Lights in the DuskMovies like Lights in the Dusk
- Key Features:
- Betrayal, Manipulation, Outcast, Security guard, Crime, Noir, European cinema, Social commentary, Loneliness, Vulnerability, Deception, Urban setting
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Film noir enthusiasts, Independent film viewers, Viewers interested in social realism, Fans of slow-burn dramas
- Emotional Arc:
- Isolation → Hope → Disillusionment
Lights in the Dusk

Outcast by his co-workers and living alone, Koistinen is a security guard who works the night shift in a luxury shopping mall in Helsinki. But when icy blonde Mirja approaches him, the lonely Koistinen falls helplessly for her, unaware she is manipulating him for her criminal boyfriend.
Lights in the Dusk
Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur, finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate dies. One evening, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her-luck cashier, in a local supermarket. Falteringly, a bond begins to develop between them.

Iris is a shy and dowdy young woman stuck in a dead-end job at a match factory, who dreams of finding love at the local dancehall. Finding herself pregnant after a one-night stand and abandoned by the father, Iris finally decides the time has come to get even and she begins to plot her revenge.

In modern-day Helsinki, two lonely souls in search of love meet by chance in a karaoke bar. However, their path to happiness is beset by obstacles – from lost phone numbers to mistaken addresses, alcoholism, and a charming stray dog.

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.

In the mid-1960s, three small-time Finnish bootleggers seize control of their Helsinki neighborhood's black-market liquor business.

A farmer's wife is seduced into running away from her stolid older husband by a city slicker, who enslaves her in a brothel.

A woman prepares for bed, but realizes that something may be lurking in the shadows.

Four small gangsters from Copenhagen trick a gangster boss: they take over 4,000,000 kroner which they were supposed to bring him. Trying to escape to Barcelona they are forced to stop in the countryside, in an old, wrecked house, hiding there for several weeks. Slowly, one after another, they realize, that they would like to stay there, start a new life.

At a Greek hotel in the off-season, a chambermaid, a man obsessed with BMW cars, and a photo-store clerk attempt to film and photograph various badly re-enacted struggles between a man and a woman.

The ever-poker-faced Ilona loses her job as a restaurant hostess, as her tram driver husband, Lauri, also finds himself out of work. Together they must hit the streets of Helsinki, facing up to hardship and humiliation in their quest for survival, guided through the gloom by a ray of hope.

Feeling suffocated by a possessive boyfriend, work and suburban life, a young woman starts spending the weekends in her Paris apartment in order to reclaim some of her lost freedom.

After the assault of a young woman in their seaside town, a security expert and his family get caught in a powerful riptide of secrets and lies.

When eighteen-year-old Pasha rescues a beautiful young woman from a band of strangely powerful attackers, he discovers an underworld of supernatural beings living among us.

Mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt is called into action to stop a flasher from turning shopper's paradise into his personal peep show. But when Barnhardt can't bring the culprit to justice, a surly police detective is recruited to close the case.

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.

Jaakko and Sirpa have never met face to face, but talk on the phone every day. When Jaakko hears news about Sirpa's declining health, he decides to go meet her in another city. It's not the easiest decision, because he's blind and paralyzed from the chest down - and he has to make the journey alone. To get there, Jaakko must rely on the help of five strangers. What could go wrong?

A cop named Cristi must go undercover to trail teen Victor who is suspected of selling pot in the north-eastern city of Vaslui.

Ari, a paramedic, is a chronic womanizer; he makes it a point of pride to never sleep with the same woman twice, and his nights are a long series of brazen one-night stands. But when Ari meets Tiina, something unexpected happens – he falls in love.

In the shadowy outskirts of Paris, a desperate door-to-door salesman crosses paths with a mysterious young woman trapped in a grim world. As his obsession deepens, his grip on reality begins to slip—and the line between escape and destruction starts to blur.

A grieving heart surgeon struggling with the loss of his wife drifts through an emotionally detached life while raising his teenage daughter. His chance encounter with a dominatrix awakens feelings he thought were gone, drawing him into a dark and unconventional world where pain and desire intertwine.

A pastor's faith turns upside down when a meteorite lands in his small Finnish town, its impact stirring up chaos and criminal intentions.

A former policeman turns full-time robber and goes on a downward spiral of crime in 1970s Rome.

Rachel, a rookie cop, is about to begin her first night shift in a neglected police station in a Scottish, backwater town. The kind of place where the tide has gone out and stranded a motley bunch of the aimless, the forgotten, the bitter-and-twisted who all think that, really, they deserve to be somewhere else. They all think they're there by accident and that, with a little luck, life is going to get better. Wrong, on both counts. Six is about to arrive - and All Hell Will Break Loose!

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.

Marina, an upper-crust social worker with a doting husband and an enviable downtown apartment, is suddenly transformed into a bizarre twilight version of herself when she is raped by three policemen.

