SilentiumMovies like Silentium
- Key Features:
- Abuse, Catholic Church, Suicide, Detective, Investigation, Small town secrets, Corruption, Silence, Religious themes
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, cynical
- Target Audience:
- Crime drama enthusiasts, Viewers interested in social commentary, Fans of European cinema
- Emotional Arc:
- Dread → Suspicion → Resignation
Silentium

A man who accused a catholic bishop of abusing him when he was a child dies in the Austrian city Salzburg. Everyone except his widow and the eccentrical detective Simon Brenner keeps silent and believes that the man killed himself.
Silentium
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.

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.

Former detective Brenner has become an ambulance driver and finds himself, much to his dismay, caught up in a war between two rival first aid organizations.

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.

After the forcible transfer to his Bavarian home village, an ex-criminal cop investigates the death of a school principal who he thinks had lots to hide.

When a priest hears a murderer’s confession, he becomes bound by his vow of silence—even as circumstantial evidence turns suspicion toward him. Torn between faith and self-preservation, he faces public scandal and trial for a crime he cannot reveal the truth about.

Alexandre, a man in his 40s living in Lyon with his wife and children, discovers that the priest who abused him decades ago continues to work with children. He joins forces with others victims of the priest, to bring justice and “lift the burden of silence” about what they endured.

In the 17th century, two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to Japan in an attempt to locate their mentor, who is rumored to have committed apostasy, and to propagate Catholicism.

After the alleged suicide of her priest brother, Grace travels to the remote Scottish convent where he fell to his death. Distrusting the Church's account, she uncovers murder, sacrilege and a disturbing truth about herself.

Brenner returns to Graz, the city where he grew up. When confronted with his old friends, his former girlfriend and the major sin he committed when he was young, murders and a fateful gunshot to the head result. After Brenner comes out of a coma, he begins to search for the person who tried to kill him - however, everybody claims that he himself is responsible. In the beginning Brenner was at the end of his rope, but he could face a new beginning in the end.

Kings should be treated courteously! At least, that's what famous music critic Georg thinks. But he finds himself counting pennies when his chief editor suddenly fires him from the Viennese newspaper for which he has been writing for decades. While keeping his dismissal a secret from his psychotherapist wife Johanna, whose mind is occupied solely by getting pregnant, Georg begins to plot his revenge.

The story of a man who murdered thirty-two people, gained power, and then got afraid because too many people wanted to kill him. One August morning, he disappeared. For fifteen years, everyone believed him dead.

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.

Academy Award®–winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.

In a small village of Communist-era Romania a young couple wish to marry, but Joseph Stalin dies the night prior to their wedding ceremony forcing the bride and groom to marry in silence.

Vienna, 1920. The Austro-Hungarian Empire has collapsed. Peter Perg returns home from the Great War, after years of captivity. But the Vienna he comes home to is nothing like the place he once knew. The new Austrian Republic thrives on social and artistic freedom, but anti-democratic movements and unemployment loom overhead. A stranger in his hometown, his life takes a turn for the worse when one of his former comrades is murdered. Suddenly the mysterious killings of veterans are mounting. Personally connected to the victims, Perg decides to bring the killer to justice. He finds an ally in the cool-headed forensic doctor Theresa Körner, with whom he has a deeper, shared history. Their investigation leads them into the darkest corners of the city, as they confront a brutal and systematic killer and intrigues from within the police force. But when the killer’s net closes around Perg himself, he faces the moral dilemma of his life.

A frustrated, unemployed teacher joins forces with a scammer and his girlfriend in a blackmailing scheme.

Seminary student Michael Kovak reluctantly attends exorcism school at the Vatican. While he’s in Rome, Michael meets an unorthodox priest who introduces him to the darker side of his faith, uncovering the devil’s reach even to one of the holiest places on Earth.

While working a case as an interpreter, a hearing-impaired police detective must confront a group of criminals trying to eliminate a deaf murder witness in her apartment building.

Against the backdrop of a military dictatorship, Eugenia is reunited with her estranged family following her father’s stroke and is forced to confront dark secret.

