Movies like The Paternal House
If you like "The Paternal House" you are looking for intense, art house and psychological horror movies about / with patriarchy, domestic violence, family secret, claustrophobia, basement, suicide and isolation themes of Crime, Drama and Thriller genre shot in Iran.
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1. Identify all themes of interest from this film (block below).
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The Paternal House (2012)
1K
Original name: خانه پدری
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Iran
Duration: 97 min.
Story:
A young woman is murdered by her own father, with the help of her younger brother. She is secretly buried in the cellar, a space where the women of the family weave carpets and perform other domestic chores. Her loss, or perhaps her presence, continues to haunt the family as it reverberates through the following generations. Ayyari’s film is staged exclusively in this house and was banned several times in Iran.
Style:
intense, art house, psychological horror, tragic
Plot:
patriarchy, domestic violence, family secret, claustrophobia, basement, suicide, isolation, social realism, macabre, murder, child abuse, taboo, father, family relations, sister, persian, family secrets, mystery
Place:
poetic realism, persia, iran
Movie in categories
Most similar movies to The Paternal House
The list contains related movies ordered by similarity. Recommendation engine sorted out tense, intense, tragic and dark films with plots about isolation, moral ambiguity, claustrophobia, slow burn, murder, family drama and psychological drama mostly in Drama, Crime and Thriller genres. Some movies like The Paternal House: Asphyxia (2017), Sheeple (2018), 13 (2014), Los ojos de un niño (1982), My Brother Khosrow (2016). The matching attributes are highlighted in bold.
Genre: Crime, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Iran
Duration: 107 min.
Story:
I was suffocating, but I don't kill her. I love it.
Style:
psychological thriller, intense, dark, suspenseful, psychological horror ...
Plot:
mental illness, character study, domestic drama, control, claustrophobia, obsession, neurosis, obsessive love, family tragedy, intimate, guilt, suffocation ...
Place:
iran, persia
Similarity:
95%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Iran
Duration: 103 min.
Story:
The story is about a family of three brothers and a sister in the suburbs of the city's poverty. Their elder brother owns a drug-producing kitchen and presides over the group, like a shepherd for sheep.
Style:
intense, tense, dark, crime thriller, black comedy ...
Plot:
gang, family drama, drug traffic, social realism, survival, meth lab, loyalty, street life, moral ambiguity, siblings, brothers, brotherhood ...
Place:
tehran, persia, iran, tehran iran
Similarity:
78%
1K
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Iran
Duration: 100 min.
Story:
The lack of communication between the mother and the father of a 13 year old, leads inevitably to a divorce. During this ordeal their son, feeling out of place, befriends some troubled older kids and gets involved in murder.
Style:
realistic, poignant, melancholic, intense, tense ...
Audience:
teen drama
Plot:
adolescence, loss of innocence, coming of age, family drama, peer pressure, character study, identity crisis, social realism, bullying, alienation, juvenile delinquency, isolation ...
Place:
iran
Similarity:
70%
Genre: Drama, Crime, Thriller
Country: Mexico
Duration: 86 min.
Story:
Little boy learns of his stepmother's infidelity and later witnesses a murder... but the shocks have thrown him into a hysterical paralysis, and it's almost impossible for him to communicate anything to anybody.
Style:
psychological thriller, tense, crime drama, psychological horror
Plot:
loss of innocence, murder witness, child protagonist, family secret, paranoia, claustrophobia, isolation, traumatic memory, hysteria, moral ambiguity, small town, woman in a bikini ...
Similarity:
64%
Movie in collections
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 90 min.
Story:
Khosrow (Shahab Hosseini) who is a bi-polar man is forced to live in his brother's house Nasser, as his guardian and sister goes abroad for a while. The brothers soon find themsleves in friction due to the challenging behavior of Khosrow and ...
Style:
psychological, tense, intense, realistic, emotional ...
Plot:
bipolar disorder, sibling relationship, mental illness, character study, moral dilemma, social realism, isolation, morality, guilt, responsibility, middle class, sibling rivalry ...
Time:
2010s
Place:
iran, persia
Similarity:
63%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Greece
Duration: 85 min.
