Jar CityMovies like Jar City
- Key Features:
- Murder investigation, Small town corruption, Genetic experiment, Family secrets, Police procedural, Mystery, Moral decay, Genetic mutation, Grief, Social issues, Violence-moderate
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Crime thriller fans, Mystery lovers, Nordic noir enthusiasts, Character-driven narratives
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Disgust → Resignation
Jar City

A murder opens up a bleak trail of long buried secrets and small town corruption for a worn out police detective and his squad.
Jar City
Thirty-year-old Hlynur still lives with his mother and spends his days drinking, watching porn and surfing the net while living off unemployment checks. A girl is interested in him, but he stands back from commitment. His mother's Spanish flamenco teacher, Lola, moves in with them for Christmas. On New Year's Eve, while his mother is away, Hlynur finds out Lola is a lesbian, but also ends up having sex with her. He soon finds out he and his mother are sharing more than a house. Eventually he must find out where he fits into the puzzle, and how to live life less selfishly.

Soon after the break of the pandemic and realizing that his clock is ticking, Kristofer gets the urge to embark on a journey to try to find out what really happened when his Japanese girlfriend mysteriously vanished without a trace from London fifty years earlier.

When Baldvin and Inga's next door neighbours complain that a tree in their backyard casts a shadow over their sundeck, what starts off as a typical spat between neighbours in the suburbs unexpectedly and violently spirals out of control.

In a remote Icelandic town, an off duty police chief begins to suspect a local man to have had an affair with his wife, who has recently died in a car accident. Gradually his obsession for finding out the truth accumulates and inevitably begins to endanger himself and his loved ones. A story of grief, revenge and unconditional love.

When his daughter's criminal boyfriend becomes an increasing threat to the family, a father must take action to protect them.

An Icelandic couple live with their herd of sheep on a beautiful but remote farm. When they discover a mysterious newborn on their land, they decide to keep it and raise it as their own. This unexpected development and the prospects of a new family brings them much joy before ultimately destroying them.

In the mid to late '90s, the Reykjavik crime and drug scene saw a drastic change from a relatively small and innocent world into a much more aggressive and violent one.. The film tells the story of this change through the fictional gang of pushers that took control of Iceland's underworld.

After an older lady hangs herself in a church, a new psychiatrist discovers she was obsessed with the disappearance of his eight-year-old son, who vanished three years earlier. Meanwhile, three city dwellers are restoring a house when they realize it is haunted.

The Interrogator Erik Backstrom is forced to return to his former home village to solve a murder mystery, in which the local polices and some hunters and even Erik's family seems to be involved. Soon, the conflicts are in full action, especially between Erik and the local police Torsten. Torsten does not support Erik very much in his job and has, for some personal reasons, already arrested a suspected perpetrator. Eric takes great risks when he starts digging in the criminal material of the horrible murder case.

An aggressive police officer tries to solve the mystery behind consecutive murders. While doing so, he must fight against his inner demons.

When a notorious German serial killer is captured after committing some of the most heinous acts against humanity ever imaginable, a farmer and police officer from a sleepy rural community on the outskirts of Berlin is drawn into the case as he searches for the answers to a murder that has shaken his tight-knit community.

The eclectic residents of a small, picturesque island town must navigate a sensational murder and the discovery of a million dollars, leading to a series of increasingly bad decisions which upend the once-peaceful community.

In a secluded valley in Iceland, Gummi and Kiddi live side by side, tending to their sheep. Their ancestral sheep-stock is considered one of the country’s best and the two brothers are repeatedly awarded for their prized rams who carry an ancient lineage. Although they share the land and a way of life, Gummi and Kiddi have not spoken to each other in four decades. When a lethal disease suddenly infects Kiddi’s sheep, the entire valley comes under threat. The authorities decide to cull all the animals in the area to contain the outbreak. But Gummi and Kiddi don’t give up so easily – and each brother tries to stave off the disaster in his own fashion: Kiddi by using his rifle and Gummi by using his wits.

13-year-old Sinikka vanishes on a hot summer night. Her bicycle is found in the exact place where a girl was killed 23 years ago. The dramatic present forces those involved in the original case to face their past.

