Alice in the CitiesMovies like Alice in the Cities
- Key Features:
- Road movie, Unexpected friendship, Writers block, Lost in translation, Father-daughter relationship, Black and white, New York City, Germany, Travel, Responsibility, Melancholy, Searching, Coming-of-age
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Fans of independent film, Those interested in character-driven stories, Viewers who appreciate European cinema, People who enjoy road movies
- Emotional Arc:
- Detachment → Connection
Alice in the Cities

German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer’s block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected.
Alice in the Cities
A young man from East Germany travels to San Francisco to search for his father, who fled 12 years ago. Together with his best friend, he starts the journey from New York with no money and the only word they ever learned in english-lessons: "friendship".

Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.

Itinerant projection-equipment repairman Bruno Winter and depressed hitchhiker Robert Lander - a doctor who has just been through a break-up with his wife and a half-hearted suicide attempt - travel along the Western side of the East-German border in a repair truck, visiting worn-out movie theaters, learning to communicate across their differences.

Two university students gain insight into life and love as they get to know each other during a road trip across Europe.

The film follows 24 hours in the life of father and daughter Leo and Molly, as they weave their way around New York City, until their ordinary but stressful day takes on a hallucinatory and epic quality.

A comedy that chronicles a chance encounter between Robert and a Chinese named Jun who wanders lost through the city of Buenos Aires in search of his uncle after being assaulted by a taxi driver and his henchmen.

Xavier is a 40-year-old father of two who still finds life very complicated. When the mother of his children moves to New York, he can't bear them growing up far away from him and so he decides to move there as well.

Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.

David and Linda Howard are successful yuppies from LA. When he gets a job disappointment, David convinces Linda that they should quit their jobs, liquidate their assets, and emulate the movie Easy Rider, spending the rest of their lives traveling around America...in a Winnebago.

Marleen is in her early 20s, works in a movie theater, still lives at home and is somehow aimless. Her parents torment her with questions about her future and her brother is a high-flyer who has already traveled halfway around the world. When a tragic accident plunges her into sheer endless grief, Marleen just wants to get away. Equipped with the bare essentials, she sets off on a journey into the unknown.

After a fictitious marriage with a Russian emigrant, Cellisten Louka, a Czech man, must suddenly take responsibility for her son. However, it’s not long before the communication barrier is broken between the two new family members.

After weeks of traveling through Europe, the immature William finds himself in Copenhagen, the place of his father’s birth. He befriends the youthful Effy, who works in William’s hotel as part of an internship program, and they set off to find William’s last living relative. Effy’s mix of youthful exuberance and wisdom challenges William unlike any woman ever has. As the attraction builds, he must come to grips with destabilizing elements of his family’s sordid past.

When a renowned architecture scholar falls suddenly ill during a speaking tour, his son Jin finds himself stranded in Columbus, Indiana - a small Midwestern city celebrated for its many significant modernist buildings. Jin strikes up a friendship with Casey, a young architecture enthusiast who works at the local library.

After the death of his mother, a young boy calls a radio station in an attempt to set his father up on a date. Talking about his father’s loneliness soon leads to a meeting with a young female journalist, who has flown to Seattle to write a story about the boy and his father.

Maik, a fourteen-year-old teenager, sets out on a road trip during summertime with Tschick, a new classmate, in a stolen car. The two share life changing experiences during the eventful journey.

Two Greek children embark on a journey to search for their father, who supposedly lives in Germany.

Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck and they join his neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin.

An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.

An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.

Six days in the life of Wilhelm: a detached man without qualities. He wants to write, so his mother gives him a ticket to Bonn, telling him to live. On the train he meets an older man, an athlete in the 1936 Olympics, and his mute teen companion, Mignon. She's an acrobat in market squares for spare change.

Convinced that his daughter has forgotten how to laugh, a father shows up unannounced while she's living abroad and bombards her with outrageous jokes.

Eric Lazard is a heartbroken former college football star who gets involved in a dangerous Florentine sport and a local woman, Stephanie, while visiting his cousin Anna, who lives in Italy and teaches the Italian language to foreigners.