For centuries, a secret Order of priests has existed within the Church. A renegade priest, Father Alex Bernier, is sent to Rome to investigate the mysterious death of one of the Order's most revered members. Following a series of strangely similar killings, Bernier launches an investigation that forces him to confront unimaginable evil.

Michaela, an epileptic, enrolls in college to study education. She goes off her medication and soon begins hearing voices and seeing apparitions that tell her to avoid religious objects, although she is devoutly Roman Catholic. One priest scoffs at the idea that Michaela could be possessed by demons, but a younger pastor arranges an exorcism for the young woman.

Kurt Gerstein—a member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS—is appalled to discover that a poison gas he helped discover is being used to kill Jews. Driven by his conscience to alert the rest of the world, Gerstein teams up with a young Jesuit priest, Riccardo Fontana, but their protestations fall on deaf ears in the Vatican.

When a priest is jailed for the murder of a nun on whom he was performing an exorcism, an investigative journalist strives to determine whether he in fact murdered a mentally ill person, or if he lost the battle with a demonic presence.

An ancient skeleton has been discovered in Jerusalem in a rich man's tomb. Colouration of the wrist and leg bones indicates the cause of death was crucifiction. other signs, include a gold coin bearing the marks of Pontius Pilate and faint markings around the skull, lead authorities to suspect that these could be the bones of Jesus Christ. Politicians, clerics, religious extremists and those using terror as a means to an end, find their beliefs and identities tested while risking their lives to unearth the truth.....

Stalinstadt, East Germany, 1956. While the Hungarian uprising against Soviets is taking place, teenage members of a classroom of the local school perform a seemingly harmless act that causes unexpected consequences.

In a monastery cut off from the world, the monks run a clinic for the possessed. One day, a young policeman Marek comes to the convent. Posing as a clergyman, he penetrates monastic life and tries to explain the recent, mysterious disappearance of several tormented inmates. It turns out, however, that there is no way out of the monastery.

The fate of three Catholic priests were linked together through tragic events a few years back. Every year, on the anniversary of the catastrophe, they gather to celebrate their survival of the tragedy. Lisowski works at a curia in a big city, building his career while dreaming of the Vatican. Standing in his way, Mordowicz, the archbishop, a luxurious church dignitary who is making use of his political connections to build the largest sanctuary in Poland. Trybus, is a parish priest and often submits to human weaknesses. Kukuła also is not doing well. Despite his passion for faith, he is losing the trust of his flock. Soon, through new tragic events, the paths of the three priests will cross again.

After the unexpected death of the Pope, Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with managing the covert and ancient ritual of electing a new one. Sequestered in the Vatican with the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders until the process is complete, Lawrence finds himself at the center of a conspiracy that could lead to its downfall.

A woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child is forced to confront the events of that day.

A successful, cold-blooded crime novelist gets involved in a kidnapping case while uncovering the corrupt ties between politicians and the local mafia in Valencia, Spain.

In a secluded house in a small seaside town live four unrelated men and the woman who tends to the house and their needs. All former priests, they have been sent to this quiet exile to purge the sins of their pasts, the separation from their communities the worst form of punishment by the Church. They keep to a strict daily schedule devoid of all temptation and spontaneity, each moment a deliberate effort to atone for their wrongdoings.

A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.

Not satisfied with the result of a murder investigation in Warsaw's gay community, an officer in 1980s communist Poland resolves to uncover the truth.

The deeply held religious convictions of an idealistic young priest are challenged when he must face extraordinary events within his own congregation.

After being a victim of rape within their own home, Diana chooses to keep the trauma secret. Mario, her husband, also has something to hide. The silence takes the couple's account over the day turns gradually into a peculiar form of violence.

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.

Karrer plods his way through life in quiet desperation. His environment is drab and rainy and muddy. Eaten up with solitude, his hopelessness would be incurable but for the existence of the Titanik Bar and its beautiful, haunting singer. But the lady is married and Karrer is determined to keep her husband away...

