Ice MerchantsMovies like Ice Merchants
- Key Features:
- Father-son relationship, Remote location, Survival, Tradition, Poverty, Resilience
- Tone:
- poetic, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Art house enthusiasts, Fans of visually stunning films, Viewers interested in stories about family and survival
- Emotional Arc:
- Tranquility → Melancholy
Ice Merchants

Every day, a father and his son jump with a parachute from their vertiginous cold house, attached to a cliff, to go to the village on the ground, far away where they sell the ice they produce daily.
Ice Merchants
When a schoolteacher is sacked, he projects his bad mood at his troubled teenage son. The son, in turn, buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This starts a chain reaction of misery as every victim projects his problems on to another person.

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.

Even though Sam's father is hardly ever home because he is often away on business trips, he is able to connect with his son by teaching him how to pack a suitcase.

A fairy tale about a conceited young man and a young woman with a tyrannical step-mother, who must overcome magical trials in order to be together.

Ana, a nine year old girl, arrives with her mother to an isolated beach with the intention to rest and to know the sea. There, she discovers that they are under a terrible threat, therefore she is obligated to look for help with her father in order to save her mother.

A man leaves his 8-year old son with his father-in-law who lives near the glacier where the boy's mother died.

The life of the owners of Circus Esperança, Puro Sangue e Pangaré, father and son, who plays two clowns. At a certain point, Pangaré starts showing tiredness and sadness for being an unhappy clown.

An aged father and his younger, mentally challenged son have been working hard every day to keep the bathhouse running for a motley group of regular customers. When his elder son, who left years ago to seek his fortune in the southern city of Shenzhen, abruptly returns one day, it once again puts under stress the long-broken father-son ties. Presented as a light-hearted comedy, Shower explores the value of family, friendship, and tradition.

A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls.

A father, who can't keep his promises, dies in a car accident. One year later, he returns as a snowman, who has the final chance to put things right with his son before he is gone forever.

A father discovers that his son floats, which makes him different from other kids. To keep them both safe from the judgement of the world, Dad hides, covers, and grounds him. But when his son's ability becomes public, Dad must decide whether to run and hide or to accept his son as he is.

Christian, a visionary scientist, studies wild geese. For his son, a teenager obsessed with video games, the idea of spending a holiday with his father in the wilderness is a nightmare. However, father and son will get together around a crazy project: save a species endangered, thanks to the ultralight of Christian! Then begins an incredible and perilous journey ...

In a busy life, Copi is a father who tries to teach the right way to his son, Paste. But - What is the correct path?

After his wife died a man refuses to go out and doesn't want to talk to his only son. Life has no meaning for him. One day his son finds a baby pelican and decides to leave the bird at home. Pelican helps the boy find his father again and revive him back to life ...

A massive influx of glacial melting triggers a new ice age in the Northern Hemisphere, forcing a family to make their way across the ice-covered landscape before they are frozen out for good.

The story 11-year-old Luis who makes friends with three loveable little aliens, who crash their UFO into his house. In return for Luis' help in finding the home-shopping channel stuff they came for, they save Luis from boarding school - and an exciting adventure follows.

Igor, aged 15, and his father Roger deal in housing and peddling illicit labor in the outlying districts of Liege, Belgium. Scams, lies and swindling rule their lives. When one of his father’s illegal workers gets injured on the job and asks Igor to promise to take care of his wife and baby, Igor finds himself at a crossroad. He wants to keep the promise, but the price would be to betray his father.

The new film by French director Cédric Kahn focusses on Philippe Fournier, a man who lives with his 2 sons, having decided not to give them back to their mother after she won custody of the children. The children Okyesa and Tsali must grow up in the shadow, hunted by the police but always free and on the move.

Joseph and his two sons, Joachim and Ivan, form a close-knit family but fail to see that each one is losing control of his life. Joachim is supposed to be studying psychiatry but spends most of his time daydreaming about his ex-girlfriend, Ivan cannot fit in at school despite being very smart, and Joseph has secretly quit his job as a doctor and is trying to become a writer. While there is plenty of affection at home, all three are also, clumsily, searching for love...

