Movies Similar to Emilienne and the Passage of Time

Ghosts: Long Way Home(2019)

After a spell cast by Grandma Faraway, the oldest son of a small family encounters the ghost of his late Grandma Maria still living in her old house, and they chat as they used to.

Pick up the Wind(2021)

A short film following Anthony, a young child from the small, rural town of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. We see him in different moments of his daily life as he interacts with different forms of environmental, familial, and social influences. While Anthony displays contradictory traits of creativity, destruction, rigidity, and tenderness as he interacts with his external and internal worlds, we see a story built from the the multidimensionality of Anthony's layered personality as a young man.

Comitiva Esperança(1985)

Miyama, Kyōto Prefecture(2023)

The follow-up film to “Barstow, California” takes us to the mountains of Miyama, a remote forest and tourist area north of Kyoto. Uwe Walter, a shakuhachi player from Germany, lives there with his wife Mitsuyo for 30 years. Together with the villagers he prepares the annual Gion Festival. On the eve of the festival, the village representatives tell him that his self-built studio is to be demolished. This brings back memories for him of earlier times and his first steps as a Nō actor. In the manner of a fresco, the film interweaves rural depictions of everyday life with the story of its German protagonist. In the village community with its togetherness of generations, Uwe shares life with his neighbours, with farmers, hunters, woodsmen, poultry farmers and anglers, tills his kitchen garden, and like other tradition-conscious villagers, he also grows his rice. The film shows them in a harsh mountain landscape between the rainy season and the first snow.

Tu nourriras le monde(2022)

Là, où le temps s’est arrêté(2021)

Soms. Elles i Beget(2021)

Women 50 Minutes(2007)

A representation of queer and feminist imagery that was mainly shot in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, remote and developing areas in southwest China, and metropolitan cities like Beijing from 2000 to 2004 to document the social changes in contemporary China. The director sympathetically and erotically represents a variety of women, including women as laborers, women as prayers, women in the ground, women in marriage, and women who lie on the funeral pyre with their dead husbands. Her camera juxtaposes the mountains and rivers in old times, the commercialized handicrafts as exposition, the capital exploitation of the elders’ living space, and the erotic freedom of the young people in a changing city.

William Wells Talks About The Island(1967)

William Wells defends the viability of Fogo Island and expresses his apprehension about the exodus of young people.

La détresse au bout du rang(2020)

A la porra(2023)

The Cheese & The Worms(2006)

A documentary that records the daily life of a mother with a limited life expectancy and a grandmother, directed by the daughter, Haruyo Kato.

Les doléances(2024)

The Echo(2024)

In the remote village of El Echo that exists outside of time, the children care for the sheep and their elders. While the frost and drought punish the land, they learn to understand death, illness and love with each act, word and silence of their parents. A story about the echo of what clings to the soul, about the certainty of shelter provided by those around us, about rebellion and vertigo in the face of life. About growing up.

Plains(2023)

Set in the sparsely populated lobster fishing villages of southern Nova Scotia, Plains is a cinema vérité approach to documenting the curious lives of Jon and Cat, a young couple who are developing politically left-leaning virtual reality video games. Against the busy backdrop of their art practice, we sit in on their quiet rural life, which, in its proximity to nature and the vast green and oceanic spaces that surround, echoes the romanticism of a simpler time. As the decaying world of physical labour and the mechanical industry faces up to an expanding digital empire, Jon gradually retreats into the alternative realities of his own design.

The Grove(2025)

Exploring the reports of a spectral mansion on the outskirts of Rougham, a village in the Eastern county of Suffolk. The film delves into local folklore surrounding these sightings as villagers recount their haunting experiences against the desolate backdrop of rural Britain. It reflects on themes of memory, place, and the fading tradition of oral storytelling, evoking the eerie atmosphere of a fractured England and our growing disconnect from the natural environment.

A Hakka Song(2024)

A song is heard in the distance. It comes from the Hekeng village, famous for its ancient earthen buildings, also called tulou. It is where the last original Hakka families live amidst the exodus of those looking for a more modern environment. Among them there is Zhang Zhouyin, an elderly man concerned about the state of the village's temple; or her daughter-in-law, Wei Yi, who spends her entire day guiding tourists through these awe-inspiring houses. And then there’s young Zhang Weibo, her son, who manages to find joy even in the simplest of things... Hekeng: a place frozen in time whose songs have endured for centuries.

Bad Axe(2022)

A real-time portrait of 2020 unfolds as an Asian-American family in Trump’s rural America fights to keep their restaurant and American dream alive in the face of a pandemic, Neo-Nazis, and generational scars from the Cambodian Killing Fields.

Appearances(2023)

An atmospheric and dreamy picture poem from Argentina's vast La Pampa region, where ancient stories of spirits are evoked in dark and evocative images between reality and the beyond.

4 mois sur ma biosphère(2021)

After traveling the globe to highlight low-tech, Corentin de Chatelperron has set himself a new challenge: to live independently, alone for four months, on a bamboo raft floating in Phang Nga Bay, Thailand. On his 70 square meter platform, the engineer, passionate about ecology and system D, puts into practice what he has learned in order to feed himself and produce his own energy.