After witnessing a grotesque murder at a party in her new town, a teenager starts having strange visions and bizarre desires.

A country romance about the human streak in the horse and the horse in the human. Love and death become interlaced and with terrible consequences. The fortunes of the people in the country through the horses' perception.

A policeman from Stockholm come to Norrbotten in Sweden, to join his brother, now when their father is dead. While there he starts to work on a long-running case where reindeers have been poached and soon discovers that his brother is involved...

A young drifter working on a river barge disrupts his employers' lives while hiding the fact that he knows more about a dead woman found in the river than he admits.

A young girl in 1990s Iceland is caught between the life that took her brother and her own inability to strike out on her own. In her grief, she finds solace in metal and dreams of making her own music.

Veteran homicide cop Fermanand his hot-headed partner İdris team up with rookie cop and anthropology major Hasan to investigate the murder of a young woman. The suspects include her conservative family, who might have killed her for honor, her drug-dealing boyfriend and aged billionaire Battal who had taken the victim as his second wife.

Detectives Jonas and Erik are called to the midnight sun country of northern Norway to investigate a recent homicide, but their plan to arrest the killer goes awry, and Jonas mistakenly shoots Erik. The suspect escapes, and a frightened Jonas pins Erik's death on the fugitive. Jonas continues to pursue the killer as he seeks to protect himself; however, his mounting guilt and the omnipresent sun plague him with an insomnia that affects his sanity.

Two Los Angeles homicide detectives are dispatched to a northern town where the sun doesn't set to investigate the methodical murder of a local teen.

After serving a 12-year sentence for killing the man that slept with his wife, a man ponders whether he should try and reconcile with his family, or take revenge on those who turned him in.

A remote fishing village in Iceland. Teenage boys Thór and Kristján experience a turbulent summer as one tries to win the heart of a girl while the other discovers new feelings toward his best friend. When summer ends and the harsh nature of Iceland takes back its rights, it's time to leave the playground and face adulthood.

When Bússi, Iceland's toughest cop, is forced to work with a new partner to solve a series of bank robberies, the pressure to close the case as soon as possible proves too much for him.

A city boy visits a remote village to find out the reason behind his father's strange death. The locals are watching his every move and are eager to see him leave. As he starts to investigate, the village's sinister secrets begin to unravel.

A renowned health supplement company, run by a ruthless businesswoman, is selecting and abducting young women as part of an experiment bio-hacking babies’ DNA to enable her clients to reverse the aging process. When Mia goes to investigate, she finds herself trapped, branded and tortured in a grim underground facility. Familiar faces start to appear, and she realises that she is not alone in this. Can she somehow find inner strength and escape from the nightmare?

When a ruthless serial killer terrorizes a small Southern town, everyone becomes a suspect -- including local authorities. As the body count rises and the dark mystery deepens, the chief detective becomes haunted by the horrors of his past.

An epic tale about a group of whale watchers, whose ship breaks down and they get picked up by a whale fisher vessel. The Fishbillies on the vessel has just gone bust, and everything goes out of control.

A disgraced former cop, fresh off a six-year prison sentence for attempted murder, returns home looking for redemption but winds up trapped in the mess he left behind.

A modern-day lawyer is sucked into an international conspiracy after being accused of a murder she didn't commit. Her only chance of freedom lies in uncovering the secret of an old German WWII aeroplane, long buried deep beneath the ice, before the CIA.

Upstanding community leader Nils has just won an award for "Citizen of the Year" when he learns the news that his son has died of a heroin overdose. Suspecting foul play, Nils begins to investigate, and soon finds himself at the center of an escalating underworld gang war between Serbian drug dealers and a sociopathic criminal mastermind known only as “The Count.”

A dicey murder investigation. A fuming best friend. A chaotic living situation. Village police officer Franz Eberhofer has a lot on his plate right now.

Inspector Amaia Salazar must return to the Baztan valley in order to solve a series of suicides that seem to follow a similar pattern.

