Searching for Bobby FischerMovies like Searching for Bobby Fischer
- Key Features:
- Chess, Child prodigy, Mentorship, Coming-of-age, Family, Competition, Talent, Ethics, Pressure, Individualism, Sportsmanship, Genius, Sacrifice, Ambition
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Family audiences, Chess enthusiasts, Coming-of-age stories, Intellectual dramas
- Emotional Arc:
- Innocence → Pressure → Self-discovery
Searching for Bobby Fischer

A seven-year-old chess prodigy refuses to harden himself in order to become a champion like the famous but unlikable Bobby Fischer.
Searching for Bobby Fischer
The first documentary feature to explore the tragic and bizarre life of the late chess master Bobby Fischer.

American chess champion Bobby Fischer prepares for a legendary match-up against Russian Boris Spassky.

From a young age Magnus Carlsen had aspirations of becoming a champion chess player. While many players seek out an intensely rigid environment to hone their skills, Magnus’ brilliance shines brightest when surrounded by his loving and supportive family. Through an extensive amount of archival footage and home movies, director Benjamin Ree reveals this young man’s unusual and rapid trajectory to the pinnacle of the chess world. This film allows the audience to not only peek inside this isolated community but also witness the maturation of a modern genius.

A young girl overcomes her disadvantaged upbringing in the slums of Uganda to become a Chess master.

Based on a true story from 1998, five Latino and Black teenagers from the toughest underserved ghetto in Miami fight their way into the National Chess Championship under the guidance of their unconventional but inspirational teacher.

Fahim Mohammad, a Bangladeshi immigrant, becomes a world junior chess champion in France.

A troubled and angry 11-year-old orphan from a small Texas town, ends up at a Boy Choir school after the death of his single mother. Completely out of his element, he finds himself in a battle of wills with a demanding Choir Master who recognises a unique talent in this young boy as he pushes him to discover his creative heart and soul in music.

Hélène, a housekeeper at a ritzy hotel in Corsica, is devoted to her family but lacks any passion in her own life. When she sees a handsome couple play a passionate game of chess, she becomes inspired to play herself. Hélène's working-class husband and spoiled daughter are soon bewildered by her obsession with chess. They also grow suspicious of Hélène's close relationship with Dr. Kröger, her eccentric American expat tutor.

1938. While the Nazi troops march into Vienna, the lawyer Josef Bartok hastily tries to escape to the USA with his wife but is arrested by the Gestapo. Bartok remains steadfast and refuses to cooperate with the Gestapo that requires confidential information from him. Thrown into solitary confinement, Bartok is psychologically tormented for months and begins to weaken. However, when he steals an old book about chess it sets him on course to overcome the mental suffering inflicted upon him, until it becomes a dangerous obsession.

Lyla and Louis, a singer and a musician, fall in love, but are soon compelled to separate. Lyla is forced to give up her newborn but unknown to her, he grows up to become a musical genius.

A socially awkward teenage math prodigy finds new confidence and new friendships when he lands a spot on the British squad at the International Mathematics Olympiad.

The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.

Jimmy is a committed child psychologist who uses his own playbook, but when he is brought in to work with Ellie, he is completely unprepared for his subject—a 9-year-old psychopathic genius with nothing to lose. As he begins to understand the extent of her capabilities and the fate that has been planned for her, he struggles to overcome her defenses before it is too late for them both.

Vitus tells the story of a highly-gifted boy (played by real-life piano prodigy Teo Gheorghiu) whose parents have demanding and ambitious plans for him.

With the help of her coach, her mom, and the boy who drives the Zamboni, nothing can stop Casey Carlyle from realizing her dream to be a champion figure skater.

Seven year old Sasha practices violin every day to satisfy the ambition of his parents. Already withdrawn as a result of his routines, Sasha quickly regains confidence when he accidentally meets and befriends worker Sergei, who works on a steamroller in their upscale Moscow neighborhood.

At the American Computer Chess Convention, enthusiasts gather to pit their programs against other computer chess programs and human players in a tournament for a grand prize of $7500.

Charlie Boyle finds that even his high IQ can't solve all of his problems when he takes on a double life in order to make friends his own age.

A man searches for his childhood best friend, a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust, who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.

Frank, a single man raising his child prodigy niece Mary, is drawn into a custody battle with his mother.

Alfred “Boogie” Chin is a basketball phenom living in Queens, New York, who dreams of one day playing in the NBA. While his parents pressure him to focus on earning a scholarship to an elite college, Boogie must find a way to navigate a new girlfriend, high school, on-court rivals and the burden of expectation.