After being haunted by evil spirits inside a residential building, a security guard seeks help from a mysterious exorcist, who turns out to be an escaped mental patient.

When Max, who is recovering from a traumatic accident, takes a job as a nighttime security guard, he begins to see visions of a young mysterious woman in the store's mirror.

Percy Nilegaard collects Swedish single men and embarks on a bus trip to Tallinn with a so-called "highly-experienced driver".

After going to extremes to cover up an accident, a corrupt cop's life spirals out of control when he starts receiving threats from a mysterious witness.

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 drifting ex-soldier turns underground fighter with the help of a just-released ex-con, pitting him against corrupt cops and hired killers now gunning for him and all those he cares about.

Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation. A man is wrongly accused of collaboration. Desperate to save his dignity, he faces an impossible moral choice.

As a serial killer stalks the city, Julia — a young actress who just moved to town with her husband — notices a mysterious stranger watching her from across the street.

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 young Finnish woman escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the arctic port of Murmansk. Forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a larger than life Russian miner, the unexpected encounter leads the occupants of Compartment No. 6 to face major truths about human connection.

A restaurateur befriends a Syrian refugee who has recently arrived in Finland.

It is 1595. Brutal wars have just ended in an uneasy peace between Protestant Sweden and Orthodox Russia. We focus on the spiritual defeats of two conquered Finnish brothers, one a hardened near-psychopathic war hero, the other a gentle scientist in an age with no use for such men. They find themselves in the swampy interior, demarcating the new border with a unit of sadistic Russians.

A Finnish man goes to the city to find a job after the mine where he worked is closed and his father commits suicide.

Rendel, a masked superhero, becomes blinded by his desire for revenge against a sinister criminal organization.

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.

Documentary filmmaker Erik and closeted lawyer Paul meet through a casual encounter, but they find a deeper connection and become a couple. Individually and together, they are risk takers — compulsive, and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity and to be true to himself.

Cop-turned-security guard Ma Xianyong finds himself in a criminal twilight zone when two unrelated events turn his world upside down. The mysterious disappearance of his boss has implications for his financial security. Even more perilous is the abduction of his paralyzed sister who, unknown to Ma, makes a morbid deal with her captors.

In a poor Estonian village, a group of peasants use magic and folk remedies to survive the winter, and a young woman tries to get a young man to love her.

The reception for Finland's Independence Day is rudely interrupted when the presidential palace is attacked and the state leadership is taken hostage. Max Tanner of the Security Police is appointed as a negotiator in the hostage crisis, that unfolds as part of a bigger plan to undermine European security.

Caterino is a worker at the Ilva factory in Taranto. When the company executives decide to use him as a spy to identify the workers they should get rid of, Caterino starts to track his colleagues, in search of reasons to report them. He then asks to be assigned himself to the Palazzino LAF where as punishment, some employees sit out their time with no job assignment. There he discovers that what looks like paradise is actually a strategy to psychologically break troublesome workers.

Martin, a law student, takes up a job as a nightwatchman at a mortuary to fund his studies. But the mortuary harbours a dark secret, and he has to find the truth before he is implicated in a serial murder case.

A psychotic executive triggers a journalist's dark side, and they begin to form a strange bond through the internet.

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.

Tangled up with blackmail and crooked cops, the son of a former gangster seeks out his father's old friends, who risk everything to save him.

The idyllic and secluded Finnish archipelago. The pandemic soars across the world. Elli’s world trembles as her husband’s old friend arrives at the island.

In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

Two Finnish men agree to drive an Estonian woman and a Russian woman to a harbor.

A violent screenwriter and a female neighbor fall in love after she clears him of murder, but she begins to have second thoughts.

In a struggling post-Soviet community, Lilya a teenage girl is abandoned when her mother moves to the United States with her boyfriend. Facing neglect and poverty, she meets Andrei, who offers her a job in Sweden, giving her hope for a better life — and a journey that will change everything.

An ex-special services veteran, down on his luck and desperate for work, takes a job as a security guard at a run-down mall in a rough area of town. On his first night on the job, he opens the door to a distraught and desperate young girl who has fled the hijacking of a Police motorcade that was transporting her to testify as a witness in a trial. Hot on her heels is the psychopathic hijacker and his team of henchmen, who will stop at nothing to extract and eliminate the witness.

César, an unhappy concierge, maintains a peculiar relationship with the very diverse inhabitants of the upper-class apartment building where he works in Barcelona.

A beautiful fugitive draws a shy film buff out of his shell while she hides in the museum — the cavernous interiors of the Mole Antonelliana in Turin, Italy — where he works as night watchman.