While holidaying in the French Alps, a Swedish family deals with acts of cowardliness as an avalanche breaks out.

Marc, a successful, ambitious man, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and is given a few months to live. Unable to accept death, he decides to cryogenically freeze himself. The love of his life is devastated. Seventy years later, Marc becomes the first cryogenic resuscitated person in history. But this doesn't happen in the idealized way he dreamt of.

The story of a father's tireless love for his autistic son. A terminally ill father's attempt to teach his autistic son the necessary life skills to survive on his own before he passes away. It is also a poignant tribute to the infinite love that parents have for their children and their unending desire to take care and look after them to their best abilities, no matter the struggle, no matter the effort.

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.

Shamoto runs a small tropical fish shop. When his daughter Mitsuko is caught shoplifting at a grocery store a man named Murata steps in to settle things between the girl and the store manager. Murata also runs a tropical fish shop and he and Shamoto soon become friendly. However Murata hides many dark secrets behind his friendly face.

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.

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.

This is a story of a man in free fall. On the road to redemption, darkness lights his way. Connected with the afterlife, Uxbal is a tragic hero and father of two who's sensing the danger of death. He struggles with a tainted reality and a fate that works against him in order to forgive, for love, and forever.

The story of a busy man, who fills his time travelling to Africa, South America and the Middle East. His passion for his job has distanced him from his loved ones. He’s been divorced for three years and has since seen his son very little. When the latter disappears, he is forced to stand still, and soon discovers things about his ex-wife and, above all, his son. A terrible feeling of guilt overwhelms him and he decides to find his son at all costs...

A boy walks down the street and as he goes along his strides increase. Eventually he leaps over towns, forests, and oceans, seeing many things and surprising many people along the way.

Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished.

Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a camping site near Takumi's house offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to nature.

Young Pietari lives with his reindeer-herding father in arctic Finland. On the eve of Christmas, a nearby excavation makes a frightening discovery and an evil Santa Claus is unleashed…

Stephen, an international trader, tracks down his ex-wife Patricia in some Amazonian backwater. He needs her consent to a divorce so that he can marry Charlotte. Unfortunately, he discovers a son he didn’t know he had – Mimi-Siku. The young jungle boy yearns to see Paris so Stephen reluctantly agrees to take him back home with him for a few days. How will Mimi-Siku react to life in the great metropolis?

When three skiers find themselves stranded on a chair lift at a New England ski resort that has closed for the next week, they are forced to make life or death choices that prove to be more perilous than staying put and freezing to death.

After suffering a plane crash on a mysterious island, a young man embarks on an epic journey through forests, deserts and mountains trying to escape the shadow of a huge dark spirit.

Just when Lola, 18 years old and transgender, learns that she can finally have surgery, her mother, who is her only financial support, passes away. Abiding by her mother’s last wishes, Lola and her father, who are permanently in conflict and have not seen each other for two years, undertake a journey all the way to the Belgian coast. They realize the outcome of the journey may not be the one they were both expecting...

Cheng, 45, a restaurant owner from China, has travelled with his young son halfway around the world to a remote village in Finland. His wife died recently in an accident, and Cheng wanted to have a break from everything by traveling with his son to see an old Finnish friend who lives on a farm in the countryside of Finland. It’s the most remote place Cheng can imagine with endless forests, thousands of lakes, a country with entire population of one-fifth of Cheng’s home town, Shanghai.

A poor young Belgian mother wants her petty thief of a boyfriend to be gainfully employed to raise their newborn child, but he has other ideas.

Vincent is a famous successful entrepreneur. One day, a car breakdown on a mountain road temporarily interrupts his frantic lifestyle. Pierre, who lives apart from the modern world in the middle of sublime nature, comes to his aid and offers him his hospitality. The meeting between these two men, who are opposites will upset their respective beliefs and they will find themselves laughing. The question is...deep down, are they really each living the lives they want to live?