In 1933 in Berlin. Anna is only nine years old when her life changes from the ground up. To escape the Nazis, her father Arthur Kemper, a well-known Jewish journalist, has to flee to Zurich. His family, Anna, her twelve-year-old brother Max and her mother Dorothea, follow him shortly thereafter. Anna has to leave everything behind, including her beloved pink rabbit, and to face a new life full of challenges and privations abroad.

Still mourning the death of her mother a few years back, Alice McKinley finds her life seriously disrupted when her father Ben buys a store and moves her and her older brother Lester to a new town.

Alice Tate, mother of two, with a marriage of 16 years, finds herself falling for a handsome sax player, Joe. Stricken with a backache, she consults herbalist Dr. Yang, who realizes that her problems are not related to her back, but in her mind and heart. Dr. Yang's magical herbs give Alice wondrous powers, taking her out of her well-established rut.

Rainbow press reporter Ludo is sentenced to 8 months, but is released on probation. But he has to work 300 hours for a local daycare center and meets Anna who has unfinished business with him.

Daniel’s drab existence as a physics teacher takes an adventurous turn when he falls in love with a Turkish girl named Melek. He spontaneously decides to follow her to Instanbul by car. On the road across Europe, he picks up his free-spirited friend Juli, who is secretly in love with him.

An American girl, Daphne, heads to Europe in search of the father she's never met. But instead of finding a British version of her bohemian mother, she learns the love of her mom's life is an uptight politician. The only problem now is that her long-lost dad is engaged to a fiercely territorial social climber with a daughter who makes Daphne's life miserable.

An unexpected meeting on a train leads two travelers to spend an evening wandering through Vienna. As the night unfolds, they share stories and conversations about life and love, exploring new ideas while a quiet intimacy grows between them, knowing it may be their only night together.

An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.

A devoted father working in film shares a magical bond with his daughter, but as she enters adolescence and falls into addiction, he takes her to Paris in a final effort to save her and their fading connection.

An unknown actress lands the role of a lifetime in Rome. Paired with an American journalist writing a profile, she will discover surprises about love and life in the eternal city.

The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

A story of a businessman who accidentally boards a train bound for Russia with his mother and has to overcome difficulties with his mother and problems in his family life.

Sal Paradise is a young writer whose life is shaken and ultimately redefined by the arrival of Dean Moriarty, a free-spirited, fearless, fast talking Westerner and his girl, Marylou. Traveling cross-country, Sal and Dean venture out on a personal quest for freedom from the conformity and conservatism engulfing them in search of the unknown, themselves, and the pursuit of “it” -- the pure essence of experience.

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

Giorgio and Tito, father and son. A successful journalist and a lazy teenager apparently impossible to understand. Giorgio's dream is to take Tito to the Nasca Hill in Liguria, but Tito prefers to spend his entire day with his group of friends, eating, talking about nothing and playing video games. Until one day when he suddenly informs his father that he would join him in this trip. After a series of accidents and misunderstandings, at the end, somehow father and son will find the way to communicate … or at least they will try.

In New York City, Thom is broke and jobless, illegally working as a taxi driver. Claire is a successful business-woman, but personally she's in shambles - then comes the phone call that her estranged father is in the hospital. Not knowing what to do, Claire hops in Thom's cab and orders him to just drive and so he does. They find themselves in Pennsylvania and Claire makes the rash decision to drive across the country to California. On the road, there are many detours as the obstacles and secrets force them to learn about themselves and each other.

The true story of Andrea and Franco Antonello, a father and autistic son who traveled by motorbike for three months between the United States and South America.

Follows six very different men and their struggles with women, family and work. Yet, they are somehow connected to each other.

The Hamburg friends Walter, Ricco and Floyd take each day as it comes between the estates of tower blocks and fast food restaurants. All three are in their early twenties and are dreaming of another life when Floyd suddenly takes a job on a freighter going to Singapore.

A road movie about two very different brothers who have not seen each other for 20 years: city manager Christian and cabinetmaker Georg, who never left their hometown and took care of their father until his passing. After their fathers funeral, the brothers decide on a whim, and with some help from the alcohol, to fulfil their old dream: travel trough Germany together on their mopeds.

