Movies like Sunday Pranks
If you like "Sunday Pranks" you are looking for grim, bleak and period piece movies about / with bullying, communism, stalinism, childhood, post war, totalitarianism and innocence lost themes of Drama genre shot in Poland.
Find your next favorite and similar movies in two steps:
1. Identify all themes of interest from this film (block below).
2. Look for them in the presented list.
Sunday Pranks (1983)
105
Original name: Niedzielne igraszki
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 60 min.
Story:
Made in 1983, shelved for four years. A chilling tale about kids playing in a bombed-out Warsaw courtyard on the day of Stalin's death, while their parents are away at the church or a memorial procession.
Style:
grim, bleak, period piece
Plot:
bullying, communism, stalinism, childhood, post war, totalitarianism, innocence lost, cruelty, tragedy, poverty, fear, anti semitism, working class, oppression, irony, political repression, moral ambiguity, dark humor, social satire, identity, porter, renaissance, church, ritual, children ...
Time:
1950s, 50s
Place:
warsaw poland, poland, eastern europe
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Most similar movies to Sunday Pranks
The list contains related movies ordered by similarity. Recommendation engine sorted out bleak, period piece, grim and art house films with plots about moral ambiguity, character study, working class, poverty, oppression, communism and violence mostly in Drama and History genres. Some movies like Sunday Pranks: Wielki bieg (1987), Blindness (2016), How to Be Loved (1963), Child's Play (1992), Short Working Day (1995). The matching attributes are highlighted in bold.
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 99 min.
Story:
Set in 1952, the story follows events around the "Peace Run", a propaganda 3-day marathon for peace. The winner is to be presented with a new motorcycle by the country's president. Chief organizer is a ruthless manipulator who will ...
Style:
historical drama, tense, grim, poignant, satirical
Plot:
race, manipulation, propaganda, oppression, power struggle, marathon, betrayal, corruption, irony, moral ambiguity, cold war era, sabotage ...
Time:
1950s, 50s
Place:
poland, eastern europe
Similarity:
95%
394
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 115 min.
Story:
A little known episode from the life of Stalinist security police office Julia Brystiger. Her nickname Bloody Luna was a reference to her incredibly brutal methods of interrogation. In the early 1960s, she appears in a centre for the blind on the ...
Style:
psychological, political, thrilling, captivating, suspenseful ...
Plot:
stalinism, torture, catholic, character study, biopic, faith, physical torture, problem, male female relationship, abuse of power, interrogation, totalitarianism ...
Time:
60s
Place:
poland, eastern europe
Similarity:
79%
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min.
Story:
An actress travels from Warsaw to Paris and during the trip reflects on the last few years of her life. It goes back to the German occupation and her hiding of a fellow actor who has supposedly killed a collaborator. He is weak and a bit cowardly, ...
Style:
reflective, bleak, melancholic, dramatic, road movie ...
Plot:
world war two, identity, theater, flashback, actress, nazi occupation, suicide, guilt, female protagonist, survival, moral ambiguity, tragedy ...
Time:
1940s
Place:
warsaw poland, paris france, poland, eastern europe
Similarity:
76%
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 111 min.
Story:
When Micha's mother leaves his irascible father, he tries to prevent their divorce by any means he can think of, but his attempts to hold the family together lead to a catastrophe...
Style:
tense, grim, dark, period piece, social ...
Plot:
children, sex scene, childhood, abusive father, child abuse, bullying, domestic violence, dysfunctional family, loss of innocence, violence, trauma, coming of age ...
Time:
60s
Similarity:
61%
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 73 min.
Story:
Kieślowski’s study of a political strike, controversially told from the viewpoint of a Communist functionary trying to keep order.
Style:
historical drama, period piece, serious, intense, educational ...
Plot:
working class, violence, civil unrest, character study, cold war era, social realism, ethical dilemma, bureaucracy, renaissance, political party, government, clerk ...
Time:
70s
Place:
poland, eastern europe
Similarity:
54%
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 92 min.
Story:
The first motion picture film by Agnieszka Holland about loneliness, longing for affection, and misfortune. Irena, a postal delivery worker, is struggling with a inadequate housing, a drunk neighbor who wants to take her place, and a heartless boss, ...
