My Own Private IdahoMovies like My Own Private Idaho
- Key Features:
- Prostitution, Narcolepsy, Shakespearean adaptation, Estranged family, Identity crisis, Road trip, Drug use, LGBTQ+, Coming-of-age, Friendship, Independent film, Search for identity, Sexual exploitation, Class conflict
- Tone:
- serious, poetic, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Independent film enthusiasts, LGBTQ+ audiences, Art house aficionados, Drama lovers
- Emotional Arc:
- Confusion → Longing → Disillusionment
My Own Private Idaho

In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
My Own Private Idaho
Writer and Adderall enthusiast Stephen Elliott reaches a low point when his estranged father resurfaces, claiming that Stephen has fabricated much of the dark childhood that that fuels his writing. Adrift in the precarious gray area of memory, Stephen is led by three sources of inspiration: a new romance, the best friend who shares his history, and a murder trial that reminds him more than a little of his own story. Based on the memoir of the same name.

A wheelchair-bound singer and her best friend embark on a roadtrip to Memphis.

After a failed assassination attempt, a soldier finds himself stranded in the desert. Exposed to the elements, he must survive the dangers of the desert and battle the psychological and physical toll of the treacherous conditions.

Single mom Laura, along with her awkward 14 year-old son Henry is forced to drive Jack, her estranged, care-free pot dealing father across country after he's kicked out of yet another nursing home.

At the age of ten, Henry James Hermin, a boy who was conceived in a petri-dish and raised by his feminist mother, follows a string of Post-It notes in hopes of finding his biological father.

18-year-old Noah moves from America to London, with her mother who's recently fallen in love with William, a wealthy British businessman. Noah meets William’s son, bad-boy Nick, and soon discovers there is an attraction between them neither can avoid. As Noah spends the summer adjusting to her new life, her devastating past will catch up with her while falling in love for the first time.

Michele Apicella lives in Rome, in an apartment paid for by his father. Abandoned by his wife and his son Andrea, he occupies his time acting in an experimental theater company under the artistic direction of his friend Fabio.

Brad has committed murder and barricaded himself inside his house. With the help of his friends and neighbours, the cops piece together the strange tale of how this nice young man arrived at such a dark place.

A young man turns from drug addiction and petty crime to a life redeemed by a discovery of compassion.

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

Ruthless silver miner, turned oil prospector, Daniel Plainview, moves to oil-rich California. Using his son to project a trustworthy, family-man image, Plainview cons local landowners into selling him their valuable properties for a pittance. However, local preacher Eli Sunday suspects Plainview's motives and intentions, starting a slow-burning feud that threatens both their lives.

When Tyler Davidson brings his college buddy Chase home for the summer holidays a secret is revealed that threatens to tear his perfect family apart.

Troy and his young transgender son Joe are on the run from his conservative mother in the Montana wilderness, with a detective in hot pursuit.

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

A mother takes her two sons on an unusual road trip from New York to Pittsburgh, St. Louis and eventually Hollywood in her quest to find a man to take care of them all.

In the Yorkshire countryside, working-class tomboy Mona meets the exotic, pampered Tamsin. To seal their friendship, Mona introduces Tamsin to her born-again Christian brother and helps her spy on her adulterous father. Bound together by their secrets, the two girls see their friendship deepen and enter into dangerous waters.

James White is a troubled twentysomething trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. As he retreats further into a hedonistic lifestyle, his mother's battle with a serious illness faces a series of setbacks that force him to assume more responsibility. With the pressure on him mounting, James must find new reserves of strength or risk imploding completely.

Jérémie, a young man reaching a breaking point on all fronts, decides to leave behind Paris and return to Limosin, to the home of his intrusive mother.

In the late 1990s, the arrival of elderly invalid Patrick into Marion and Tom’s home triggers the exploration of seismic events from 40 years previous: the passionate relationship between Tom and Patrick at a time when homosexuality was illegal.

In the Salinas Valley in and around World War I, Cal Trask feels he must compete against overwhelming odds with his brother for the love of their father. Cal is frustrated at every turn, from his reaction to the war, how to get ahead in business and in life, and how to relate to his estranged mother.