The true story of one man's mission to give inner city kids of Washington DC something he never had - a future. After being incarcerated for eighteen years, Eugene Brown established the Big Chair Chess Club to get kids off the streets and working towards lives they never believed they were capable of. This is his inspirational story.

After David Kim's 16-year-old daughter goes missing, a local investigation is opened and a detective is assigned to the case. But 37 hours later and without a single lead, David decides to search the one place no one has looked yet, where all secrets are kept today: his daughter's laptop.

A chess grandmaster is in a big tournament, and when his lover is found painted up and the blood drained out of her body he becomes a chief suspect. After he gets a call from the killer urging him to try and figure out the game, he cooperates with police and a psychologist to try and catch the killer, but doubts linger about the grandmaster's innocence as the string of grisly murders continues.

Joe Gardner is a middle school teacher with a love for jazz music. After a successful audition at the Half Note Club, he suddenly gets into an accident that separates his soul from his body and is transported to the You Seminar, a center in which souls develop and gain passions before being transported to a newborn child. Joe must enlist help from the other souls-in-training, like 22, a soul who has spent eons in the You Seminar, in order to get back to Earth.

A 12-year-old boy from Brooklyn tries to unite his half-Israeli and half-Palestinian family through cooking.

Bobby Deerfield, a famous American race car driver on the European circuit, falls in love with the enigmatic Lillian Morelli, who is terminally ill.

A career driven professional from Manhattan is wooed by a young painter, who also happens to be the son of her psychoanalyst.

Tyler is a young man who is desperately seeking direction from a world that seems to have abandoned him. Searching for answers he looks to his new friend Indrid who appears to have it all figured out.

This documentary captures the extraordinary twists and turns in the journeys of Rubik's Cube-solving champions Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs.

Sophie is a brilliant student. Encouraged by her maths teacher, she leaves the family farm to attend a science preparatory class. Between new encounters, successes and failures, and faced with fierce competition, Sophie realizes that her dream of joining the Polytechnique represents more than an entrance examination but a true challenge of social climbing.

A woman who works for a non-governmental organization (NGO) forms a special relationship with a young boy in war-torn Chechnya.

Gus Van Sant tells the story of a young African American man named Jamal who confronts his talents while living on the streets of the Bronx. He accidentally runs into an old writer named Forrester who discovers his passion for writing. With help from his new mentor Jamal receives a scholarship to a private school.

George, a lonely and fatalistic teen who's made it all the way to his senior year without ever having done a real day of work, is befriended by Sally, a popular but complicated girl who recognizes in him a kindred spirit.

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

Wife and mother Miriam begins a downward emotional spiral as her husband avoids their collapsing marriage by immersing himself in his 11-year-old daughter's quest to become a spelling-bee champion.

After Roberta Guaspari separates from her husband, she receives encouragement from her mother to take up a job of a music teacher at the Central Park East School in East Harlem.

Candela, the headmistress of an elite school, after a traumatic divorce, returns to her old high school to lead a group of rebellious students through chess. There she will learn that in chess, and in life, it doesn't matter if you are a king or a pawn, because everyone ends up in the same box.

After deciding he needs to do something meaningful with his life, high school wrestler Louden Swain sets out on a mission to drop weight and challenge the area's undefeated champion, which creates problems with his teammates and health. Matters are complicated further when Louden's father takes in an attractive female drifter who's on her way to San Francisco.

Eleven-year-old North has had it with his parents. They are always busy with their careers and don't give North the attention he needs, so he files a lawsuit against them. The judge rules that North should either find new parents or return to his own parents within two months. Thus North starts off on a journey around the world to find parents that really care about him.

After years of caring exclusively for the needs of her husband and children, Agnes, a devoted housewife living in a small town near New York, has found something she really enjoys doing: solving puzzles.

Bobby Griffith was his mother's favorite son, the perfect all-American boy growing up under deeply religious influences in Walnut Creek, California. Bobby was also gay. Struggling with a conflict no one knew of, much less understood, Bobby finally came out to his family.

Pianist David Helfgott, driven by his father and teachers, has a breakdown. Years later he returns to the piano, to popular if not critical acclaim.

A foundling, raised in the circus, Sam Lion becomes a businessman after a trapeze accident. However, when he reaches fifty and becomes tired of his responsibilities and of his son Jean-Philippe, he decides to disappear at sea. However, he runs into Albert Duvivier, one of his former employees. He comes to realise that he has ignored the important things in his life.

After being released from prison, Dr. Nise da Silveira is back at work in a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro where she refuses to employ the new and violent electroshock in the treatment of schizophrenics. Ridiculed by doctors, she is forced to take on the abandoned Sector for Occupational Therapy, where she would start a revolution through paintings, animals and love.