Style:
bleak
Plot:
loneliness, poverty, alienation, isolation, social realism, female protagonist, single mother, theft, tragic romance, working class, melancholy, desperation ...
Time:
80s
Place:
eastern europe, west berlin west germany, poland
Similarity:
53%
Genre: Drama
Country: Chile
Duration: 75 min.
Story:
A foreign journalist arrives on a small Pacific island 200 miles off the coast of South America. Once a leper colony, the island was later transformed into a prison and then, under U.N. mandate, made into an independent republic. Yet despite ...
Style:
satirical, grim, cynical, bleak, surreal ...
Plot:
prison, journalist, torture, island, dictatorship, oppression, authoritarianism, repression, propaganda, human rights, totalitarianism, manipulation ...
Place:
latin america, chile
Similarity:
51%
Genre: Drama
Country: Egypt
Duration: 143 min.
Story:
In one of their best roles ever, distinguished actors Nour Al Sherif and Souad Hosni star in this film depicting the unstable social and political life in Egypt during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The film revolved around a group of university ...
Style:
dark, bleak, serious, historical drama, art house ...
Audience:
adult
Plot:
torture, police brutality, authoritarianism, political repression, oppression, imprisonment, social injustice, sacrifice, resistance, conscience, tragedy, moral ambiguity ...
Time:
year 1970, 60s
Place:
egypt
Similarity:
49%
Genre: Drama
Country: France, Germany, Italy
Duration: 123 min.
Story:
A group of men and women have been brought together after World War II, when Italy regained its national and territorial unity. They make up a primitive community which seeks to erase not only the distress created by the war but also the hardships ...
Style:
reflective, period piece, bleak, melancholic, light
Plot:
post war, worker, working class, solidarity, community, survival, hopes, social change, village life, resilience, trauma, poverty ...
Time:
1940s
Place:
italy
Similarity:
47%
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 94 min.
Story:
Directed by Henryk Kluba
Style:
realistic, tense, serious, bleak, dramatic ...
Plot:
rebellion, political conflict, resistance, post war, oppression, power struggle, working class, authoritarianism, class struggle, sawmill, mountain village, confrontation ...
Place:
poland
Similarity:
46%
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 101 min.
Story:
Via the Chicago Reader: "After World War II an Italian soldier returns to his hometown near the Alps and, unable to find a job, hooks up with a crotchety hermit who scavenges buried shells and bombs for scrap metal."
Style:
melancholic, realistic, bleak, grim, art house ...
Plot:
survival, poverty, post war, mountain, frustration, salvation, black market, alienation, social realism, desperation, working class, trauma ...
Time:
1940s, 1950s, year 1945
Place:
alps, italy
Similarity:
45%
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 74 min.
Story:
Physicist John worked as a meteorologist. He lives in a small village with his wife, a teacher. Meanwhile, his friend from university, Mark, is doing a research career. Trying to get John to return to academic work in the capital. Mark is not ...
Style:
poetic, intellectual, masterpiece
Plot:
renaissance, old friend, identity, moral dilemma, provincial life, university, university student, physics, meaning of life, weatherman, school teacher, married ...
Time:
year 1969
Place:
poland, eastern europe, warsaw poland
Similarity:
44%
501
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 80 min.
Story:
Beginning with a sci-fi prologue before finding itself with several doctors attending a medical school reunion in a sealed-up railway carriage. Between drinks, the disenchanted medicos ruminate over the effect that communism (particularly the ...
Style:
allegory, black and white, philosophical, avant garde, experimental ...
Plot:
surrealism, memory, trauma, renaissance, communism, post-apocalyptic future, politics, medical profession, female protagonist, absurdism, male camaraderie, freight train ...
Time:
70s
Place:
poland, eastern europe
Similarity:
43%
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 88 min.
Story:
On the streets of a damp metropolis lie the corpses of hundreds and hundreds of boys and girls. No one can give them a resting place because of a law enacted by a repressive State. But the young Antigone, with the help of a foreigner, Tiresias, ...