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 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.

The young priest Father Giulio returns to Rome, his hometown, after a long pilgrimage. Don Giulio hopes to live peacefully with his family and his friends, but discovers that many of them are depressed or frustrated, and some suicidal.

Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican, investigates a young boy's terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden.

Paris, December. A conductor of a choir is found mysteriously murdered, with burst eardrums. Lionel Kasdan, a police inspertor the verge of retirement, and Frank Salek, an official of Interpol, embark together on a hunt for the killer, and also to a secret organization specializing in kidnapping children.

A mute gunslinger fights in the defense of a group of outlaws and a vengeful young widow, against a group of ruthless bounty hunters.

Astrid is the wife of an acclaimed lawyer. Silenced for 25 years, her family balance suddenly collapses when her children initiate their search for justice.

Lukas, a young schizophrenic man, has to deal with a new town, a new relationship, and the paranoia in his head.

Johan and his family are Mennonites from the north of Mexico. Against the law of God and Man, Johan falls in love with another woman.

A young woman with no strong religious beliefs, Frankie Paige begins having strange and violent experiences, showing signs of the wounds that Jesus received when crucified. When the Vatican gets word of Frankie's situation, a high-ranking cardinal requests that the Rev. Andrew Kiernan investigate her case. Soon Kiernan realizes that very sinister forces are at work, and tries to rescue Frankie from the entity that is plaguing her.

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.

After being threatened during a confession, a good-natured priest must battle the dark forces closing in around him.

A reformed hunter becomes involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse when he and the local sheriff set out to track a vicious killer who may have kidnapped his daughter years ago.

A policeman suspects that several bizarre deaths in the same family were murders and that the killer is a mysterious woman who just moved to the village.

Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.

A mute man with a violent past is forced to take on the teeming underworld of a near-future Berlin as he searches for his missing girlfriend.

Former East Germany, 1992. Patrick Stein and Markus Bach, two very different police officers, are commissioned to investigate the disappearance of two female teenagers in a remote area of the country. Did they run away from home or did something more terrible happen to them?

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.

A cop investigates whether the man convicted of murdering his daughter is really guilty.

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.

A family decides to buy a lodge in a remote hiking area. Their first customer commits suicide and the distraught family buries his body to avoid the bad publicity. But their luck gets worse, the bodies start piling up, and the family becomes frantic to rectify the situation.

A lawyer defends her father accused of war crimes, but there is more to the case than she suspects.

Will believes his wife Rosalind is innocent of their son's suspected murder, only to discover the devastating truth behind her past links her to another unsolved crime.

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.

Tore, a young lost soul involved with an underground Christian punk movement, falls in with a dysfunctional family who test his seemingly unwavering faith.

A burned-out British police detective finally snaps while interrogating a suspected child molester.

Through his work at a morgue, an incarcerated young man trying to build a new life starts to come to terms with the crime he committed.

Alex, an ex-con working as muscle in a Vienna brothel, dreams of escaping with his girlfriend Tamara, who also works there. Their attempt to break free sets off a chain of events that links their fate with a rural police officer and his troubled marriage. As their lives intersect, a quiet struggle unfolds between guilt, grief, and the desire for redemption.

In a moment of cowardice, Detective Carl Mørck sends Rose, his junior colleague in Department Q, to the remote Danish island of Bornholm to answer his old colleague Christian Habersaat's repeated requests. But during his forced retirement ceremony Christian kills himself sending Rose into a journey deep into her own traumatic past. Later, Department Q are embroiled into an old cold case of a girl found dead hanging in a tree.

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.

The story revolves around three members of a police surveillance squad conducting an investigation into a financial investment group involved in criminal fraud. The focus of the plot, however, is actually on the three officers themselves who stumble upon an opportunity to capitalize on information they gathered during their surveillance.

A young lawyer stumbles upon a vast conspiracy while investigating a brutal murder case.

A cop clashes with his priest brother while investigating the brutal murder of a young prostitute.

