Movies Similar to The Zerda or the Songs of Forgetting

Copying Beethoven(2006)

A fictionalised exploration of Beethoven's life in his final days working on his Ninth Symphony. It is 1824. Beethoven is racing to finish his new symphony. However, it has been years since his last success and he is plagued by deafness, loneliness and personal trauma. A copyist is urgently needed to help the composer. A fictional character is introduced in the form of a young conservatory student and aspiring composer named Anna Holtz. The mercurial Beethoven is skeptical that a woman might become involved in his masterpiece but slowly comes to trust in Anna's assistance and in the end becomes quite fond of her. By the time the piece is performed, her presence in his life is an absolute necessity. Her deep understanding of his work is such that she even corrects mistakes he has made, while her passionate personality opens a door into his private world.

6.4

Nowhere in Africa(2001)

A Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich flees Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances, bringing with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown. While Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor.

7.1

When Saturday Comes(1996)

Jimmy Muir comes from a typical gritty, northern town where there are only two options: working down the pit or in a factory. But Jimmy has other ideas - he dreams of becoming a professional footballer. Confronted by a bitter and unsupportive father, hard drinking friends and a lifetime of bad habits...has Jimmy the will to achieve his ultimate goal?

5.7

A Real Young Girl(1999)

Bored and restless, Alice spends much of her time lusting after Jim, a local sawmill worker. When not lusting after him, Alice fills the hours with such pursuits as writing her name on a mirror with vaginal secretions and wandering the fields with her underwear around her ankles. And, in true teenaged tradition, she spends a lot of time writing in her diary.

5.3

Who's Afraid of the Bogeyman(1989)

Portrait of a private coal company in East Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district in 1988/89. The feisty woman boss runs the business with humour and understanding. Her seven male employees respect her. To the outside world, they are all tough guys, but as they describe their jobs and personal situations, above and beyond the hard manual labour, their vulnerability starts to come to light.

0.0

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Tango Dream(1985)

Sitting at her typewriter, listening to tango music, she dreams. Buenos Aires and Montevideo are far away, a different world where, long ago, the tango came into being. A dream about dance and music, as well as about unfulfilled desire and wanderlust behind the Berlin Wall.

4.7

Charly(2007)

Nicolas, an aimless adolescent who hasn't yet found his way in life leaves his grandparent's home, hitchhikes to a small town, and befriends, Charly an outspoken and slightly older prostitute, a red-headed beauty who appears to ply her trade in the same no-nonsense way she clears the breakfast dishes. She seems to find something endearing about Nicolas' mussed hair and dopey face, so she puts him up in the teeny trailer home that she maintains with such hilarious fussiness. As their unusual domestic arrangement evolves, each stumbles vulnerably into new emotional territory.

4.5

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood(2002)

A mother and daughter dispute is resolved by the "Yaya sisterhood" - long time friends of the mother.

6.1

Little Women(1994)

With their father away as a chaplain in the Civil War, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy grow up with their mother in somewhat reduced circumstances. They are a close family who inevitably have their squabbles and tragedies. But the bond holds even when, later, male friends start to become a part of the household.

7.3

The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean(1966)

Written, directed, and self-financed by Juleen Compton, The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean is the story of a clairvoyant teenage girl, Norma Jean (Sharon Henesy), taken advantage of by a boy band, fashioned after The Beatles, determined to exploit the young woman's powers as part of a hoax revival.

7.7

Stranded(1965)

Compton's first feature was the autobiographical Stranded, which she wrote, directed, starred in, self-financed and distributed. Released in 1965, the film shares the cinematic experimentation and stylish, youth-centric rebellion of the French New Wave made even more radical by its progressive portrayals of female independence and sexuality, beatnik culture, and discussions of homosexuality. Stranded follows Raina, a young American woman (played by Compton), traveling through Greece with her American lover (Gary Collins), and her French, gay, best friend (Gian Pietro Calasso). Raina partakes in several love affairs rejecting marriage offers for no other reason than she likes her life the way it is. Made just prior to the arrival of second wave feminism, Compton, as writer-director, never judges her on-screen alter-ego the way similar female characters were frequently punished in other films during this era by stigmatizing female sexuality.

6.0

REM(2019)

"REM" is an Afrikaans Sci-Fi Drama about a grief-stricken father, Dehan, who becomes obsessed with the memory of his late wife, Lena, through the use of a high-tech, dream-altering device, the REM. This unhealthy obsession leads to Dehan struggling to reconnect with his young son, Erich, who survived the car accident that caused Lena's death. Dehan must decide to face and to confront his grief, reconnecting with his son, or to become so immersed in his fantasy dream-world that he loses touch with reality, and Erich, altogether.

7.3

Sorceress(2017)

A young woman raised in the US returns to her birth country in Eastern Europe after a devastating tragedy. Questioning her sanity and her sexuality, she starts believing she possesses supernatural powers.

5.0

Girlhood(2014)

Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.

6.4

Butch Jamie(2008)

The film follows the story of Jamie, a struggling butch lesbian actress who gets cast as a man in a film. The main plot is a romantic comedy between Jamie's male alter-ego, "Male Jamie," and Jill, a heterosexual woman on set. The film's subplots include Jamie's bisexual roommate Lola and her cat actor Howard, Lola's abrasive butch German girlfriend Andi, and Jamie's gay Asian friend David.

3.8

Felicitas(2009)

Buenos Aires at the outskirts of XIX century. A society rigid in patriarchal rules. A war between brothers of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay. Two young and very much in love youngsters, fight for their right to be together. Obeyance and fear sets them apart along more than ten years. When they are finally reunited, will they be able to overcome the pain and tragedy that haunts them?

4.5

Election Day(2007)

Forget the pie charts, color-coded maps and hyperventilating pundits. What's the street-level experience of voters in today's America? In a triumph of documentary storytelling, ELECTION DAY combines eleven stories--all shot simultaneously on November 2, 2004, from dawn until long past midnight--into one. Factory workers, ex-felons, harried moms, Native American activists and diligent poll watchers, from South Dakota to Florida, take the process of democracy into their own hands. The result: an entertaining, inspiring and sometimes unsettling tapestry of citizens determined on one fateful day to make their votes count.

0.0

Afternoon(2007)

A family spends three summer days in a beautiful lake mansion close to Berlin. Together with her new lover, Irene visits her brother Alex, who still inhabits the house with Irene's writer son Konstantin. Konstantin's girl-friend pops in, too, and all of them drift away from each other more and more.

6.3

Les petites couleurs(2002)

Swiss drama in the form of a road movie starring Bernadette Lafont. Hairdresser Christelle is harassed daily by her chauvinistic husband until she can no longer stand it and flees. She then meets the strong landlady Mona and learns to see her life from a different perspective.

7.8

Alone(2017)

This investigation into the layers of mass incarceration and its shaping of the modern black American family is seen through the eyes of a single mother in New Orleans, Louisiana.

6.6