Style:
art house, bleak, grim, melancholic, slow cinema ...
Plot:
oppression, dystopia, totalitarianism, political protest, urban decay, rebellion, tragedy, absurdism, sacrifice, satire, existentialism, class struggle ...
Place:
milan italy
Similarity:
43%
255
Genre: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 103 min.
Story:
When a young boy comes in to see a doctor abourt a red mark on his face, the doctor's wife welcomes him into the consulting room instead. As they talk, she offers him something to eat and then notes that his manner of eating is just like that ...
Style:
bleak, art house, period piece
Plot:
post war, sexual repression, sexual awakening, domestic drama, character study, guilt, regret, moral dilemma, moral ambiguity, family secret, longing, intimacy ...
Time:
1950s
Place:
hungary
Similarity:
43%
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 56 min.
Story:
Two symbiotic sociopaths play obscurely deviant mind games with each other while engaging in perversely brutal acts of violence against victims apparently chosen at random
Style:
disturbing, intense, tense, bleak, atmospheric ...
Plot:
violence, working class, class conflict, moral ambiguity, character study, cruelty, celebrity, social commentary, humiliation, obsession, machismo, alienation ...
Time:
90s
Similarity:
43%
Genre: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 75 min.
Story:
A young boy loses his innocence in a pre-perestroika Russian prison during the chaotic last months of the Khrushchev regime.
Style:
bleak, psychological, grim, historical drama, existential ...
Audience:
teen drama
Plot:
coming of age, prison, stalinism, perestroika, brutality, gay, torture, sadism, trauma, survival, violence, authoritarianism ...
Time:
60s
Place:
eastern europe, soviet union, ussr
Similarity:
43%
448
Genre: Drama
Country: Yugoslavia
Duration: 80 min.
Story:
Yugoslavia, 1948, the year of Inform Bureau's resolution and Tito's break-up with Stalin. The story takes place during a wedding in the Dalmatian inland in Croatia. Ante marries a much younger woman, Visnja; the groom's godfather is ...
Style:
historical drama, period piece, tense, art house, suspense ...
Plot:
secret police, wedding, fear, political repression, uncertainty, surveillance, small village, claustrophobia, moral ambiguity, black, peasant, rural setting ...
Place:
croatia, balkan, former yugoslavia
Similarity:
41%
Movie in collections
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 103 min.
Story:
Ewa is a reporter. Using her feminine charms and other means she is trying to become a journalist on a Warsaw weekly popular magazine. She hopes to become political interviewer of personalities and state leaders. On her way up the ladder she trips ...
Style:
period piece
Plot:
reporter, ambition, ethical dilemma, female protagonist, journalism, character study, ambitious woman, obsession, social climbing, manipulation, moral ambiguity, downfall ...
Time:
80s
Place:
warsaw poland, eastern europe, poland, rome italy
Similarity:
41%
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min.
Story:
A circus clown is imprisoned by the Nazis and goes with Jewish children to their deaths.
Style:
controversial, emotional, tragic ending, grim, disturbing ...
Plot:
clown, holocaust, nazi, auschwitz, concentration camp, oppression, innocence lost, accomplice, haunting, tragedy, guilt, prison ...
Time:
1940s
Place:
europe
Similarity:
40%
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina
Duration: 95 min.
Story:
Juan is a 35 year old man whose hobby is bodybuilding. He works in a factory, where despite its huge and muscled physique, is mistreated by his bosses and colleagues. His biggest dream is to leave that life gray and a better life, especially owning ...
Style:
melancholic, intense, suspense, grim
Plot:
moral ambiguity, moral dilemma, character study, male protagonist, working class, harassment, bullying, blue collar, factory worker, abuse of power, oppression, poverty ...
Similarity:
40%
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 86 min.
Story:
Teenager Tereska comes from poor family and has to face difficult world and mean people around her.
Style:
disturbing, touching, serious, realistic, bleak ...
Audience:
teens
Plot:
sexual initiation, friendship, life is a bitch, teenage life, misfit, dull life, society, youth, working class, down on your luck, unemployment, loneliness ...
Time:
21st century
Place:
poland
Similarity:
40%
Genre: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 101 min.
