EmbersMovies like Embers
- Key Features:
- Post-apocalyptic, Memory loss, Survival, Human connection, Existentialism, Dystopian future, Social commentary, Isolation, Philosophical, Interwoven stories
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Sci-fi enthusiasts, Philosophical film lovers, Viewers interested in dystopian themes, Fans of thought-provoking cinema
- Emotional Arc:
- Confusion → Longing → Acceptance
Embers

After a global neurological epidemic, those who remain search for meaning and connection in a world without memory. Five interwoven stories each explore a different facet of life without memory in a future that has no past.
Embers
A woman wakes in a cryogenic chamber with no recollection of how she got there, and must find a way out before running out of air.

Oxford PhD student Ana finds herself unable to build new memories, following an experiment to generate and travel through a wormhole. The story follows her increasingly desperate efforts to understand what happened, and to find out who—or what—is behind the rising horror in her life.

A man wakes up deep inside a cave. Suffering amnesia, he has no recollection of how he came to be here or of what happened to the man whose body he finds beside him. Tailed by a mysterious creature, he must continue through this strange and fantastic world. Enclosed, Tolbiac has no other option to reach the surface than to use REZO ZERO, secret observing cells in this cemetery-like abandoned mine.

With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the death of his family.

For generations, the people of the City of Ember have flourished in an amazing world of glittering lights. But Ember's once powerful generator is failing and the great lamps that illuminate the city are starting to flicker. Now, two teenagers, in a race against time, must search Ember for clues that will unlock the ancient mystery of the city's existence, before the the lights go out forever.

In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.

A man awakes-- without memory -- in a pit full of bodies and must figure out if the people who rescued him are the killers, or if he is the murderer.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where a global airborne pandemic has wiped out 90% of the Earth's population and only the young and immune have endured as scavengers. For Ellie and Quinn, the daily challenges to stay alive are compounded when they become hunted by the merciless Stalkers.

Five men wake up in a locked-down warehouse with no memory of who they are. They are forced to figure out who is good and who is bad to stay alive.

In an oppressive future, where everyone's only contact is their computer, one lonely young man is forced to venture forth in search of human contact.

Sylvia is a social worker who leads a simple and structured life: her daughter, her job, her AA meetings. This is blown open when Saul follows her home from their high school reunion. Their surprise encounter will profoundly impact both of them as they open the door to the past.

The story of a man who wakes up in bed suffering from memory loss after being in an accident, only to begin to suspect that his wife may not be his real wife and that a web of lies and deceit deepen inside the house where he soon finds himself a prisoner.

Lost in a world reclaimed by nature and overrun by mysterious creatures, Ethan, a young man with amnesia navigates the dangerous landscape in search of his lost love Emma. His journey takes an unexpected turn when he encounters Mae, a hardened and eccentric survivor. Together, Ethan and Mae face threats both human and otherwise before a fateful encounter with Kai unravels a secret that lies just beyond Ethan's fractured memory.

After hearing a loud ‘bang’ at daybreak, a Scottish woman begins experiencing a mysterious sensory syndrome while traversing the jungles of Colombia.

A service which creates holographic projections of late family members allows an elderly woman to spend time with a younger version of her deceased husband.

A man struggles with the tragic memories of his past to make sense of his present, but soon realizes that time isn't the enemy he thinks it is.

A young man is found bruised, beaten and stumbling down a secluded road. As the police try to piece together what happened, the convoluted relationship between a young woman and her two suitors gradually emerges.

Loneliness, death and the meaning of life, explored through vastly separate lives colliding in interweaving short stories set in future Earth.

The 19 years old Thomas wakes up in a hospital after three years in a coma. He doesn't remember anything. The psychologist Anna tells him that his family has been murdered and that he is the only survivor of the massacre while his sister Laura is still missing.

Four couples gather for dinner the night a mysterious and powerful comet passes overhead.

After the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, Vesper, a 13-year-old girl struggling to survive with her paralyzed Father, meets a mysterious Woman with a secret that forces Vesper to use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the possibility of a future.

A photographer struggling with memory loss discovers her pictures may indicate something sinister is hitting close to home.

In the near future, the sun has become so toxic people can no longer leave their houses in daytime, and normal life is conducted mostly inside the virtual realm. Against this dystopian backdrop, a dying man seeks to ensure the future well-being of his family, while coping with what it means to be human in this new reality.