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.

One-time Maori speed-chess champ, Genesis Potini, lives with a bi-polar disorder and must overcome prejudice and violence in the battle to save his struggling chess club, his family and ultimately, himself.

A young boy takes interest in piano while his family begins to disintegrate around him after his father loses his job.

An aging codger named Geri plays a daylong game of chess in the park against himself. Somehow, he begins losing to his livelier opponent. But just when the game's nearly over, Geri manages to turn the tables.

A wanna-be blues guitar virtuoso seeks a long-lost song by legendary musician, Robert Johnson.

Three close knit 12-year-olds - introverted Jacob, precocious Malee and vulnerable Leonard - start down the path of self-discovery and begin to distinguish their own voices from those of their parents.

A man trying to put his life back on track gets some advice from an unexpected benefactor -- the ex-footballer Eric Cantona.

After his parents decide to move to a retirement home in Florida, professional gamer Quincy “Q” Johnson (Jerry Trainor) must find a way to raise 175,000 dollars to buy his family home. After hearing about a tournament for the game “Black Hole” with a grand prize of 175,500 dollars, Quincy enters the tournament, only to be faced with a new challenge. An equally skilled gamer, named Chris Saunders “Prodigy” (Jeanette McCurdy), has become the one block in Quincy’s plan, defeating him at every turn. Quincy then teams-up with his friend Wendell (Amir Talai), to try and find ways to stop Chris from entering the tournament.

Powerful businessman Russ Duritz is self-absorbed and immersed in his work. But by the magic of the moon, he meets Rusty, a chubby, charming 8-year-old version of himself who can't believe he could turn out so badly – with no life and no dog. With Rusty's help, Russ is able to reconcile the person he used to dream of being with the man he's actually become.

William Keane is barely able to cope. It has been six months since his six-year-old daughter was abducted from New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal while traveling with him. Repeatedly drawn to the site of the abduction, Keane wanders the bus station, compulsively replaying the events of that fateful day, as if hoping to change the outcome.

A heart-warming tale about friendship, honor & courage, which sees a young boy become a man as he embarks on a quest to become a knight.

After losing everything, a young fish, Pi, goes to live with his family on the Reef. There he meets the love of his life but finds that she already has the unwanted affections of a bully shark. He must follow his destiny to save her and rid the Reef of this menace for good.

A year after his father's death, Oskar, a troubled young boy, discovers a mysterious key he believes was left for him by his father and embarks on a scavenger hunt to find the matching lock.

A young boxer is taken under the wing of a mob boss after his mother dies and his father is run out of town for being an abusive alcoholic.

Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.

In the 1980s a group of foreign-born Korean teenagers who meet at a Seoul summer camp to learn what it means to be Korean. The three boys, from the U.S., Mexico, and Germany, then meet three girls who rock their world.

Finley, a talented aspiring violinist, meets Beckett, a famous young movie star, on the way to her college semester abroad program in a small coastal village in Ireland. An unexpected romance emerges as the heartthrob Beckett leads the uptight Finley on an adventurous reawakening, and she emboldens him to take charge of his future, until the pressures of his stardom get in the way.

A 10-year-old child prodigy cartographer secretly leaves his family's ranch in Montana where he lives with his cowboy father and scientist mother and travels across the country on board a freight train to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute.

Following an unexpected tragedy, child psychologist Malcolm Crowe meets a nine year old boy named Cole Sear, who is hiding a dark secret.

A young and impatient stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider, whom takes the youth under his wing.

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.

As children, the introverted Smile was being bullied by a gang of kids until the brash Peco comes by and chases all of them them away. Peco then takes Smile under his wings and teaches him how to play the game of ping pong. From there a life long best friend relationship comes into existence between these two polar opposite kids.

A modern adaptation of the classic children's story 'Alice through the Looking Glass', which continued on from the popular 'Alice in Wonderland' story. This time Alice is played by the mother, who falls asleep while reading the the bedtime story to her daughter. Walking through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself in Chessland, a magical and fun world. There she meets the Red and White Queens, as well as many other amusing friends on her journey across the chessboard countryside onto become a crowned queen.

Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.

14-year-old basketball phenom Terron Forte has to navigate the under-the-table world of amateur athletics when he is recruited to an elite NCAA prep school.

Albert Einstein helps a young man who's in love with Einstein's niece to catch her attention by pretending temporarily to be a great physicist.