Qinawi, a physically challenged peddler who makes his living selling newspapers in the central Cairo train station, is obsessed with Hanuma, an attractive young woman who sells drinks. While she jokes with him about a possible relationship, she is actually in love with Abu Siri, a strong and respected porter at the station who is struggling to unionize his fellow workers to combat their boss' exploitative and abusive treatment.

The sudden disappearance of a wealthy banker's wife cracks open a dizzying world of secret fetishes, desperate acts and elaborate deceptions.

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.

Among normal humans live the "Others" possessing various supernatural powers. They are divided up into the forces of light and the forces of the dark, who signed a truce several centuries ago to end a devastating battle. Ever since, the forces of light govern the day while the night belongs to their dark opponents. In modern day Moscow the dark Others actually roam the night as vampires while a "Night Watch" of light forces, among them Anton, the movie's protagonist, try to control them and limit their outrage

A chambermaid and a former cop meet at a speed dating event and a romance develops. But during a romantic getaway things suddenly take a turn for the worse when her mysterious past is revealed.

A security guard working at an art museum in Vienna crosses paths with a Canadian woman in town to visit her ailing cousin.

Morán works as a clerk in a bank in Buenos Aires. He is as good as invisible to his colleagues. Over dinner with his colleague Román, Morán tells him that he stole exactly $650,000, which is exactly double what he would have made until his retirement. He plans to turn himself in, but not before offering Román to split the money if agrees to hide it for the duration of his incarceration.

Gilda has long since moved to a small southern island and earns her living as a prostitute in a context suspended between retrograde traditions and modernity. During one summer, his destiny intersects with that of Olivia and Crocetta, two women from the area, the former a happy wife and the latter an ugly, unlucky wife. The three are forced by fortuitous circumstances to come together to save themselves but their behavior attracts the suspicions of Nino Malachia, a brusque police commissioner who is convinced that they are hiding something.

Detective Martin Beck investigates the grisly murder of a police Lieutenant in his hospital room, he soon realises the urgency of the case when it turns out the killer may hold a hatred for all policemen.

A restaurant opens at midnight. Both the menu offerings and personality of the owner draw a series of flawed patrons including Tamako, whose boyfriend has passed away, live-in worker Michiru, and ruckus-raising Kenzo.

A blind musician hears a murder committed in the apartment upstairs from hers that sends her down a dark path into London's gritty criminal underworld.

In Italy, Checco Dal Monte manages a troupe of traveling performers with plenty of heart but minimal talent. At a small town engagement, he encounters the starry-eyed, gorgeous Lily Antonelli, and hires her as a dancer on the show. Vivacious Lily quickly sells out crowds and earns the resentment of Checco's mistress, Melina Amour, but the fledgling performer has far bigger ambitions and soon sets her sights on a higher-profile role.

A young agent leaves everything behind to pose as a member of ETA, risking her life to uncover the terrorists' hideouts in the south of France.

The lives of the tenants of a lower-class apartment building in the outskirts intersect on a backdrop of crime, drug dealing, confused feelings and tainted relationships, in a lucid portrait of contemporary Rome. Marcello, a bisexual former body builder married with Chiara, has an affair with the bourgeois professor Walter; the ambitious Mauro and cold-blooded dealer and his wife Simona get involved in the ambiguous business of the local boss Carmine to move up to the elegant and cruel circles of central Rome that profit from the public funds for the disadvantaged; Valeria and her son Attilio, Flaminia and her violent husband Bruno face the daily difficulties of their troubled lives. The corrupted powers of urban speculation invade a suspended corner of the suburbs, contaminating the lives of a group of lost souls,revealing the desperate world of the slum and the pitiless scene of the city center as the hidden face of the same coin.

Two young women find themselves struggling to survive in Paris, street-wise Nathalie, a stripper, and naïve Sandrine, a barmaid. Together, they discover that sex can be used to their advantage, and pleasure.

In a Naples suspended between magic and superstition, madness and rationality, a mystery envelops the existence of Adriana, overwhelmed by a sudden love and a violent crime.

Based on Tommy Jaud's bestselling novel, this comedy focuses on a dispassionate clerk and his set-backs in life. 29-year-old Simon works in a phone shop, but his thoughts just circle around finding a new girl-friend after being left by his last one year ago. While his Croatian cleaner tries to procure him, his efforts to chat up women in clubs also fail. However, he finds the woman of his dreams (and mother of their future children) in his most hated coffee shop, although not having a clue how to win her heart...

The once unconditional friendship between police officers Vincke and Verstuyft hits a very rough patch when they come up against a series of gruesome murders. Complicating matters even further, a survivor of the killer drives a wedge between them when Verstuyft falls for her charms. Meanwhile, the serial killer has a new victim in sight...

A troubled young woman who, in a last-ditch effort at getting her life together, takes a job working nights as a security guard at an abandoned luxury apartment building. Stuck with a brusque rent-a-cop as her partner, she tries to not let her mind play tricks on her while she patrols the empty halls. But as the night progresses strange things begin to happen - and she realizes it may not all be in her head.

