEIGHBORING SOUNDS is the thrilling debut from filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho. On a quiet block in the coastal city of Recife, ruled by an aging patriarch and his sons, a recent spate of petty crime has rattled the nerves of the...Watch Movie
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Orchestra of Exiles
The thrilling story of how one man helped save Europe's premiere Jewish musicians from obliteration by the Nazis. In the early 1930's Hitler began firing Jewish musicians across Europe. Overcoming extraordinary obstacles, violinist Bronislaw Huberman moved these great...Watch Movie
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Flotsam/Jetsam
A grainy black-and-white adventure on the high seas turns into something else entirely in this typically idiosyncratic short from David and Nathan Zellner, their very first to appear at the Sundance Film Festival. Adrift in the open water, a man clings to some floating suitcases (along with a...Watch Movie
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Sami Blood
Elle Marja, 14, is a reindeer-herding Sami girl. Exposed to the racism of the 1930's and race biology examinations at her boarding school she starts dreaming of another life. To achieve this other life she has to become someone else and break all ties with her family and culture.Watch Movie