Story:
A young girl is forced by her father to become a nun. But soon she finds out that dark secrets are hiding behind the convent walls and that she's there to serve lustful human masters and not God.
Style:
disturbing, religious drama, psychological horror, art house
Plot:
nunsploitation, convent, nun, rape, sexploitation, sexual abuse, victimization, trauma, religious hypocrisy, oppression, female protagonist, taboo ...
Time:
80s
Similarity:
59%
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 192 min.
Story:
In an Iran weighed down by a struggling economy, two middle-aged brothers live with their bullying father. A man prone to rages and driven by chauvinism, the father’s abusiveness found his second wife leaving him. Now he picks on his eldest son, ...
Style:
grim, tense, neo noir
Plot:
abusive father, chauvinism, mature, family drama, domestic abuse, social realism, confrontation, claustrophobia, brothers, isolation, family secret, sexual attraction ...
Place:
iran
Similarity:
59%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 80 min.
Story:
Years after the institutionalizing and abandoning of their mentally unstable daughter, the Kilpatrick family becomes victim to mental instabilities of their own as their past comes back to haunt them.
Style:
psychological thriller, tense, psychological horror, dark, suspense ...
Plot:
dysfunctional family, trauma, mental illness, family drama, paranoia, guilt, family secret, mental breakdown, revenge, obsession, grief, psychological manipulation ...
Similarity:
53%
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 86 min.
Story:
Directed by Basar Sabuncu.
Style:
disturbing, sad, dark, grim, intense ...
Plot:
toxic relationship, psychological abuse, obsession, patriarchy, character study, repression, sexual perversion, gender roles, jealousy, sexual abuse, isolation, loneliness ...
Place:
turkey
Similarity:
52%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Iran
Duration: 93 min.
Story:
The truth carries a heavy burden, whether it is said that it sets off a storm, or it remains in the heart that disturbs man. Between telling the truth and revealing a secret or being silent and expedient, one is preferable to the other.
Style:
emotional, tense, suspenseful, tragic
Plot:
moral dilemma, secrets, moral ambiguity, tradition, reputation, honor, village life, social conflict, character study, family drama, small community, family honor ...
Place:
iran
Similarity:
49%
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Austria
Duration: 88 min.
Story:
Flooding in Krumau am Kamp: three infant bodies, two girls and a boy, are found in the basement of the Trummler family's farm, which has long been uninhabited. The children were suffocated immediately after birth and buried on the spot. A dark ...
Style:
atmospheric, sinister, psychological thriller, dark, psychological horror ...
Plot:
filicide, haunted house, family curse, macabre, disappearance, investigation, isolation, small town, taboo, moral ambiguity, slow burn, home invasion
Similarity:
49%
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Hong Kong
Duration: 122 min.
Story:
Ann Hui's darkly realistic Night and Fog starts at the end of the story: a man murders his wife and, based on statements by unreliable witnesses, the film goes on to investigate how things could have got this far and what kind of man was able ...
Style:
bleak, dark, dramatic, disturbing, suspenseful ...
Plot:
murder, domestic violence, tragedy, family tragedy, abuse, killing, cold blooded murder, murder of wife, murder of family, murder of a family, violent, murder of a woman ...
Place:
hong kong
Similarity:
47%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min.
Story:
Coyote Lake is a reservoir on the Rio Grande along a dangerous drug smuggling route that has become synonymous with cartel violence and mysterious disappearances. It is there, on the lake, that Teresa and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Ester, run ...
Style:
dark, psychological thriller, tense, suspenseful, bleak ...
Plot:
lake, female assassin, mother and daughter, secrets, mother daughter relationship, brutality, serial killer, murder mystery, moral dilemma, macabre, family secret, nothing goes right ...
Time:
2010s
Similarity:
44%
114
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Country: Ukraine, Czech Republic
Duration: 100 min.
Story:
An ordinary funeral procession moves along its path from church to cemetery. Observing, you slip from reality into a place where time has lost its linearity, looping through the odd images thrown off by a distorted reality. Images of non-existence, ...
Style:
art house, psychedelic, non-linear, neo noir, surreal ...