While in his teens, Donny fathered a son, Todd, and raised him as a single parent up until Todd's 18th birthday. Now, after not seeing each other for years, Todd's world comes crashing down when Donny resurfaces just before Todd's wedding.

Two middle-aged men embark on a spiritual journey through Californian wine country. One is an unpublished novelist suffering from depression, and the other is only days away from walking down the aisle.

The story of a child star attempting to mend his relationship with his law-breaking, alcohol-abusing father over the course of a decade, loosely based on Shia LaBeouf’s life.

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

40-year-old Daniel has been suspended from active police work and is under internal investigation for violence. When Sara, his internet love affair, stops answering his texts he decides to drive north in search of her, starting on what is apparently a fool's errand. He shows Sara's picture around, but nobody seems to recognize the woman. Until eventually one guy pops up, saying he can put the two in touch under very specific conditions.

International art dealer Ron Hall must befriend a dangerous homeless man in order to save his struggling marriage to his wife, a woman whose dreams will lead all three of them on the journey of their lives.

With John's social life at a standstill and his ex-wife about to get remarried, a down on his luck divorcée finally meets the woman of his dreams, only to discover she has another man in her life - her son. Before long, the two are locked in a battle of wits for the woman they both love-and it appears only one man can be left standing when it's over.

After several years away, FBI agent Henry Durand returns to find his mother, Marty, a much different person: Having long mourned for Henry's father, she is now embracing single life. One day, while Marty, Henry and his new fiancée, Emily, are out for a walk, they meet Tommy, a mysterious stranger with whom Marty then becomes involved. However, through his FBI contacts, Henry learns that Tommy is suspected of being an art thief. As a young federal agent, Henry is given a difficult assignment: spy on his mother and her boyfriend who is suspected of leading a gang of art thieves.

An urgent phone call pulls a Yale Law student back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future.

Christian, a hunky, 20-something, West Hollywood party boy gets more than he bargains for when he tries to seduce Aaron, a sexually confused Mormon missionary who moves into his apartment complex.

At the end of WWII, Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot who fought in France, suffers from unexplainable symptoms and is admitted to a military hospital. When doctors suspect schizophrenia, an eccentric psychoanalyst takes up the case and starts a conversation with the veteran.

A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.

Even though he's the only black student at the elite Palmetto Grove Academy, star basketball player and future NBA hopeful Odin James has the adoration of all, including the team's coach and the Dean's beautiful daughter Desi. Odin's troubled friend Hugo, the coach's son, is deeply resentful of his father's preference of Odin on and off the court. When Hugo plots a diabolical scheme to sow the seed of mistrust between O and Desi, it sets in motion a disturbing chain of events which erupts into a firestorm of breathtaking intensity.

A retelling of the biblical book of Hosea set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush of 1850.

Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.

A domineering but charismatic rancher wages a war of intimidation on his brother's new wife and her teen son, until long-hidden secrets come to light.

Loner Diane Ford is a truck driver with an 11-year-old son, Peter, whom she never sees, and that's fine with her. But, when Peter's father, Len, falls ill, he asks Diane to take care of their son for a while. Eventually, Diane reluctantly agrees, but she quickly realizes that caring for a child interferes with her independent lifestyle - and Peter isn't all that thrilled with the arrangement, either.

Rhode Island State Trooper Charlie Baileygates has a multiple personality disorder. One personality is crazy and aggressive, while the other is more friendly and laid back. Both of these personalities fall in love with the same woman named Irene after Charlie loses his medication.

The Falls is a feature film about two missionaries that fall in love while on their mission. RJ travels to a small town in Oregon with Elder Merrill to serve their mission and teach the words of Joseph Smith. Living together and sharing the challenge of leaving home, the two men help each other discover their strengths. They share a passion for their faith and learn to express their feelings, risking the only community they have for a forbidden intimacy.

In the not so distant future, Theodore, a lonely writer, purchases a newly developed operating system designed to meet the user's every need. To Theodore's surprise, a romantic relationship develops between him and his operating system. This unconventional love story blends science fiction and romance in a sweet tale that explores the nature of love and the ways that technology isolates and connects us all.