Pierre Gastié-Leroy is the son of a wealthy director of a factory of weapon manufacturing. Despite his parents, two generous uncles and a bishop godfather who try to inculcate him the rigid values of his social level, Pierre is a dreamer, antimilitaristic, social educator who dreams of saving three thugs, his "little guys" at the limit of delinquency. After several resounding failures that sent him to prison, Pierre is ordered by his father to join his factory to direct the social service. Tired of the venality of his father and the foolishness of the "little guys", Pierre hires them at the factory...

Bruno is a young film editor who has just broke up his marriage with Regina, and returned living in his mother's house. Drowned in deep sorrow, something very weird happens in his life: people around him are gradually disappearing. But only for him. Some kind of blindness.

Put in charge of his young son, Ali leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Ali's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident.

Deep in a secluded forest, Marko lives in isolation under the watchful eye of his overprotective father, who is determined to keep his young son safe from the Evil Ones. Deeply lonely, and increasingly curious about the outside world, Marko yearns to uncover the secrets of life beyond the forest and begins venturing further from home. But after a cruel turn of events grants his wish sooner than he ever imagined, Marko is forced to flee and embark on a grim journey filled with unknown dangers and a glimpse into a world forever changed.

The opening of the new tunnel, which took ten years to build, coincided with a series of serious cataclysms. The lives of 160,000 people depend on the actions of two people, a father and a son.

In a desperate attempt to reach Europe and crouched before an airstrip in Cameroon, a six-year-old boy and his older sister wait to sneak into the holds of an airplane. Not too far away, an environmental activist contemplates the terrible image of an elephant, dead and fangless. Not only do you have to fight against poaching, but you will also have to meet the problems of your newly arrived daughter from Spain. Thousands of kilometers to the north, in Melilla, a group of civil guards prepare to face the furious crowd of sub-Saharan people who have begun the assault on the fence. Three stories linked by a central theme, in which none of its protagonists know that their destinies are doomed to cross and that their lives will no longer be the same.

An everyday conversation between Marta and her mother turns into a tragic race against the clock when Marta receives a phone call from Iván, her six-year-old son, who is on holiday in France with his father.

A man stranded in the Arctic is finally about to receive his long awaited rescue. However, after a tragic accident, his opportunity is lost and he must then decide whether to remain in the relative safety of his camp or embark on a deadly trek through the unknown for potential salvation.

Once upon a time there was Louise and her friend, the magician. But his last trick left a bitter taste in her mouth. He disappeared in a curtain of smoke… never to appear again. This is too much for the young woman. Devastated by endless grief, Louise is sent to a psychiatric asylum, resigned to the idea that she will swallow pills till the end of her days. Yet nine months later she gives birth to a child who is likely to have a big problem for his future class pictures, since he’s invisible. But Louise doesn’t care. He’s her angel and, wanting to protect him from this cruel world, she decides to keep his existence a secret. Years later, Louise’s angel has grown up. He even managed to find a girlfriend; Madeleine. The two become inseparable, for Madeleine never judges him. And for good reason: she’s blind.

Two married couples adjust to the vast social and economic changes taking place in China from the 1980s to the present.

Two cosmonauts, two friends, try to do their best in their everyday training life to make their common dream a reality. But this story is not only about the dream.

Mircea, former Intelligence officer, finds out that his son from has gone missing in the mountains. He travels there to find him. After days of searches, Mircea put his own rescue team together, leading to conflict with the local squad.

A nurse, a paramedic, a gymnast and her coach offer a service for hire wherein they stand in for dead people by appointment, hired by relatives, friends or colleagues of the deceased, to assist with the grieving process.

A human-rights activist takes in an illegal immigrant and her daughter, then shocks his family when they learn that he has married the sexy 28-year-old.

Shortly after the Korean war, a father and a son are wandering through the country and make a stop in a remote village, where strange and dangerous happenings occur.

1917. Bakary Diallo enlists in the French army to join his 17-year-old son, Thierno, who has been forcibly recruited. Sent to the front, they will have to face the war together. While Thierno learns to become a man, Bakary will do everything to bring him back safely.

Stranded in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, a man sets in motion an unlikely plan to protect the precious cargo he carries: his infant daughter.

A monumental windstorm and an abused horse's refusal to work or eat signal the beginning of the end for a poor farmer and his daughter.