When architect-turned-recluse Bernadette Fox goes missing prior to a family trip to Antarctica, her 15-year-old daughter, Bee, goes on a quest with Bernadette's husband to find her.

A woman taking a cab ride from JFK airport engages in a conversation with the driver about the important relationships in their lives.

Christine’s life has not been easy lately. Her lonely routine is divided between free food banks distributions and wandering the streets. On a cold winter night she founds Suli, an 8-year-old Eritrean boy, sobbing in front of her shelter. Christine understands that he is lost and has been separated from his mother. Bounded by their marginal condition, they embark together on an emotional journey to find Suli’s mother in the underground world of Paris...

In 1999, a woman's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash with two bank robbers, who enlist her help to take the money to a drop in Paris. On the way, she runs into another fugitive from the law — an American doctor on the run from the CIA. They want to confiscate his father's invention – a device which allows anyone to record their dreams and visions.

After the death of his wife and father, Kudret, who has always lived by the book, decides to go on a road trip to save a girl.

Richie Bravo, once upon a time a successful pop star, chases after his faded fame in wintry Rimini. Trapped between permanent intoxication and concerts for busloads of tourists, his world starts to collapse when his adult daughter breaks into his life.

A father says goodbye to his young daughter. In time the daughter grows old, but within her there is always a deep longing for her father.

Max Salinger, writer divorced, flamboyant and self-absorbed, refuses to welcome her daughter for 15 years under its roof. In revenge, she steals his last manuscript and file class of snow. To retrieve his property, Max has then no choice but to land in the ski resort to improvising "accompanying parent. Only problem: the famous writer, who is not already an exemplary parent, is not really a qualified nor attendant! EPIC descents in infernal hiking, the life of Max in the mid-teens was not all rest Announces...

After being abandoned by their Nazi parents at the end of World War II, five German siblings embark on a harrowing journey across their war-torn country. Led by the eldest, 14 year-old Lore, the children are forced to confront their parents’ actions and the reality of a new world.

During shopping for Christmas, Frank and Molly run into each other. This fleeting short moment will start to change their lives, when they recognize each other months later in the train home and have a good time together. Although both are married and Frank has two little kids, they meet more and more often, their friendship becoming the most precious thing in their lives.

Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.

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.

A woman who is robbed on her way to catch the 1:30 train to Boston is left stranded in New York City. She meets a man who helps her during the course of the night and the two form a romance.

To find Joseba, a dying friend, and see him reunite with his daughter Ely, two old friends, Jean Pierre and Tocho, embark with her on a road trip through the Sahara desert, from Spain to Mali.

Three Italian retirees embark on a journey to find a new country to live in.

The mayor of Lyon, Paul Théraneau, is in a delicate position. After 30 years in politics, he is running out of ideas and is faced with a feeling of existential emptiness. To overcome this, Paul hires a young and brilliant philosopher, Alice Heimann. Then follows a dialogue between two diametrically opposed personalities who will turn their certainties upside down.

A transgender woman takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she had a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.

Samba migrated to France 10 years ago from Senegal, and has since been plugging away at various lowly jobs. Alice is a senior executive who has recently undergone a burnout. Both struggle to get out of their dead-end lives. Samba's willing to do whatever it takes to get working papers, while Alice tries to get her life back on track until fate draws them together.

Arthur is invited to a New Year's Eve party to celebrate the year 2000. His girlfriend Lucie would like a baby from him but he refuses. Through the ceiling of the toilets, he discovers a passage leading to this futurist Paris. There, he meets an old man Ako who affirms he is his son and that he wants to exist. Otherwise he will vanish into the air. Arthur is still hesitant because his life is an unfulfilled one: a has a little lucrative job, is uncertain about his future and things are getting out of hand when Ako discovers the passage and interferes in the party.

Two young people arrive in New York to spend a weekend, but once they arrive they're met with bad weather and a series of adventures.

Beyond Silence is about a family and a young girl’s coming of age story. This German film looks into the lives of the deaf and at a story about the love for music. A girl who has always had to translate speech into sign language for her deaf parents yet when her love for playing music grows strong she must decide to continue doing something she cannot share with her parents.