After hitting rock bottom in Los Angeles, former porn star Mikey Saber returns to his hometown in Texas to stay with his estranged wife and mother-in-law. Just as tensions begin to ease, he becomes infatuated with a young doughnut shop worker named Strawberry.

After flying home to L.A. for the funeral of his estranged record-producer father, a struggling man discovers that the will stipulates that he must deliver $150,000 in cash to a 30-year-old alcoholic sister he never knew existed, and her troubled 12-year-old son.

The story of American poet Emily Dickinson from her early days as a young schoolgirl to her later years as a reclusive, unrecognized artist.

A Jewish teenager sets three goals: lose his virginity, become a writer, and survive World War II.

When Lenny and his wife, Amanda, adopt a baby, Lenny realizes that his son is a genius and becomes obsessed with finding the boy's biological mother in hopes that she will be brilliant too. But when he learns that Max's mother is Linda Ash, a kindhearted prostitute and porn star, Lenny is determined to reform her immoral lifestyle. A Greek chorus chimes in to relate the plot to Greek mythology in this quirky comedy.

Pierre is seventeen and in the middle of puberty. He plays in a band, has sex at parties and secretly tries on women’s clothing and lipstick in front of a mirror. Ever since his father’s death, his mother Aracy has looked after him and his younger sister Jacqueline, spoiling them both. But when he discovers that she stole him from a hospital when he was a new born baby, Pierre’s life changes dramatically. In her new film, director Anna Muylaert explores the mother-child relationship through the eyes of a rebellious son whose whole world unravels overnight.

Although Brad has a satisfying career, a sweet wife and a comfortable life in suburban Sacramento, things aren't quite what he imagined during his college glory days. When he accompanies his musical prodigy son on a university tour, he can't help comparing his life with those of his four best college friends who seemingly have more wealthy and glamorous lives. But when circumstances force him to reconnect with his former friends, Brad begins to question whether he has really failed or if their lives are actually more flawed than they appear.

New York, 1937. A teenager hired to star in Orson Welles' production of Julius Caesar becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.

Though a childhood bout with polio left him dependent on an iron lung, Mark O'Brien maintains a career as a journalist and poet. A writing assignment dealing with sex and the disabled piques Mark's curiosity, and he decides to investigate the possibility of experiencing sex himself. When his overtures toward a caregiver scare her away, he books an appointment with sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene to lose his virginity.

A near-penniless drifter's journey to Alaska in search of work is interrupted when she loses her dog while attempting to shoplift food for it.

Upon learning that their mother has been lying to them for years about their allegedly deceased father, two fraternal twin brothers hit the road in order to find him.

When eight male cadets are left behind at an isolated military high school, the greatest romantic drama ever written seeps out of the classroom and permeates their lives.

A story of a man who fakes his own death and assumes a new identity in order to escape his life, who then moves in with a woman who is also trying to leave her past behind.

When Leif’s estranged mother, Honey dies she leaves him a ‘conditional inheritance’. He has to complete her elaborate to-do list before he gets her cabin in Yosemite. Leif steps into Honey’s wild world as the mother he never really knew tries to make amends from beyond the grave.

While touring in Italy, a recently-widowed American opera singer has an incestuous relationship with her 15-year-old son to help him overcome his heroin addiction.

Single dad Richard meets Christine, a starving artist who moonlights as a cabbie. They awkwardly attempt to start a romance, but Richard’s divorce has left him emotionally damaged. Meanwhile, Richard’s sons—one a teenager, the other 6-years-old—take part in clumsy experiments with the opposite sex.

Gail and Tom Hartman are struggling to stay together and decide to take a white-water rafting holiday adventure in Montana for their son Roarke's 10th birthday, only to meet up with a pair of mysterious men whose desperation grows, turning their vacation into a nightmare.

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

In a decript apartment, a young man watches as his father and a friend shoot an amateur porn film. Issues of morality, reality TV and friendship are explored.

Cherry drifts from college dropout to army medic in Iraq—anchored only by his one true love, Emily. But after returning from the war with PTSD, his life spirals into drugs and crime as he struggles to find his place in the world.