Gooische Vrouwen (Vipers Nest) is based on a very popular Dutch TV series and can be described as a Dutch variation of Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. The film tells the story of four girlfriends who live in the bourgeois area ‘t Gooi, where life always seems to run smoothly, but dark clouds are gathering on the horizon. A flight seems the only way out…

Beleaguered police detective Nishi takes desperate measures to try and set things right in a world gone wrong. With his wife suffering from leukemia and his business partner paralyzed from a brutal gangster attack, Nishi borrows from a yakuza loan shark and then robs a bank to clear his debt.

In the harbor city of Le Havre, France, a woman is stabbed during the night, just below the windows of her neighborhood. Pierre (Yvan Attal) has witnessed the murder, and heard the wails of the women crying for help. So have the neighbors, certainly. But at the end, nobody called the police. Nevertheless, sorrows are too heavy for Pierre, which feel the needs to tell everything to his wife (Sophie Quinton), and to the police. During the investigation, it appears that 38 people witnessed the murdering, and none reacted...

When Erik, a Stockholm urbanite, learns that his beauty-queen sister, Susie, is missing, he goes to their country roots to look for her. But after talking to the eccentric locals -- including a shy video store clerk and a corrupt police officer -- Erik finds a woman who is not at all like the girl he left behind. Award-winning director Ulf Malmros helms this black comedy infused with hipster flair.

Anna is living with "face-blindness" after surviving a serial killer's attack. As she lives with her condition, one in which facial features change each time she loses sight of them, the killer closes in.

Katja's life collapses after the deaths of her husband and son in a bomb attack. After a time of mourning and injustice, Katja seeks revenge.

In a Tokyo love hotel district, a woman is found dead in a derelict apartment. As police investigate, a romance novelist's wife lives a life that seems simply a daily repetition without romance. To break away from the loveless monotony, she follows her desires and becomes a nude model enacting sex in front of a camera. Soon, she meets a mentor and begins selling her body to strangers, while at home, she hides behind the façade that she's still the doting wife she's supposed to be.

Oslo, Norway. After living a traumatic experience, Anna and her son Anders move into a huge apartment building. Feeling constantly terrified and insecure, Anna buys a babycall to monitor Anders while he sleeps.

A new student, Manuela, enters a strict girls' boarding school after her mother’s death, where she finds comfort in a kind teacher, stirring complex emotions within her.

Late one evening Alex suddenly abandons his girlfriend, Simone, to pursue the beautiful Aimee. In his encounter with Aimee time and place dissolve for him and he becomes a stranger to Simone, to whom he cannot return.

In the 18th Arrondissement of Paris, Lambert, an aloof garage manager working the night shift at a petrol station spends his time drinking on the job, content in his own company. One night, Bensoussan, a small-time drug pusher in dire straits falls in on a stolen moped pretending to need a spark plug. The two men develop an unlikely friendship.

With a serial strangler on the loose, a bookkeeper wanders around town searching for the vigilante group intent on catching the killer.

Mady, a student, works as a locksmith by night. He helps Claire get into her apartment and soon realizes that she lied to him about her identity and robbed something that belonged to a dangerous man, Yannick. Mady gets embroiled in a manhunt and will have one night to prove his innocence.

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 the night falls, and the creatures of the dark are crawling out of the shadows, there is only one man who stands between us and evil: Edward Carnby.

Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.

Sascha, the young and beautiful trophy girlfriend of a Danish drug lord, arrives at his holiday villa in the seaside town of Bodrum, on the Turkish Riviera, where she is welcomed into his inner circle. Under the summer sun, she lives a carefree dream of luxury and fun until she meets Tomas, a Dutch traveler trying to discover himself.

Rouhi, a young bride-to-be, is hired as a maid for an affluent family in Tehran. Upon arriving, she is suddenly thrust into an explosive domestic conflict. The wife is convinced her husband is having an affair and enlists Rouhi as a spy, to follow her husband, and confirm her suspicions. What Rouhi discovers, however, threatens not only their marriage but her own future.

Melissa is an experienced, exemplary prison guard. But a dangerous spiral is set into motion when she transfers to a Corsican jail, where she accepts help and protection from inmate Saveriu to get her bearings. Upon his release, he contacts Melissa expecting to collect.

A disconnected teenage girl enters a relationship with a man twice her age. She sees him as the solution to all her problems, but his intentions are not what they seem.

In the teeming, multicultural metropolis of modern-day London, a seemingly straightforward missing-person case launches a down-at-heel private eye into a dangerous world of religious fanaticism and political intrigue.

Rome, Italy. After committing a heinous crime, a senior police officer exposes evidence incriminating him because his moral commitment prevents him from circumventing the law and the social order it protects.

