Movies Similar to The East Is Red

The Travelling Players(1975)

This expansive Greek drama follows a troupe of theater actors as they perform around their country during World War II. While the production that they put on is entitled "Golfo the Shepherdess," the thespians end up echoing scenes from classic Greek tales in their own lives, as Elektra plots revenge on her mother for the death of her father, and seeks help from her brother, Orestes, a young anti-fascist rebel.

7.4

The Last Emperor(1987)

A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

7.6

Shanghai Express(1932)

A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.

7.0

M. Butterfly(1993)

In 1960s China, French diplomat Rene Gallimard falls in love with an opera singer, Song Liling – but Song is not at all who Gallimard thinks.

6.6

The Warrior(2001)

In 1375, China was in chaos between Yuan Dynasty and Ming Dynasty. Coryo (an ancient kingdom of Korea then) sent a delegation of many diplomats, soldiers and a silent slave to make peace with the new Chinese government. However, this delegation got charged as spies and sent in exile to a remote desert.

7.0

Mongolian Ping Pong(2005)

Bilike has never seen a ping-pong ball before. He and his family live without electricity and running water in a solitary tent home among the vast steppe grasslands. The magnificent landscape here has changed little since the days of Genghis Kahn. But life in the middle of nowhere can be exciting for a young boy. The smallest of details become big events for curious Bilike and his best friends Erguotou and Dawa. The mystery of the small white ball floating in the creek leads to questions about the world around them, as well as innocent mischief.

6.0

Curse of the Golden Flower(2006)

During China's Tang dynasty the emperor has taken the princess of a neighboring province as his wife. She has borne him two sons and raised his eldest. Now his control over his dominion is complete, including the royal family itself.

6.9

The Story of Zhou Enlai(2013)

With a unique perspective of the accompanying cameraman of Premier Zhou Enlai, the film tactfully tells the story that Premier Zhou went to the old revolutionary base area of Hebei Province at the beginning of the 1960s when our country suffered from the Great Chinese Feminine. He made in-depth research in Boyan commune of Handan District, work closely with the masses, followed up a clue and seized the culprit in four days and nights.

6.5

Good Night, and Good Luck.(2005)

The story of journalist Edward R. Murrow's stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts in the early 1950s.

7.1

Newton(2017)

A government clerk on election duty in a conflict-ridden jungle of Central India tries his best to conduct free and fair voting despite the apathy of security forces and the looming fear of guerrilla attacks by communist rebels.

7.1

Lust, Caution(2007)

During World War II, a secret agent must seduce and assassinate an official who works for the Japanese puppet government in Shanghai.

7.2

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum(1975)

After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.

7.0

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers(2007)

The film follows Mr. Shi, a retired widower from Beijing. When his only daughter, Yilan, who lives in Spokane, Washington and works as a librarian, gets divorced, he decides to visit her to help her heal. However, Yilan is not interested. She tries keeping an emotional distance but when this finally fails she begins physically avoiding her father. He confronts her about an affair with a married Russian man and she, in turn, lets loose about all the gossip she'd heard as a young girl about his alleged affair with a female colleague back in China.

6.2

Indochine(1992)

Set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s, this is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement.

7.0

The Ambush(1969)

Idealistic young man supports the party and the new Yugoslavia's communist regime, but soon gets involved in various political and criminal machinations becoming more and more confused about what's right and what's wrong.

5.6

The Sand Pebbles(1966)

Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat USS San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the 'rice-bowl' system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.

7.2

Her Sister's Keeper(1963)

To put her younger sister Huilan (Margaret Tu Chuan) through college, Huilian (Grace Ting Ning) became a taxi dancer and is despised by Huilan. Now married to a good husband (Guan Shan), the lonely Huilan falls for a man after her money. To protect her younger sister, Huilian puts herself at risk. Grace Ting Ning plays a sad role, as the noble sister who keeps her purity in a cesspool.

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Do No Harm(2017)

3am. Hongjing, China. 1980s. A single-minded surgeon is forced to break her physician's oath when violent gangsters storm into a hospital to stop a crucial operation.

7.5

Red Corner(1997)

An American attorney on business in China, ends up wrongfully on trial for murder and his only key to innocence is a female defense lawyer from the country.

6.3

Shanghai Madness(1933)

In the 1920s Pat Jackson destroys a Chinese post and is discharged from the Navy. Li Po Chang hires him to run a gunboat up the river. He drops Wildeth off at a mission for safety, but when his boat returns the mission is being attacked by communists.

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