Jack is caught with the wife of his employer, a Vegas thug. The thug sends goons after Jack, who convinces his best friend, Pilot, to flee with him. Pilot insists that they head for Seattle, but doesn't tell Jack why. The goons learn from Pilot's drug source where the youths are headed, and they follow, hell bent on breaking Jack's feet. On the road, Jack and Pilot give a ride to Cassie, a distressed young woman. She and Jack hit it off. They pick up an aging stoner headed to Seattle for Kurt Cobain's memorial, and they help a circus sideshow family. Why is Pilot so set on Seattle, will the goons catch Jack, and is there any way the friends' competing needs can be resolved?

Stranded on an isolated desert road, two life-long friends fight for survival as their already strained relationship spirals into knife-wielding madness.

Precocious young Harriet and her older sister Gwen live at their mother's motel in small-town New Hampshire. Harriet dreams of a life beyond her inattentive family and the stultifying town. A mentally disabled man named Ricky comes to stay at the motel, and Harriet finds him kinder and more interesting than anyone she has ever met. After tragedy strikes, Harriet and Ricky cling to each other ever more tightly.

An 18th birthday mushroom trip brings free-spirited Elliott face-to-face with her wisecracking 39-year-old self. But when Elliott’s "old ass" starts handing out warnings about what her younger self should and shouldn't do, Elliott realizes she has to rethink everything about family, love, and what's becoming a transformative summer.

A young woman dealing with anorexia meets an unconventional doctor who challenges her to face her condition and embrace life.

A young farmer in rural Yorkshire numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker.

An unlikely friendship unfolds between a young deaf boy, Wesley, and a fugitive criminal who takes refuge in an abandoned barn on the family’s rural North Dakota farm.

An introverted teenager tells his parents he is going on a ski trip, but instead spends his time alone in his mom's basement. But things didn't go as planned after his half sister joins him.

King is a young man, but he's already a veteran of life on the streets of Los Angeles. The de facto leader of a group of teenage runaways, King acts as a mentor to troubled kids such as gay hustler Little J and junkie Greg. When Heather, a beautiful girl from Chicago, starts hanging out with King and his crew, it changes the dynamic of the gang. However, it seems as though nothing will alter their dangerous lifestyle.

A suicidal artist goes into the desert, where he finds his doppelgänger, a homicidal drifter.

After 25 years, an ex hired gun visits his old colleague, who is now a small town sheriff. Their past relationship is explored, as is how they reflect on it in the present.

A massage therapist looking to overcome her addictions and reconnect with her son, whose father is an anthropologist in South America studying the Yanomani people, moves in with a wealthy ex-client in New Jersey.

A group of actors and their casting agents try to find a direction in their lives whilst coming to terms with their personal problems and relationship conflicts.

Ned is in the throes of a mid-life crisis. His work as a writer on an outrageous, semi-pornographic TV show is less than satisfying. His fifteen year old son has just told him he is gay and his eleven year old is afraid of, well pretty much everything. When his wife, Jeannie, moves her sick and embittered father from Detroit into their home in NY, it puts added stress on an already strained marriage. And when a sexy female co-worker puts the moves on Ned, the temptation sends him spiraling.

The sierras of southern Brazil, 1963. The son of an French man and a Brazilian woman, Tony is a young man with a profound love of cinema and poetry. After graduating from college he returns to his small town in rural Brazil, to find out that his father had left for good, back to France. Tony then looks for the company of his fathers friends in search of information and references of a lost male role-model. He becomes a school teacher and a male figure to kids, in an attempt to provide them with something he lacks himself. A series of developments lead him to a surprising final lead on his fathers' whereabouts and reasons for leaving.

The lives of three men who were childhood friends are shattered when one of them suffers a family tragedy.

In this adaptation of the best-selling roman à clef about Bill Clinton's 1992 run for the White House, the young and gifted Henry Burton is tapped to oversee the presidential campaign of Governor Jack Stanton. Burton is pulled into the politician's colorful world and looks on as Stanton -- who has a wandering eye that could be his downfall -- contends with his ambitious wife, Susan, and an outspoken adviser, Richard Jemmons.

In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.

A widowed mother and her son change when a mysterious stranger enters their lives.