Story:
In Margate, England, life is not easy for teenager Sarah Taylor, between being bullied at school, being exploited by a dominant boss and having to take care of her depressive mother and her two siblings. But Sarah finds a way to channel her growing ...
Style:
emotional, independent film, bleak, intense, black humor
Plot:
teenager, stand up comedy, coming of age, mental illness, working class, bullying, caregiver, realism, british, poverty, social issues, depression ...
Similarity:
39%
Movie in collections
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Romania, Germany
Duration: 102 min.
Story:
Set in the period prior to the revolt in Timisoara in December 1989 and mirroring the events that led to the downfall of the dictator Ceausescu. -- BFI
Style:
thought provoking, historical drama, tense, art house, bleak ...
Plot:
dictatorship, totalitarianism, oppression, revolution, fear, surveillance, guilt, protest, atonement, revolt, anxiety, reconciliation ...
Time:
80s
Place:
eastern europe, romania
Similarity:
38%
588
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 83 min.
Story:
On the outskirts of Austin, 10-year-old Annie tears around on her BMX bike, hurls dough at cars, and smashes things up with her baseball bat. Her father, a goat-farmer-cum-demolition-derby driver, does little parenting. Annie has no friends her age, ...
Style:
independent film, atmospheric, bleak, poignant, grim ...
Plot:
childhood, coming of age, female protagonist, dysfunctional family, loneliness, isolation, moral ambiguity, preteen, character study, neglect, small town, unhappiness ...
Place:
texas, austin texas
Similarity:
36%
Genre: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 100 min.
Story:
In a poor provincial town, the ragamuffin boys are frenziedly drilled for combat, and at nights the local elite, gathered in a pool room, boasts of fictitious biographies, while bands of boys amuse themselves with bloody fights on trashy vacant ...
Style:
period piece, bleak, atmospheric, melancholic
Audience:
kids
Plot:
post war, escape, survival, poverty, desperation, coming of age, loss of innocence, realism, childhood, adolescence, obsession, mafia ...
Place:
kazakhstan, ussr, soviet union
Similarity:
36%
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 160 min.
Story:
Man of Marble is a Polish film about a student making a film about a bricklayer who was once idolized. She interviews people who knew him and finds old footage that lead to an unfolding mystery that causes her producer to cancel the project.
Style:
emotional, meditative, compassionate, talky, disturbing ...
Plot:
politics, terrorist, visceral, communism, friendship, working class, honest, eviction, renaissance, heroes, journalism, father daughter relationship ...
Time:
70s, 1950s, year 1976, year 1977, 20th century ...
Place:
poland, eastern europe, europe, canada, japan ...
Similarity:
35%
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 94 min.
Story:
Lucjan Bohme is a ruthless debt collector working in a post-industrial Silesian town. In the land of unemployment and misery, he's got a lot of work and no mercy at all. Until something happens.
Style:
realistic, psychological, captivating, serious, bleak ...
Plot:
redemption, debt collector, lovers reunited, self discovery, moral dilemma, collector, life is a bitch, debt, ex girlfriend, rivalry, society, desperation ...
Time:
year 2005, 21st century
Place:
poland, europe
Similarity:
35%
Genre: Drama
Country: Hungary
Duration: 110 min.
Story:
The changing and turbulent history of Hungary is seen through the eyes of three men over a 30-year period in this somber drama. The three recall the highlights of their lives in flashbacks as they reminisce in the mid 1960s. The venerable trio begin ...
Style:
family saga, historical drama, bleak, period piece, thought provoking ...
Plot:
political repression, social realism, father son relationship, village life, class struggle, oppression, cold war era, moral ambiguity, resistance, revenge, betrayal, boredom ...
Time:
year 1967
Place:
hungary
Similarity:
34%
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 89 min.
Story:
Drama directed by Radoslaw Piwowarski.
Style:
historical drama, period piece, melancholic, emotional, intense ...
Plot:
anti semitism, exile, emigration, youth, political persecution, moral dilemma, identity crisis, political oppression, cold war, escape, family conflict, nationalism ...
Time:
60s
Place:
poland
Similarity:
34%
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