A woman wakes up in a river. Wounded and without memory, then races to elude mysterious followers and recover from amnesia.

After ending his long-term relationship, Antonio is sure that he can quickly get over Sofia. But nothing is as simple as it seems. And realizing the impossibility of controlling his own feelings, he begins to boycott them, using all sorts of contemporary palliative measures to free himself from the memories of his ex: cognitive psychoanalysis, prescription drugs, Tinder, among others. Ergo, Antonio will go through several tragicomic situations.

Panic attacks and memory loss signal the plight of a writer whose body is inexplicably being taken over by another woman.

Three months after surviving a terrorist attack in a bistro, Mia is still traumatized and unable to recall the events of that night. In an effort to move forward, she investigates her memories and retraces her steps.

Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.

A young and talented architect comes to his senses after a horrific accident only to find himself in the odd dystopian world. A world that is filled with the memories of all current coma patients. Just like a human memory this world is fragmental, chaotic and unstable. This is COMA: icecaps, rivers and cities can all exist in a space of a single room and laws of physics are no longer laws as they can be bent.

In New York City, David Stillwell struggles to recover his memory before the people who are trying to kill him succeed. Who is he, who are they, and why is he surrounded by murder?

On a romantic getaway to Iceland, a young American couple wake up one morning to discover every person on Earth has disappeared. Their struggle to survive and to reconcile the mysterious event lead them to reconsider everything they know about themselves and the world.

Paris 2020, a high tech surgeon and her daughter are involved in a horrific car accident, the surgeon saves her daughter's life at the cost of manipulating her dreams and memories.

New parents Adrienne and Matteo are forced to reckon with trauma amidst their troubled relationship. They must revisit the memories of their past and unravel haunting truths in order to face their uncertain future.

A set of six nested stories spanning time between the 19th century and a distant post-apocalyptic future. Cloud Atlas explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future. Action, mystery and romance weave through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future. Based on the award winning novel by David Mitchell. Directed by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis.

Open war against humanity rages. For five survivors – lost and on the run – the pursuit is relentless, the bullets are dwindling and the battle is everywhere. This is a 24-hour look into their lives.

Evan McCauley has skills he never learned and memories of places he has never visited. Self-medicated and on the brink of a mental breakdown, a secret group that call themselves “Infinites” come to his rescue, revealing that his memories are real.

In a future where consciousness can be transferred, Sal is urged by his sister to try a breakthrough technology that implants the memories and personality of the dead into the living. After the passing of his wife, Sal must decide how far he's willing to go to reconnect with the past.

A woman with a metal plate in her head from a childhood car accident embarks on a bizarre journey, bringing her into contact with a firefighter who's reunited with his missing son after 10 years.

A woman wakes up every day, remembering nothing as a result of a traumatic accident in her past. One day, new terrifying truths emerge that force her to question everyone around her.

After losing his wife and his memory in a car accident, a single father undergoes an experimental treatment that causes him to question who he really is.

Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realises that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.

After a deadly virus wipes out most of humanity, the survivors are forced to wait alone in self-sustaining bunkers while the viral threat runs its course. Able to communicate through a networked video interface, the survivors wait for years and slowly become a motley family of sorts. But their fragile social ecosystem is shattered when, one by one, they start mysteriously disappearing from their bunkers.

Unconscious soldiers are dropped into a testing site only to discover their memories have been wiped and that once docile machines are the new intelligence.

An amnesiac must reach back into his mind for memories that will help him save the love of his life before a virus completely takes over.

As an unpredictable, sweeping pandemic causes people to develop sudden amnesia, a man finds himself enrolled in a recovery program designed to help him build a new life. His treatment: performing daily tasks prescribed by his doctors on cassette tape, and capturing those with a Polaroid camera.

A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun and run by beings with telekinetic powers who seek the souls of humans.

Set in a near-future world where there is no privacy, ignorance or anonymity, our private memories are recorded and crime almost ceases to exist. In trying to solve a series of unsolved murders, Sal Frieland stumbles onto a young woman who appears to have subverted the system and disappeared. She has no identity, no history and no record. Sal realizes it may not be the end of crime but the beginning. Known only as 'The Girl', Sal must find her before he becomes the next victim.