Feeling forgotten on Mother's Day, three best friends leave the suburbs and drive to New York City to surprise their adult sons.

Djibi lives alone with Sofia, his 8-year-old daughter. Every night, he invents a story to put him to sleep. When Sofia falls asleep, these extraordinary stories come to life somewhere in an imaginary world inhabited by knights, pirates and other dragons. In this world that belongs only to them, Sofia is always the princess to save, and the brave Prince is none other than Djibi himself. But 3 years later, the entry of Sofia to the college will mark the end of her childhood. To the despair of her father, she no longer needs her stories at night. On the one hand, Djibi will have to accept that his daughter will grow up and move away from him. On the other hand, in the World of Stories, the Prince will have to face the most epic of all his adventures. Find your destiny in a world where it no longer has a place.

Andy Goodrich's life is upended when his wife enters a rehab program, leaving him on his own with their young kids. Goodrich leans on his daughter from his first marriage, Grace, as he ultimately evolves into the father Grace never had.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, is a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words. When she receives a devastating diagnosis, Alice and her family find their bonds tested.

Just before Anne is moving from Amsterdam to live with her great love Sara in Montreal, her publisher criticizes the manuscript for her first novel. What exactly is the story she's trying to tell? Does she even have something to say at all? Anne is forced to search for what she wants in life, because it is not only the main character in her novel who seems to be a little lost.

Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.

A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York.

After a family visit, stressed businesswoman Senga Wilson is driving with her rebellious daughter, Nat, down an ominous highway in the middle of the night. After they pick up a weird teenage hitchhiker, their journey goes awry. Nat decides to give her mom the slip and runs off with the hitchhiker at a rest stop. In a desperate search to find her daughter, Senga learns that Nat has been drawn into an evil cult.

Mirco von Juterczenka's novel "Wir Wochenendrebellen" is the story of a father and his ten-year-old son, who is Asperger's autistic. The boy has set his mind on finally finding his favourite football club. But his selection criteria are very specific and besides, he wants to experience all the clubs (no matter in which league they play) live in the stadium.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind and water. It is cold enough to crack stones and, when the snow falls, it is gray. Their destination is the warmer south, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there.

Desperate to be rid of her toddler, a dissatisfied Beverly Hills housewife hires a stranger to babysit and ends up getting much more than she bargained for.

A recently retired man embarks on a journey to his estranged daughter's wedding, only to discover more about himself and life than he ever expected.

During a trip to Berlin, a young Amish in the middle of a rite of passage reconnects with his roots, explores other ways of life, falls in love — and faces a big decision.

Christian, a reclusive young man from Leipzig, gets a job working the night shift at a big-box store. He's trained to stocks goods and operate a forklift by Bruno, a wistful former truck driver, who introduces Christian to a colorful group of overnight workers, including Marion, with whom Christian develops a troubled infatuation.

In downtown Manhattan, twentysomething Allie, whose father is not around and whose mother is institutionalized, is a big Charlie Parker fan. He almost subconsciously searches for meaning in his life and meets some idiosyncratic characters along the way.

Eleven-year-old Alexander and his family embark on a dream Spring Break vacation to Mexico City only to have all their plans go terribly wrong when they discover a cursed idol.

Eleven moving dates, eight friends: Philipp, Wiebke, Jessica, Maria, Swantje, Michael, Thomas, Dina – all in their twenties and mutually lonesome. And always searching: For a new city, a new job, an own apartment, a new, or even an old love. The search is never-ending, and so they repeatedly find themselves at a ritual gathering: someone moving. Boxes are shifted from one side of Berlin to the other, or the length and breadth of Germany, from one abode to the next as one life is exchanged for another. In 3 ZIMMER/KÜCHE/BAD, director Dietrich Brüggemann portrays existences in which relationships, social networks and backdrops are in a constant state of flux; where best friends are the only, and therefore the most valuable constant. Humorous sketches of the self-conception of a generation for whom moving has become the symbol of a life on the go.