After Antoine was fired from his job, he became a stay-at-home dad taking care of his four children, while his wife Isabelle restarts her career as a lawyer. For Antoine, the family's upcoming ski vacation is a godsend: he can finally take a break from parenthood and enjoy a luxury ski resort! But just as they are about to step on the train, Isabelle is called back to work for an emergency and Antoine has to deal, on his own, with his four mischievous kids going wild on the slopes and in the fancy hotel, as the trip turns into total chaos…

In the French harbor city of Le Havre, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa into the path of Marcel Marx, a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoe-shiner. With innate optimism and the tireless support of his community, Marcel stands up to officials pursuing the boy for deportation.

A race against time between a man whose son requires urgent treatment and a stockbroker who suddenly lost his investors' money and ruined his own family.

An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.

As children, Nick and his little brother take care of their baby brother while their mother drinks herself senseless. But the baby dies, and both brothers blame themselves. Many years later, Nick is out of prison after serving time for an assault. He drinks, lives in a shelter and tries to help an old friend. When their mother dies, Nick meets his brother at the funeral. The brother, who remains nameless, is a single father to a young boy, but also supports a drug habit that is spiraling out of control. When an opportunity presents itself, he becomes a drug dealer to secure his son's future. Eventually, the two brothers meet again.

A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.

Max is 6 years old. She lives with her dad Toni, a small time crook with a golden heart. For Xmas, Max offers him Rose, a call-girl found on the street whom she’s very fond of. Despite the complicated situation, Toni’s gonna have a hard time refusing her daughter’s «gift» and must coexist with Rose.

Two Russian soldiers, one battle-seasoned and the other barely into his boots and uniform, are taken prisoner by an anxious Islamic father from a remote village hoping to trade them for his captured son.

Life on a shelf as a snowman trapped in a snow-globe blizzard can become wearing, especially when you're surrounded by knickknacks from sunnier locales. When the jaded snowman finally breaks free of his glass house, his vacation plans are cut short.

Billy, a single mother of two, is led into a macabre underworld while her teenage son, Bones, discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town. Both Billy and Bones must dive deep into the mystery if their family is to survive.

John Peterson lives with his partner Eric and their adopted daughter in Southern California. When he is visited by his aging father Willis from Los Angeles who is searching for a place to retire, their two very different worlds collide.

A poor construction worker, who struggles to keep his son in private school, mistakes an orb he finds in a junkjard for a toy which proves to be much, much more once the young boy starts to play with it.

Vincent has an extraordinary ability: his strength and reflexes increase tenfold when in contact with water. To make full use of this gift, he settles in a region with many lakes and rivers, which is isolated enough to allow him to live a peaceful life. Then, one day, during an aquatic escapade, he encounters Lucie.

Samuel, a widower, is taking care of his 7-year-old daughter alone. Overwhelmed and stressed out, he decides to isolate in a chalet he was renovating with his wife in the Italian Alps. Indifferent to the anger of locals who help police to hunt down migrants, he comes across a woman who fled Afghanistan. Samuel decides to help her reach the border, thinking it will take them a few hours. But an agressive group of men comes after them…

A volcanic eruption in Iceland sends a glacier towards North America, causing everything in it's path to freeze. A family man struggles to escape the onslaught of the coming ice age.

During a heat wave, strange clouds start pouring down acid rain, wreaking devastation and panic throughout France. In a world teetering on the edge, a girl and her divorced parents must join forces to confront and try to escape this climate catastrophe.

A gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.

Along with her husband and three children, Marthe lives in an eden of her own creation, nearly isolated from the rest of the world. The arrival of a construction vehicle, however, pierces their tranquil, hermetic existence—before long a disused highway has been re-opened, and the family finds their home situated in the midst of rush-hour traffic. While the privileges of clean air, quietude and privacy are thus denied them, Marthe remains determined to stay no matter the cost.

New York city mechanic Robert Saunders is knocked unconscious at his birthday dinner by Russian thugs and wakes up to find himself locked inside the restaurant's industrial freezer. This ruthless gang demand he return the $8 million he has stolen from them. The only problem Robert has no idea what they are talking about. But as the temperature drops and the terror grows, the shocking truth begins to emerge as Robert struggles to survive.

