Movies Similar to Theban Plays: Oedipus at Colonus

Constance(1985)

Constance is a bored, movie-loving schoolteacher in post-WW2 New Zealand who begins to fantasize that she's a Hollywood star - with tragic consequences.

Funeral Parade of Roses(1969)

In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.

Medea(1969)

Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.

Antigone(2003)

Having defied the ban on Creon and offered a burial to Polynice, her treacherous homeland brother, Antigone is condemned to a slow death in a stone tomb, despite the interposition of Hémon, her fiance, the son of Creon . Nevertheless, Creon ends up following the advice of his diviner Tiresias and, fearing the wrath of the gods, buries Polynices with dignity. When he is about to free Antigone, the young woman had already hanged herself. Mad with pain, Hémon commits suicide by his side.

Oedipus Rex(1957)

The story of Oedipus' gradual discovery of his primal crime, killing his father and marrying his mother, filmed by the famed British theatrical director Sir Tyrone Guthrie. This elegant version of Sophocles' play adds a brilliant stroke: the actors wear masks just as the Greeks did in the playwright's day.

Kinds of Kindness(2024)

A triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.

Frine cortigiana d'Oriente(1953)

Mourning Becomes Electra(1947)

Near the end of the Civil War, the proud residents of Mannon Manor await the return of shipping tycoon Ezra Mannon and son Orin. Meanwhile Ezra’s conniving wife Christine and daughter Lavinia vie for the love of a handsome captain with a dark secret while well-meaning neighbor Peter sets his sights on Lavinia.

In the Darkness of the Night(2004)

A disturbing film about the Portuguese underworld of prostitution.

Theban Plays: Oedipus the King(1986)

Plagues are ravaging Thebes, and the blind fortune-teller Tieresias tells Oedipus, the King, that the gods are unhappy. The murder of the former king has gone unavenged, and Oedipus sets out to find the killer.

Phaedra(1962)

A modern retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra. The young and fiery second wife of an extremely wealthy shipping magnate meets her estranged stepson Alexis and sparks immediately fly. Their love seems doomed from the beginning when she convinces him to come to Paris to meet his father.

The Trojan Women(1971)

In the aftermath of the Trojan Wars, Queen Hecuba takes stock of the defeated kingdom. Her son has been killed, and his widow, Andromache, is left to raise their son, Astyanax, alone. Hecuba's daughter, Cassandra, fears being enslaved by her Greek masters, while Helen of Troy risks being executed. Astyanax also becomes the focus of the Greeks' attention as the last male heir of the Trojan royal family.

Electra(1962)

Living in exile after the death of their father, the grown children of a murdered and usurped king converge to exact eye-for-an-eye revenge.

National Theatre Live: The Other Place(2025)

Two sisters reunite on the anniversary of the death of their father. Their uncle has remodelled their family home, in an attempt at a fresh start. But one sister’s sudden reappearance threatens to shatter this fragile idyll as she demands justice for the pain she carries.Amid the debris and the new extension, guilt, grief and greed battle it out in the family’s competing dreams of their future. When we are faced with the suffering of others, even those closest to us, can we look away?

Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One(2015)

Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad!

Ahare Mon(2018)

A heartwarming collage of inter-connected love stories, Ahare Mon is a romantic drama that revolves around people who are otherwise forbidden to fall in love.

NEKOPARA OVA(2017)

Kashou Minaduki, the son of a long line of Japanese confection makers moved out to open his own shop "La Soleil" as a patisserie. But upon moving out, hidden amongst his things were two of the catgirls, Chocola and Vanilla, that the family had been raising. When he tried to send them back, they begged and pleaded until he gave in and now they've opened La Soleil together. With two catgirls who really, REALLY love their master trying their very best and occasionally failing -- a heartful comedy opens for business!

Lost, Found(2018)

Li Jie, a lawyer, is taking divorce proceedings to try to get custody of her daughter. As she is working hard to earn a better life for her daughter, she hires a baby sitter, Sun Fang, to watch her child. One day, Li comes home only to find her child and Sun have disappeared. Unfortunately, Li is suspected by both her family and the police, and must lean on herself to trace Sun alone.

Theban Plays: Antigone(1986)

In a final battle for the control of Thebes, Oedipus's two sons kill each other. Creon issues an order that no one is to bury Polynices upon pain of death. But Antigone is determined that her brother's body will have the proper rites of burial.

Antigone(1961)

In Thebes in ancient Greece, King Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother Jocasta, having two sons - Eteocles and Polyneices - and two daughters - Ismene and Antigone. King Oedipus dies a beggar in the exile after gouging out his own eye, and Eteocle agrees to reign in Thebes in alternating years with Polynices. However, he refuses to resign after the first year and Polynieces raises an army and attacks Thebes, and they kill each other. The ruler of Thebes Creon decrees that Eleocles should have an honorable burial while the body of the traitor Polyneices should be left on the battlefield to be eaten by the jackals and vultures. However, Antigone, who was betrothed to Creon's surviving son Haemon, defies Creon's orders and buries her brother. When Creon is reported of the attitude of Antigone, he sentences her to be placed in a tomb alive. Antigone hangs herself in the tomb and Haemon tries to kill his father first and then he kills himself with his sword...