A teenage boy, raised by a mother who considers herself psychic, takes a bullied kid into his group of violent misfits. As the group’s troubles escalate toward life-threatening situations, an inner voice awakens in the boy and, with the help of his mother and his new friend, he manages to find his own path.

An embittered law student commits a brutal double murder; a family man takes the fall and is forced into a harsh prison sentence; a mother and her two children wander the countryside looking for some kind of redemption.

Adnan and Hicran are happily married however when their son die as a result of a mysterious accident Adanan becomes distant from his wife. Hicran starts investigating her past to see how it could connect to the death of her son.

Painful memories arise when Kai Koss inherits his dead mother's house and goes back to his childhood home after 19 years.

The discovery of a corpse and the ensuing probe by an idealistic journalist threatens to unravel a bumbling local politician's campaign for governor of Colorado.

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?

A man with an unknown disease travels to an island with his girlfriend where his relatives once lived, hoping to find a cure to his illness. Although his relatives were all thought to be dead, he finds them living underground.

17 year old Nói drifts through life on a remote fjord in Iceland. In winter, the fjord is cut off from the outside world, surrounded by ominous mountains and buried under a shroud of snow. Nói dreams of escaping from this white-walled prison with Íris, a city girl who works in a local gas station. But his clumsy attempts at escape spiral out of control.

A hardened cop deals with three conflicting perspectives involving a brutal double murder. The case is complicated as the prime suspects are the parents who supposedly killed their teenage daughter.

A police inspector comes into contact with people of all types and dispositions during a grueling murder investigation.

Battered, broken and bereaved, a private investigator must muscle his way through a tangle of lies to uncover the truth behind a mansion murder.

Mike Kendall, a disgraced ex-cop, is fighting a losing battle with the bottle. When he finds a woman left for dead at the side of a road, Kendall turns private eye to track down her killers, taking one last shot at redemption.

A group of drug-influenced lumpen teenagers from the suburbs of the city descends into the center where they do not belong, where they are excluded. They adopted a brutal method to seize rights that were not granted to them. Unaware of what will happen to them, cheerful and well-to-do university students are helpless in the face of this gun-wielding mob that suddenly raids the bar where they are having fun.

Tadek, a Polish detective, becomes suspicious of a controversial author when the incidents described in his unpublished novel resemble the inner workings of an unsolved murder.

Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.

A former slave who arrives in Yellowstone City, Montana, a desolate former boomtown now on the decline, looking for a place to call home. On that same day, a local prospector discovers gold - and is murdered.

The corpse of a young man appears in a forest on the island of La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands. The case is closed with the indictment of a local politician who is finally exonerated. Three years later, Sergeant Bevilaqua and Corporal Chamorro join Corporal Anglada to reactivate the investigation.

Denmark, 2013. Police officers Carl Mørck and Hafez el-Assad, sole members of Department Q, which is focused on closing cold cases, investigate the disappearance of politician Merete Lynggaard, vanished when she and her brother were traveling aboard a ferry five years ago.

In a broken city rife with injustice, ex-cop Billy Taggart seeks redemption and revenge after being double-crossed and then framed by its most powerful figure, the mayor. Billy's relentless pursuit of justice, matched only by his streetwise toughness, makes him an unstoppable force - and the mayor's worst nightmare.

Fourteen-year-old Charlie's life changes when Jasper takes his help to dispose of the body of his girlfriend, Laura. He decides to look for the murderer and falls in love with Laura's younger sister.

11 years ago, inspector Malik couldn’t solve a kidnapping case and a little girl died. Now with only a few days before the crime gets classified, he decides to reopen the case. Malik owes it to the mother and to himself. As he digs into the past, a child is kidnapped again. The pattern is the same one as a decade ago, it’s no coincidence. Malik knows he has a few days to make things right and to bring justice.

A lawyer turned private investigator takes on a missing person case, propelling him on an unexpected and life-altering quest.

The feeble-minded Sven's mother dies and he gets work as a farm-hand at the rich, affluent Höglund's farm. He has to work without pay and sleeps together with the cows. He meets the disabled Anna who is the first one to treat him as an adult. One day he has had enough of Höglund's maltreatment and moves in with Anna's family. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.