After a virus of epic proportions overwhelms the planet—with more infected than uninfected—humanity is losing its grip on survival and its only hope is finding a cure and keeping the infected contained. Lauren, a doctor, arrives in Los Angeles with her crack team to lead the hunt for uncontaminated civilian survivors, but nothing can prepare them for the blood-soaked mayhem they witness as they head into the Californian streets where everything is considered a trap.

After an unprecedented global pandemic has turned the majority of humankind into violent infected beings, Morgan, a man gifted with the ability to speak the infected's new language, leads the last survivors on a hunt for patient zero and a cure.

Aliens wipe out the earth population except for 3 people. How will the adapt and survive?

Due to a near-fatal accident that has left her incapacitated and depleted of her long-term memory, a temporarily wheelchair-bound woman returns home after being abroad for six years accompanied by her bohemian boyfriend, the apparent cause of the accident. Unable to remember her family or her own childhood, she sets out, with the help of her boyfriend, to find the reason for her leaving all those years ago and quickly discovers her relatives may not be as loving as she’d thought

A woman with no memories runs in fear through the night when she is rescued by a man passing by. They will both have to figure out who her mysterious enemies are and what they want to achieve.

The widow of a wise professor stumbles upon one of his inventions that's able to record and play a person's memory.

Following the aftermath of a horrific accident, a woman is voluntarily subjected to artificial intelligence for rehabilitation.

At dawn, Clarisse takes a last look at her husband and two sleeping children, hesitates to leave a note, and hits the road. A desperate escape that gradually reveals its layers as Clarisse — who seems to have an extra-sensory connection to the family she has left behind — loses herself in the world.

Since losing her husband, Sophie has struggled to manage grief, a full-time job, and parenting her devastated daughter, but when a former physicist reveals a secret time-bending machine, Sophie will be faced with an impossible choice.

Factory worker Doug Quaid takes a virtual mind-trip vacation with the Rekall company, opting for implanted memories of being a spy. When the procedure goes wrong, Quaid becomes a wanted man by the police and joins forces with a rebel fighter to stop the evil Chancellor Cohaagen.

Plagued by strange memories, Neo's life takes an unexpected turn when he finds himself back inside the Matrix.

A couple fights to hold their relationship together as a memory loss virus spreads and threatens to erase the history of their love and courtship.

In early 1920s France, an author, lying on his deathbed, looks at various photographs and is flooded with memories of the people and events that have shaped his life.

Nine years later, Jesse travels across Europe giving readings from a book he wrote about the night he spent in Vienna with Celine. After his reading in Paris, Celine finds him, and they spend part of the day together before Jesse has to again leave for a flight. They are both in relationships now, and Jesse has a son, but as their strong feelings for each other start to return, both confess a longing for more.

A mosaic of several intertwined stories questioning the meaning of life, love and hope, set during the last six days in the life of Eluana Englaro, a young woman who spent 17 years in a vegetative state.

A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.

The movie is a post-apocalyptic horror/science fiction film. the setting is in a near post apocalyptic future where a biological warfare program goes wrong, and turns most of humanity to mindless, murderous creatures.

When a mysterious cyber-attack cripples civilization, a group of old college friends and lovers retreat to a remote country cabin, where they must cope with an uncertain future while navigating the minefield of their shared past.

A troubled psychologist is sent to investigate the crew of an isolated research station orbiting a bizarre planet.

And suddenly, overnight, the world came to a halt. Two men, two survivors, one kid, and hatred that separates them. A place forgotten by everyone, including the creatures that inhabit the Earth... until now.

In Glasgow, Scotland, while a mysterious pandemic begins to spread around the world, Susan, a brilliant epidemiologist, falls in love with Michael, a skillful cook.

Lucas is a scientist who works near the European experimental project that focus on advanced ‘human neuron research’. The project is to transfer neuron information from one human mind to another. Lukas is chosen to connect his mind with a comatose woman he named Aurora.

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.

During a pandemic lockdown, Nico, a young man with rare immunity, must overcome martial law, murderous vigilantes and a powerful family to reunite with his love, Sara.

A series of uncanny déjà vu events force a man to re-examine his tragic past, memory, instinct, and future.