Jackie Chan is the undefeated Kung Fu Master who dishes out the action in traditional Jackie Chan style. When a young boy sets out to learn how to fight from the Master himself, he not only witnesses some spectacular fights, but learns some important life lessons along the way.

In Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, gifted but volatile folk musician Llewyn Davis struggles with money, relationships, and his uncertain future.

A first-year law student struggles with balancing his coursework and his relationship with the daughter of a stern professor.

Elijah must balance his dream of becoming a master sommelier with his father's expectations that he carry on the family's Memphis BBQ joint.

A coming-of-age story that follows 12-year-old Andy Nichol, a bright student who, like most kids his age, will do anything to avoid conflict for fear of suffering overwhelming ridicule and punishment from his junior high school peers.

16-year old Belle practices playing the violin diligently, but is unable to impart her music with a sensitive undertone. Her life changes when she discovers that sexual desire stimulates passion in her music.

This is all about chasing your dreams, no matter what the obstacles. The story involves a young deaf and dumb boy who is crazy about cricket.

Story of a neglected teen with mild Asperger’s syndrome whose life is changed forever when tragedy hits his family.

A Seattle couple travel to New York to interview colorful former dancer Tobi for research on a dissertation about dance. But soon, common niceties and social graces erode when the questions turn personal and the true nature of the interview is called into question.

Awkward, isolated and disapproving of most of the people around her, a precocious 19-year-old genius is challenged to put her convictions to the test by venturing out on to the NYC dating scene.

Slowed by age and failing eyesight, crack baseball scout Gus Lobel takes his grown daughter along as he checks out the final prospect of his career. Along the way, the two renew their bond, and she catches the eye of a young player-turned-scout.

When a violin prodigy Xiaochun and his father head to Beijing seeking fame and fortune, they soon discover a fierce world of cutthroat ambition. But when Xiaochun is "adopted" by a famous music tutor, success finally seems within reach - until a shocking discovery begins to unravel his entire world, and the boy must make the most difficult choice of his life. Can he achieve the fame his father had always hoped for without losing the extraordinary passion that sets him apart?

On a golden afternoon, wildly curious young Alice tumbles into the burrow and enters the merry, madcap world of Wonderland full of whimsical escapades.

Unable to cope with his military father's sudden death in combat, quick-tempered teen, Conor, starts getting into serious trouble. During an intense lacrosse camp, his father's old friend challenges Conor to get his life on track and become a man.

This historical drama is an account of the early life of British politician Winston Churchill, including his childhood years, his time as a war correspondent in Africa, and culminating with his first election to Parliament.

Valentin, a 9-year-old boy living with his grandmother in late-1960s Buenos Aires, believes his family has problems that only he can solve. The youngster dreams of being reunited with his mother, who's separated from Valentin's abusive father.

When a beautiful first-grade teacher arrives at a prep school, she soon attracts the attention of an ambitious teenager named Max, who quickly falls in love with her. Max turns to the father of two of his schoolmates for advice on how to woo the teacher. However, the situation soon gets complicated when Max's new friend becomes involved with her, setting the two pals against one another in a war for her attention.

Momo has one dream buried for years: become a petanque champion. When an international tournament is announced, he drops his ordinary life to win the first prize and fulfill his dreams.

Surfer Jay Moriarity sets out to ride the Northern California break known as Mavericks.

Follow three professional video game players as they overcome personal adversity, family pressures, and the realities of life to compete in a $1,000,000 tournament that could change their lives forever.

A mother concerned about her young son's disturbing behavior thinks something supernatural may be affecting him.

Beth, a bookish teenager, befriends Emilia, an aspiring novelist who has just arrived in town. Emilia soon begins an affair with Beth's father that threatens to have devastating consequences.

Three young men bond together to escape volatile families in their Rust Belt hometown. As they face adult responsibilities, unexpected revelations threaten their decade-long friendship.

When young Buddy falls into Santa's gift sack on Christmas Eve, he's transported back to the North Pole and raised as a toy-making elf by Santa's helpers. But as he grows into adulthood, he can't shake the nagging feeling that he doesn't belong. Buddy vows to visit Manhattan and find his real dad, a workaholic.

Matthieu is a 33 year old Parisian who finds out that the father he never knew has died and decides to go to his funeral in order to meet his two siblings in Quebec. But once in Montréal, he realizes that nobody is aware of his existence or even interested in it. He is alone, in hostile territory…

Young Ivan Drago's newfound love of board games catapults him into the fantastical and competitive world of game invention, and pits him against the inventor Morodian, who has long desired to destroy the city of Zyl, founded by Ivan's grandfather. To save his family and defeat Morodian, Ivan must come to know what it is to be a true games maker.