Plot:
surrealism, murder, insanity, hanging, psychotic, identity crisis, mental illness, family drama, claustrophobia, metaphysics, obsession, isolation ...
Place:
ukraine
Similarity:
44%
143
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: Italy
Duration: 75 min.
Story:
A brother and a sister live on the borderline between awareness of their actions and total unconsciousness, until they commit a sin from which there is no return.
Style:
disturbing, bleak, dark, tense, melancholic ...
Plot:
brother sister relationship, moral ambiguity, sin, siblings, loss of innocence, haunting, guilt, transgression, existential crisis, conscience, youth, isolation ...
Similarity:
42%
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 101 min.
Story:
Frankenstein’s secrets did not die with him. As graves are torn up and patience disappear from asylum, William Browning sets out to find who stole his father’s body - and finds horrors close to home as his mother descends into madness.
Style:
gothic, dark, suspenseful, creepy, psychological horror ...
Plot:
macabre, madness, grave robbing, haunting, family secret, obsession, legacy, mature, family drama, claustrophobia, supernatural, isolation ...
Time:
victorian era, 19th century
Place:
england
Similarity:
41%
114
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 194 min.
Story:
Psychological thriller about a woman child-protection officer tramautized by her stillbirth who befriends a woman in hospital and then becomes convinced that the daughter is being abused.
Style:
tense, psychological thriller, suspense, captivating, suspenseful ...
Plot:
female protagonist, stillbirth, motherhood, trauma, mental disorder, life is a bitch, mother daughter relationship, family relations, kids in trouble, domestic violence, loss of child, child abuse ...
Similarity:
41%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Italy
Duration: 120 min.
Story:
Rosa is a young rebel girl who lives with her grandmother and her uncle in a remote part of Calabria, in Southernmost Italy. Her mother's untimely death when Rosa was a child casts a gloomy shadow on her present life.
Style:
thrilling, suspenseful, psychological, captivating, melancholic ...
Plot:
female protagonist, grandmother granddaughter relationship, family secret, secret, life is a bitch, undercover, coming of age, silence, grownups, rebellion, family drama, secrets ...
Time:
21st century
Place:
southern italy
Similarity:
40%
Movie in collections
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Iran
Duration: 107 min.
Story:
Parviz has as its increasingly horrifying anti-hero the 50-year-old hulk of a passive-aggressive bachelor son (theater director/activist Haftvan), whose free ride in life screeches to a halt when his miserly widowed father forms a plan to remarry.
Style:
intense, realistic, tense, existential, melancholic ...
Plot:
passive aggressive behavior, family conflict, middle aged man, character study, loneliness, anti hero, alienation, father son relationship, isolation, unsettling, small community, domestic drama ...
Place:
iran, middle east
Similarity:
40%
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 90 min.
Story:
'I Am a Mother' tells the story of Nahid, a young mother who claims responsibility for the murder of Saeed, the man who raped her daughter, in order to spare her daughter from qisas, the law of equal punishment. As Saeed's relatives ...
Style:
suspense, captivating
Plot:
islam, murder, mother daughter relationship, revenge, self sacrifice, saving a life, protector, fighting the system, criminal, social relations, social problems, mother and daughter ...
Place:
persia, iran, middle east
Similarity:
40%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Germany
Duration: 95 min.
Story:
A thriller about a man haunted by a past trauma...
Style:
psychological thriller, dark, tense, suspenseful, mind bending ...
Plot:
trauma, identity crisis, secrets, memory loss, post traumatic stress, flashback, slow burn, mature, claustrophobia, character study, amnesia, isolation ...
Place:
germany, morocco
Similarity:
39%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Iran
Duration: 126 min.
Story:
Ali, a blind man, is attempting to commit suicide when he is interrupted by the concierge of his building. He is informed that the police is in search of a woman who has escaped and hidden somewhere in the building. Little by little, Ali finds out ...
Style:
melancholic, bleak, noir
Plot:
character study, empathy, compassion, isolation, loneliness, missing child, class struggle, claustrophobia, social realism, political repression, suicide attempt, concierge ...
Place:
iran
Similarity:
38%
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 102 min.