Beatrice Prior must confront her inner demons and continue her fight against a powerful alliance which threatens to tear her society apart.

One weekend, after years without seeing each other, several friends, over whom hangs the shadow of a murky episode of the past, meet in a house in the mountains. During the first night, a strange incident takes place that leaves them isolated.

A teenager with no memory of his past finds himself among a group of boys living in a walled enclosure surrounded by a massive, ever-changing maze. As he struggles to adapt to their rules and society, he begins to uncover clues that may lead to escape and the truth behind their confinement.

Arriving in Helsinki, a nameless man is beaten within an inch of his life by thugs, miraculously recovering only to find that he has completely lost his memory. Back on the streets, he attempts to begin again from zero, befriending a moody dog and becoming besotted with a Salvation Army volunteer.

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.

Nicolas Bannister, a rugged and solitary veteran living in a near-future Miami flooded by rising seas, is an expert in a dangerous occupation: he offers clients the chance to relive any memory they desire. His life changes when he meets a mysterious young woman named Mae. What begins as a simple matter of lost and found becomes a passionate love affair. But when a different client's memories implicate Mae in a series of violent crimes, Bannister must delve through the dark world of the past to uncover the truth about the woman he fell for.

The pic is set in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event that forces people into extreme isolation. A father and son, who have been living off grid for 20 years, encounter an outsider who threatens to destroy the utopia they’ve built.

In the near future where emotions have become a threat, Gabrielle finally decides to purify her DNA in a machine that will immerse her in her past lives and rid her of any strong feelings. She then meets Louis and feels a powerful connection, as if she had known him forever.

A man becomes haunted by his past and is presented with a mysterious legacy that causes him to re-think his current situation in life.

Women enter and exit a science fiction author's life over the course of a few years after the author loses the woman he considers his one true love.

After running into something with her car, Vero experiences a particular psychological state. She realizes she might have killed someone.

When a sudden plague of blindness devastates a city, a small group of the afflicted band together to triumphantly overcome the horrific conditions of their imposed quarantine.

Sara wakes from a coma to a life she doesn't remember; a fragile, slippery reality that spirals into a nightmare where nothing is as it seems.

After surviving a car accident that took the life of her boyfriend, a teenage girl believes he's attempting to reconnect with her from the after world.

As the 15th anniversary of a fatal high school shooting approaches, former pupil Diana McFee is haunted by memories of the tragedy. After losing her best friend Maureen in the attack, Diana has been profoundly affected by the incident - her seemingly perfect life shaped by the events of that day.

Kira's skin starts to age rapidly, dry out and crumble away. But then she discovers that she can replace her own skin with somebody else's.

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

Happy young married couple Paige and Leo are, well, happy. Then a car accident puts Paige into a life-threatening coma. Upon awakening she has lost the previous five years of memories, including those of her beloved Leo, her wedding, a confusing relationship with her parents, or the ending of her relationship with her ex-fiance. Despite these complications, Leo endeavors to win her heart again and rebuild their marriage.

A young girl lost in the loneliness and boredom of reality finds solace in an ill boy, whom she can visit in a surreal dream world that she drew in her school composition book.

When Simon awakens in the hospital after surviving a near-fatal accident, amnesia has erased the last two years from his memory. He learns that his brother was killed, he has married a woman he doesn't remember and he's haunted by strange visions of the woman he loved.

Susannah Cahalan, an up-and-coming journalist at the New York Post becomes plagued by voices in her head and seizures, causing a rapid descent into insanity.

Humanity is about to come to an end due to a mysterious signal; trapped at the home of a dead friend, Aubrey tries to turn things around after finding a mysterious cassette tape.

A man becomes involved in a memory manipulation operation to try and regain lost memories. He thinks the exercise may help repair his failed marriage, but accidentally ends up with the mind of a serial killer.

After losing his brother in combat, Jacob Singer returns home from Afghanistan -- only to be pulled into a mind-twisting state of paranoia. Singer soon realizes that his sibling is alive but life is not what it seems.

Frederick Fitzell is living his best life—until he starts having horrific visions of Cindy, a girl who vanished in high school. After reaching out to old friends with whom he used to take a mystery drug called Mercury, Fredrick realizes the only way to stop the visions lies deep within his own memories, so he embarks on a terrifying mental odyssey to learn the truth.