Giuseppe Di Noi, an Italian surveyor living in Swiden, gets arrested at the border while going back to Italy with his family for a vacation. But can someone tell the man why?

Inspector Rizzo in Napoli gets a message from a policeman from South Africa who wants to meet him. Immediately before this meeting the South African policeman is killed. Dying he shows Rizzo a picture of his young son Bodo. Rizzo travels to Johannesburg to find out what the policeman was working on and to find Bodo.

Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former Pakistani rock star turned immigrant, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, however, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken by a glimmer of hope for a better life.

Vada Sultenfuss has a holiday coming up, and an assignment: to do and essay on someone she admires and has never met. She decides she wants to do an assignment on her mother, but quickly realises she knows very little about her. She manages to get her father to agree to let her go to LA to stay with her Uncle Phil and do some research on her mother.

Paolo is a sceptical 30-year-old who works unwillingly as a sales clerk in a Turin department store. Mia is a back-up singer in a band and lives her life haphazardly, which leads her to being practically homeless. One night, they bump into each other by chance, in a gay club in Turin. It will be the beginning of an emotional adventure and a journey across the country looking for the father of Mia’s baby.

Matt Ryder is convinced to drive his estranged and dying father Benjamin Ryder cross country to deliver four old rolls of Kodachrome film to the last lab in the world that can develop them before it shuts down for good. Along with Ben's nurse Zooey, the three navigate a world changing from analogue to digital while trying to put the past behind them.

A man wakes up one morning with an annoying ringing sound in his ears. A note on the fridge says: "Your friend Luigi has died. P.S. I took the car". The problem is that he does not even remember who this guy Luigi is. This is just the beginning of a tragicomic day during which he will be plunged into the folly of the world. One of those days that changes your life forever.

A German student, Stefan, now finished with his studies, hitchhikes to Paris. There he meets a free-spirited American girl, Estelle, who he follows to Ibiza. The two begin a sad and dark path into heroin addiction.

An explosion sends fear and terror through Berlin. Young Maxi's home is reduced to rubble and ashes, burying her mother and little brothers. Only she and her father survive the terrorist bomb attack. When she happens to meet the charismatic Karl, who tells her about a conference for young people in Prague, she seizes the opportunity to flee Berlin and her grieving father. The political movement behind the meeting claims to be working for a better Europe. Maxi has no idea how close the murderers really are to her family.

Before eleven years old Tilda's parents can put her beloved grandfather in an old people's home due to his progressing Alzheimer disease, she takes him on one last adventure that subliminally threatens to tear her family apart.

A young East German woman leaves her husband and business partner and relocates to a West German city to start anew as an accountant, but he soon catches up with her.

Alice, a young translator, finds the real world slowly merging with her recurring nightmares as she tries to solve the puzzle of her recent memory loss. A postcard leads her to the island of Garma where the locals seems to know her. Is she who she thinks she is? And what significance does her dream of an astronaut abandoned on the moon have?

Every day, Jay travels the length and breadth of Tokyo in his taxi, looking for his daughter Lily. In the 9 years since he has separated from his wife, he has never been able to get custody of his daughter. Having given up hope of ever seeing her again, he is about to move back to France when Lily hops in his cab. But she doesn't recognize him.

Saverio and Filippo are two friends and religious leaders of a travel agency in Rome. However, Filippo has trouble with his wife, because she finds out that he cheated on her with a comely girl named Alice.

A disparate group of characters unknowingly bond by the sexual choices they make. Consumed by loneliness, a British businessman ponders a rendezvous with a prostitute. The businessman's wife prepares to call it quits with her younger lover. A Brazilian student breaks up with her boyfriend in London. A recovering alcoholic travels to Phoenix in search of his missing daughter. A paroled sex offender struggles to stay composed when propositioned in a Denver airport. A widower's religious devotion is put to a difficult test.

A 40-year-old loser named Isidoro at the request of his brother drives from Italy to mountainous Carpathian village in Ukraine with a coffin of a diseased Ukrainian worker, who died at a construction site in Italy.

20 years since their first adventure, Lloyd and Harry go on a road trip to find Harry's newly discovered daughter, who was given up for adoption.