Story:
A drifter searching for answers to a mystery from her past takes on a job looking after a sick teen who is undergoing a mysterious transformation her family will do anything to stop.
Style:
psychological horror, creepy, tense, suspenseful, grim ...
Plot:
transformation, body horror, drifter, female protagonist, family secret, identity crisis, claustrophobia, slow burn, small town, paranoia, isolation, outsider ...
Similarity:
38%
Movie in collections
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Iran
Duration: 95 min.
Story:
For Hussein, a pizza delivery driver, the imbalance of the social system is thrown in his face wherever he turns. One day when his friend, Ali, shows him the contents of a lost purse, Hussein discovers a receipt of payment and cannot believe the ...
Style:
realistic, serious, atmospheric, sincere, islamic ...
Plot:
poverty, motorcycle, life is a bitch, rich and poor, breaking point, resentment, discrimination, injustice, depression, realism, pizza delivery boy, fiance fiancee relationship ...
Time:
year 2003, 21st century
Place:
iran, middle east, persia, tehran iran, pakistan ...
Similarity:
37%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Horror
Country: Iran
Duration: 95 min.
Story:
Saeed is a forty-year-old mason, severe and fanatical in his religious beliefs. One day his wife is accosted by a driver who assumes she is a prostitute. Seething with rage, Saeed seeks revenge. In so doing he gets into various bruising encounters, ...
Style:
bleak, disturbing, crime drama, tense, art house
Audience:
adult
Plot:
social commentary, religious fanaticism, character study, social realism, violence, tragedy, murder, revenge, poverty, prostitution, social injustice, female exploitation ...
Place:
iran, middle east, lebanon, persia
Similarity:
37%
1K
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: India
Duration: 129 min.
Story:
A cruel womaniser, who cheated death and has been bedridden for ages, harasses his wife and son out of spite. As his family waits for him to die, the villagers form a mob demanding to kill him because of his actions. When he tricks his wife into ...
Style:
intense, dark drama, tragic
Plot:
family drama, toxic masculinity, abuse, patriarchy, domestic violence, harassment, moral dilemma, oppression, trauma, betrayal, husband wife conflict, small town life ...
Similarity:
36%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Iran
Duration: 106 min.
Story:
In the tenth year of marriage, Babak and Manizheh face the biggest challenge of their life. Financial problems and difficult social situation cause Babak to work very hard and this leads to a deep gap between him and his wife, in a way that Manizheh ...
Style:
tension, dark, grim, tragic
Plot:
addiction, marriage, family drama, marital crisis, betrayal, infidelity, financial problem, regret, desperation, isolation, guilt, social commentary ...
Time:
2010s
Place:
iran
Similarity:
35%
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 118 min.
Story:
Captain Khorshid is a sailor who although only having one hand, manages to sail his little boat. In his village, due to its hot climate and hard living conditions, dangerous criminals are sent into exile. They want to escape from the area, so they ...
Plot:
iranian, smuggling, husband wife relationship, safe, money, boat, murder, smoking, trip, criminal, merchant, shooting ...
Place:
persia, iran, middle east
Similarity:
35%
1K
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: Lebanon
Duration: 119 min.
Story:
Lina, a pre-med student, is sent home to Beirut, Lebanon, after severe nightmares ruin her life. Xapa, also known as "Joy," is prescribed to help her recover. However, as Lina’s terrifying nightmares worsen and a link between them and ...
Style:
psychological thriller, tense, suspenseful, intense, atmospheric ...
Plot:
nightmare, female protagonist, family secret, mother daughter relationship, memory, revelation, identity, mental illness, intrigue, domestic drama, paranoia, investigation ...
Place:
lebanon
Similarity:
35%
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: France
Duration: 105 min.
Story:
Her distant husband refusing to join, a mother spends the holidays alone with her children for the first time. Lost in her life, she opens up to a seducing and strange and young man, who slowly draws her into his dark trap.
Style:
tense, melancholic, bleak, art house, psychological thriller ...
Plot:
female protagonist, family drama, motherhood, toxic relationship, beach, parenting, isolation, gender roles, seduction, single mother, emotional abuse, manipulation ...
Time:
2020s
Similarity:
35%
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