Sharing the same psychologist, kleptomaniac Roberto, who writes stories a bit too realistic and scary for kids, and a narcoleptic Beatrice, who documents everything in her life, begin to think that love could be the cure for their problems. But nothing comes easy to either of them, and, just like in one of Roberto's stories, the happy ending really needs to be sought after. Will they find their own?

The professional and emotional cross-currents between two romantically entwined theater actors played by the director’s son Louis and Anna Mouglalis.

Oliver meets the irreverent and unpredictable Anna only months after his father Hal Fields has passed away. This new love floods Oliver with memories of his father, who, following the death of his wife of 44 years, came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized, and wonderfully tumultuous gay life – which included a younger boyfriend.

Clara and Hans are left-wing terrorists who have been sought by police for almost fifteen years. Their increasingly rebellious daughter Jeanne begins to pose a threat to their security when she falls in love with a boy she meets on the beach.

Middle-aged Jem sets out from his suburban home on a journey into the woods, where he reconnects with his estranged hermit brother Ray. Bonded by a mysterious, complicated past, the men share a fraught, if occasionally tender relationship—one that was forever altered by shattering events decades earlier.

A handsome Belgian sailor on shore leave in the port of Brest, who is also a drug smuggler and murderer, embarks upon a voyage of highly charged and violent homosexual self-discovery that will change him forever from the man he once was.

Al McCord is hanging out at his favourite restaurant when he meets an attractive young woman (Ellie) who is looking for a ride from the city out into the Mojave Desert, where her mother lives. Little does he know that while Ellie is falling in love with him, he is falling for her mother (Julie), despite the nearby presence of Julie's boyfriend who seems likely to go berzerk at any moment. Even more strange, hilarious events follow and it's up to Al to find some explanation. His life may never again be the same.

David, a struggling comedy writer fresh off from breaking up with his boyfriend, moves from New York City to Sacramento to help his sick mother. Living with his conservative father and much-younger sisters for the first time in ten years, he feels like a stranger in his childhood home. As his mother’s health declines, David frantically tries to extract meaning from this horrible experience and convince everyone (including himself) that he's "doing okay.”

Jonathan is a young man with a strange condition that only his brother understands. But when he begins to yearn for a different life, their unique bond becomes increasingly tested.

Summertime on the coast of Maine, "In the Bedroom" centers on the inner dynamics of a family in transition. Matt Fowler is a doctor practicing in his native Maine and is married to New York born Ruth Fowler, a music teacher. His son is involved in a love affair with a local single mother. As the beauty of Maine's brief and fleeting summer comes to an end, these characters find themselves in the midst of unimaginable tragedy.

A peculiar neighbor offers hope to a recent widow who is struggling to raise a teenager who is unpredictable and, sometimes, violent.

When a man's only son goes missing, he travels to the town where his ex-wife lives in search of answers. To play a man whose life is clouded by mystery, McAvoy will not be given a script of dialogue.

Igby Slocumb, a rebellious and sarcastic 17-year-old boy, is at war with the stifling world of old money privilege he was born into. With a schizophrenic father, a self-absorbed, distant mother, and a shark-like young Republican big brother, Igby figures there must be a better life out there -- and sets about finding it.

A young father and his two children struggle to find harmony after his wife leaves them for another man.

Charlie is a troublesome 18-year-old who breaks out of a youth drug treatment clinic, but when he returns home to Los Angeles, he's given an intervention by his parents and forced to go to an adult rehab. There, he meets a beautiful but troubled girl, Eva, and is forced to battle with drugs, elusive love and divided parents.

A woman in an unhappy relationship takes refuge with a friend's family on holiday in Tuscany.

Paul is preparing to leave Tajikistan, while thinking back on his adolescent years. His childhood, his mother's madness, the parties, the trip to the USSR where he lost his virginity, the friend who betrayed him and the love of his life.

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

The true story of a small town, working class father who embarks on a solo walk across the U.S. to crusade against bullying after his son is tormented in high school for being gay.

A terminally ill man and his teenage daughter embark on a road trip from California to New Orleans for his 20th college reunion. While there, he secretly hopes she can reunite with the mother who left them long ago.
