Movies Like Subordination

Storno

2002

The village of Hassenhausen, with a population of 370, is located somewhere in the Hessian province and has little to offer apart from a motorway connection. Friends Stefanie and Gabi work as cashiers in a supermarket and dream of a different life. Gabi wants to emigrate to America and would even be willing to leave her simple-minded husband behind. Martin, a successful farmer, has his hopes set on Stefanie, but she longs for the return of her childhood sweetheart, Thomas. When Thomas actually returns one day, Stefanie believes that happiness is within reach. The volunteer fire department's celebration turns out to be an eventful day.

Samurai

1979

Lee Cantrell, a young San Francisco attorney by day, at night becomes a samurai warrior, and battles a crazed multi-millionaire who is planning to destroy the city with an earthquake machine.

The Year of Certificate

1996

This certificate was formerly obtained by pupils at the end of primary school. The teacher of a small village has a dream: he wants his son to get his certificate and to be the best in the district ("Canton"). His younger son is less gifted: he is ashamed of him and treats him like a dunce. His obsession is so strong his marriage (his wife is a schoolteacher too) is soon on the rocks.

The Unforgivable

2021

A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.

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.

Above the Rim

1994

Story of a promising high school basketball star and his relationships with two brothers, one a drug dealer and the other a former basketball star fallen on hard times and now employed as a security guard.

The System

2022

When a young soldier, newly returned from war, gets caught up in a drug bust, he is recruited by the authorities to go undercover in a notoriously dangerous prison in order to figure out what is really going on.

Prologue

1970

This film tells the story of a young Montrealer who edits an underground newspaper with help from his female friend and a draft dodger from the United States. Two rival philosophies of dissenting youth become evident in the choices they make: militant protest vs. communal retreat. Including some seminal archival footage of a speech by legendary anti-war activist Abbie Hoffman and bloody rioting during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Back to Burgundy

2017

Jean left his hometown ten years ago. When his father falls ill, he comes back and reunites with his sister Juliette and his brother Jérémie. As seasons go by around their vineyard, they'll have to trust each other again.

Siberian Education

2013

The story of a gang of children growing up in a community of banished criminals, in a forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union. This community rejects the world outside. The only law it obeys… is its own. Against this backdrop two best friends, Kolyma and Gagarin, gradually become fierce enemies as they find themselves on opposite sides of the strict code of honour of the ‘honest criminal’ brotherhood.

Mermaids

1990

Fifteen-year-old Charlotte Flax is tired of her wacky mom moving their family to a different town any time she feels it is necessary. When they move to a small Massachusetts town and Mrs. Flax begins dating a shopkeeper, Charlotte and her 9-year-old sister, Kate, hope that they can finally settle down. But when Charlotte's attraction to an older man gets in the way, the family must learn to accept each other for who they truly are.

The Bygone

2019

When a young rancher crosses paths with a Lakota girl from a nearby reservation, her mysterious disappearance sparks a search that uncovers a harrowing past and hints at a dire future.

Afterimage

2016

In 1945, as Stalin sets his hands over Poland, famous painter Wladislaw Strzeminski refuses to compromise on his art with the doctrines of social realism. Persecuted, expelled from his chair at the University, he's eventually erased from the museums' walls. With the help of some of his students, he starts fighting against the Party and becomes the symbol of an artistic resistance against intellectual tyranny.

The Codes of Gender

2010

Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.

Tödliches Vertrauen

2002

Little Odessa

1994

Long separated from his family, hitman Joshua returns to Brighton Beach for a contract killing for the Russian Mafia. His abusive father, Arkady, banned him from returning after Joshua committed his first murder. He takes up residence in a hotel, and soon everyone knows he has returned. He goes home to visit his dying mother, Irina, and prepares for the assassination, getting drawn back into the criminal community he left behind.

Ill Manors

2012

Ensemble film revolving around characters living in Forest Gate, London. Over the course of a few days, six inter-linking stories explore issues of drug use, prostitution and urban poverty.

Knock on Any Door

1949

An attorney defends a hoodlum of murder, using the oppressiveness of the slums to appeal to the court.