Smilla Jaspersen attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building. Suspecting wrongdoing, Smilla uncovers a trail of clues leading towards a secretive corporation that has made several mysterious expeditions to Greenland.

The last wish of the dying "Monk" is for his foster child, Harald, to find his real son, Ludvig. But the latter is currently in a Swedish prison cell...

When a supernatural pit worshipped by a remote community in the woods demands a new blood sacrifice, a young woman struggles to find a way to survive as the pit lashes out in anger.

Set in a sleepy Austrian mountain village, ex-detective Simon Brenner has grown weary of his job repossessing cars and embarks on an extended getaway to the countryside. But before long he becomes embroiled in the convoluted world of the locals of a supposedly quiet town.

When a border guard with a sixth sense for identifying smugglers encounters the first person she cannot prove is guilty, she is forced to confront terrifying revelations about herself and humankind.

A shady cop finds himself in over his head when he gets caught between Internal Affairs and the city’s corrupt mayor.

After suffering a personal tragedy, and desperate for justice, Jacob Kanon, a veteran New York City police detective, embarks on the search for a twisted killer who is leaving a bloody trail of elaborate murders across Europe.

Based on an astonishing true incident that took place on the frigid seas off Iceland in 1984, The Deep fashions a modern-day everyman myth about the sole survivor of a shipwreck, whose superhuman will to survive made him both an inexplicable scientific phenomenon and a genuine national hero.

A government scheme sees newly widowed Santosh inherit her husband’s job as a police constable in the rural badlands of Northern India. When a low-caste girl is found raped and murdered, she is pulled into the investigation under the wing of charismatic feminist inspector Sharma.

A coroner finds a capsule in the head of a heavily mutilated corpse, containing a phone number and single word: the name of his daughter.

A small town policeman must investigate a suspicious hunting accident. The investigation and other events result in him slowly disintegrating mentally.

A Cape Verdean woman navigates her way through Lisbon, following the scanty physical traces her deceased husband left behind and discovering his secret, illicit life.

In the grim Alaskan winter, a naturalist hunts for wolves blamed for killing a local boy, but he soon finds himself swept into a chilling mystery.

Denmark, 2014. A former police officer asks Carl Mørck, head of Department Q, to find out who brutally killed his young twins in 1994. Although a local inhabitant confessed and was convicted of murder, Carl and his partner Assad soon realize that there is something in the case resolution that is terribly wrong.

Toshio hires Yasaka to work in his workshop. But then this old acquaintance, who has just been released from prison, begins to meddle in Toshio's family life.

A mural painted with blood is found on the wall of Pasila train station, which depicts Finland's best-known serial killer Lasse Maasalo. The text in the mural, “Making the world a better place”, is linked to a voting circulating in social media, where people can vote for persons that world would be a better place without. Soon the first body is found and Sorjonen must find the person who has named himself as The Judge.

A psychotic killer is on the prowl, who continues to slaughter young women while an innocent man is wrongly accused and sentenced for crimes he could never have committed. A determined detective arrives on the scene and soon becomes obsessed with the case while under pressure from the prosecutor to see a man hang.

Inconsolable since the death of his wife, Karsh, a prominent businessman, invents a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their dear departed in their shrouds. One night, multiple graves, including that of Karsh’s wife, are desecrated, and he sets out to track down the perpetrators.

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.

The patriarch of a wealthy and powerful family suddenly passes away, leaving his wife and daughter with a shocking secret inheritance that threatens to unravel and destroy their lives.

In the harsh post-war years' Catalan countryside, Andreu, a child that belongs to the losing side, finds the corpses of a man and his son in the forest. The authorities want his father to be made responsible of the deaths, but Andreu tries to help his father by finding out who truly killed them. In this search, Andreu develops a moral consciousness against a world of adults fed by lies. In order to survive, he betrays his own roots and ends up finding out the monster that lives within him.