One thousand years after cataclysmic events forced humanity's escape from Earth, Nova Prime has become mankind's new home. Legendary General Cypher Raige returns from an extended tour of duty to his estranged family, ready to be a father to his 13-year-old son, Kitai. When an asteroid storm damages Cypher and Kitai's craft, they crash-land on a now unfamiliar and dangerous Earth. As his father lies dying in the cockpit, Kitai must trek across the hostile terrain to recover their rescue beacon. His whole life, Kitai has wanted nothing more than to be a soldier like his father. Today, he gets his chance.

In the final Huevos adventure, Toto and his family will have to travel to the South Pole to fulfill their promise to return a polar bear and some Spanish penguins to their home. In order to do so, they will have to overcome some obstacles that will teach them how important teamwork is.

In a small village in Catalonia, the peach farmers of the Solé family spend every summer together picking fruit from their orchard. But when plans arise to install solar panels and cut down trees, the members of this tight-knit group suddenly face eviction – and the loss of far more than their home.

A French illusionist travels to Scotland to work. He meets a young woman in a small village. Their ensuing adventure in Edinburgh changes both their lives forever.

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.

A cop and his son have to put away their differences while undercover on a therapeutic trip.

Set in 1980s Toronto, a young boy shuffles between the homes of his recently divorced parents.

A factory explosion plunges a small town into a timeless freeze, leaving teenage Masamune and his pals to grapple with a quickly collapsing reality.

Teenagers Birdboy and Dinki have decided to escape from an island devastated by ecological catastrophe: Birdboy by shutting himself off from the world, Dinki by setting out on a dangerous voyage in the hope that Birdboy will accompany her.

When two brothers are stranded by a brutal winter storm with an unpredictable father they barely know, the boys begin to suspect their supposed protector may be their biggest threat.

An old bear goes out every day to a busy street corner. Through a tin marionette theater of his own making, the bear will tell us his life story.

In a world hit by a wave of mutations transforming humans into animals, François does everything he can to save his wife. As some of the creatures disappear into a nearby forest, he and their son Émile embark on a quest that will change their lives forever.

Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.

A left-wing journalist whose wife died while giving birth to his son during a military coup returns to his family's farm. Estranged from his father for turning his back on the family and wasting his life with political activism instead, he tries to reconnect with him so that his son will have a place to live as his health is deteriorating due to the extensive torture he had to endure.

At the edge of Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula, two women’s lives will intersect – for a brief moment – while trapped in circumstances unforeseen. Between a struggling Icelandic mother and an asylum seeker from Guinea-Bissau, a delicate bond will form as both strategize to get their lives back on track.

Dragon Hunters is a fantastic tale telling the adventures of two dragon hunters: the world has become a vast conglomerate of islands of varying size and shape. This babbling universe is mainly peopled with ruthless rogues, surly peasants and illiterate, petty lords Their main concerns revolve around two fundamental rules : Eat and don't get eaten.

A working class family move into a new condo purchased after 11 years of hard work. They throw a housewarming party to show his co-workers when overnight a heavy downpour creates an extremely deep sinkhole that engulfs the entire building.

On a northern Italian farm, Batistì and his wife decide to send their son Minec to school, sacrificing his help in the fields but hoping to break the cycle of poverty in the family. But when Minec’s shoe breaks while walking for miles, Batisti puts the family’s future at risk to replace the clog.

Screenwriter Leo is searching for the wolf in the south of France. During a scouting excursion he is seduced by Marie, a free-spirited and dynamic shepherdess. Nine months later she gives birth to their child. Suffering from post-natal depression and with no faith in Leo, who comes and goes without warning, Marie abandons both of them. Leo finds himself alone, with a baby to care for.

In the aftermath of a nuclear disaster, a starving family find hope in a charismatic hotel owner. Lured by the prospect of a free dinner, they discover that the evening's entertainment blurs the lines between performance and reality. Will they wind up the spectators or the spectacle?