Detectives and best friends Andreas and Simon lead vastly different lives; Andreas has settled down with his beautiful wife and son; while Simon, recently divorced, spends most of his waking hours getting drunk at the local strip club. But all that changes when the two of them are called out to a domestic dispute between a junkie couple, caught in a vicious cycle of violence and drugs. It all looks very routine – until Andreas finds the couple's infant son, crying in a closet. The usually collected policeman finds himself confronted with his own powerlessness and is shaken to his core. As Andreas slowly loses his grip on justice, it suddenly becomes up to the unruly Simon to restore the balance between right and wrong.

Denmark, 2016. A blurred note is found in a bottle that has traveled across the ocean for a long time. After deciphering the cryptic note, Department Q follow a sinister trail that leads them to investigate a case that occurred in 2008. At the same time, new tragic events take place that test their faith and deepest beliefs.

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.

Investigating judge Iman grapples with paranoia amid political unrest in Tehran. When his gun vanishes, he suspects his wife and daughters, imposing draconian measures that strain family ties as societal rules crumble.

Copenhagen, 2018. A frightening discovery is made in an old apartment. The subsequent investigation of Department Q leads them to an infamous institution for girls that was suddenly closed in the early sixties.

A woman’s body disappears mysteriously from the morgue without a trace. Police inspector Jaime Peña investigates the strange occurrence with the help of Álex Ulloa, the widower of the missing woman.

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.

Indigenous Detective Jay Swan arrives in the frontier town of Goldstone on a missing persons inquiry. What seems like a simple investigation unearths an intricate web of crime, corruption, human trafficking, and coordinated exploitation of indigenous people’s land. Jay must bury his differences with young local cop Josh, so together they can bring justice to Goldstone.

Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country, Spain, 2019. Two corpses appear in the crypt of the Old Cathedral. Police officer Unai López de Ayala, an expert in criminal profiling, must hunt down the ritual murderer who has been terrorizing the city for two decades.

When the quiet and amiable Vann Siegert drifts into town, no one suspects the evil that lies beneath the surface. Despite his easy charm, Vann is merely a reflection of what those he encounters want him to be. Soon, as locals start to disappear, it becomes clear that an eerie subtraction is at work in the sleepy hamlet.

When Mari Gilbert's daughter disappears, police inaction drives her own investigation into the gated Long Island community where Shannan was last seen. Her search brings attention to over a dozen murdered prostitutes.

Archaeologist Sigurd Svendsen discovers that the Oseberg ship hides a secret from the Viking Age. Along with his two children put Sigurd out on a quest to find the truth. The mystery leads them into "No Man's Land" between Norway and Russia where no man traveling in modern times. Old runes take on new meaning when the secret they uncover is more frightening than anyone could have imagined.

Salih is a mechanic and the son of a respected barber named Ali. A woman named Tina arrives at Cholera Street, where she takes up residence and works as a prostitute.

The exact details of what took place while Talib Ben Hassi was in police custody remain unclear. Police officers Jens and Mike are on routine patrol in Svalegården's ghetto when news of Talib's death comes in over the radio, igniting uncontrollable, pent-up rage in the ghetto's youth, who lust for revenge. Suddenly, the two officers find themselves fair game and must fight tooth and claw to find a way out.

When several children disappear at the hands of a serial killer in Sector 36, a corrupt cop is forced to pursue the chilling case at all costs.

Two close friends' plan to execute a flawless crime is crushed when one of them inadvertently leaves his glasses at the crime scene.

Based on the true story of a Russian serial killer who, over many years, claimed victim to over 50 people. His victims were mostly under the age of 17. In what was then a communists state, the police investigations were hampered by bureaucracy, incompetence and those in power. The story is told from the viewpoint of the detective in charge of the case.

Two men, both hiding a deadly secret, are on a murderous rampage through the desert.

On a night of despair after being turned down continuously for the scripts he writes, Metin ends up in a bar where he meets a girl named Duygu. After spending the night together, she walks out in the morning before he wakes up and leaves only a short note. The next time they meet, Metin becomes curious about her secret and decides to follow her. What he finds out will be the beginning of an everlasting love.

A tight-knit team of FBI investigators, along with their District Attorney supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered.

A group of residents begins to suspect that their strange neighbor might be hiding something dark.