An unsettling feeling overwhelms a small Hungarian town when two orthodox Jews arrive with a mysterious trunk. As residents begin to speculate on the purpose of the visit of these two strangers, order starts to crumble in town with some pursuing devious plans and others finding remorse in their hearts.

When two girls go missing, Paul Chartier, an impulsive young police recruit, is assigned to “Maldoror”. This secret unit has been set up to monitor a dangerous sex offender. When the operation fails, fed up with the limits of the legal system, Chartier embarks on a solitary hunt to bring down the culprits.

After the sudden death of her mother, Aurore Gagnon is abused by her disturbed step-mother as her town remains in the silence followed by her death. Based on a true story.

A switchman at a seaside railway witnesses a murder but does not report it after he finds a suitcase full of money at the scene of the crime.

When police discover a young girl brutally murdered, brothers Joe Fairburns and Chrissie Fairburns join their supervisor Robert to investigate main suspect Jason Buliegh, a local sex offender and social outcast. Forced to release Jason from police custody, the Fairburns take matters into their own hands in an attempt to coerce a confession.

A modern, gothic tale of crime and redemption about an aging police officer from a small Ontario Mennonite town who hides a violent past until a local murder upsets the calm of his newly reformed life.

Frustrated with the direction of the church, Cardinal Bergoglio requests permission to retire in 2012 from Pope Benedict. Instead, facing scandal and self-doubt, the introspective Pope Benedict summons his harshest critic and future successor to Rome to reveal a secret that would shake the foundations of the Catholic Church.

A young district attorney seeking to prove a case against a corrupt police detective encounters a former lover and her new protector, a crime boss who refuses to help him.

With the mayoral election approaching, the newly-appointed state prosecutor of a small town suffering from a water supply crisis gradually descends into trouble after a young local woman is raped.

When a homeless Romani boy is arrested at the Danish border for possession of a missing public servant's passport, police inspector Carl Mørck and Department Q are tasked with finding the connection.

Two years after a burn-out, Duval is still unemployed. Contacted by an enigmatic businessman, he is offered a simple and well-paid job: transcribing telephone tapping. Duval accepts financially without questioning the purpose of the organization that employs him. Precipitated at the heart of a political plot, he must face the brutal mechanics of the underground world of the secret services.

Two couples meet for a painful and raw conversation in the aftermath of a violent tragedy.

The Catholic Church secretly investigates Caravaggio as the Pope weighs whether to grant him clemency for killing a rival.

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.

Sent to Mexico to help take care of aging Father Benito, young Father Amaro faces a moral challenge when he meets a 16-year-old girl who he starts an affair with. Likewise, the girl's mother had been having an affair with Father Benito. Father Amaro must choose between a holy or sinful life.

Matt, an influencer and young parent to newborn Julius, discovers a dark secret from his dementing father's past. He starts an in-depth investigation, which consequently opens a Pandora's box of secrets and unravels more family dramas than anticipated. Matt's wife, Liv, is deeply concerned and will do everything in her power not to lose him, but is it too late..?

A recent college graduate flees to Paris after a break-up, where his involvement with a prostitute begins to reveal a potentially dark recent past.

After her widowed father dies, deaf teenager Dot moves in with her godparents, Olivia and Paul Deer. The Deers' daughter, Nina, is openly hostile to Dot, but that does not prevent her from telling her secrets to her silent stepsister, including the fact that she wants to kill her lecherous father.

A man takes up residence with a mysterious marquis and is soon persuaded to enter into an asylum for preventative therapy. Things are not what they seem, and the marquis may be even more sinister than what the young man might have predicted.

A leftist professor wants the truth about two men killed during a hunting party; but the mafia, the Church and corrupt politicians don't want him to learn it.

Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.

A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son’s custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.

Set during the fading glory of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the film tells of the rise and fall of Alfred Redl, an ambitious young officer who proceeds up the ladder to become head of the Secret Police only to become ensnared in political deception.

A group of students arrives in a small town during a hiking expedition. Once there, the local priest accuses them of being communist agitators on the run from an army crack-down against student demonstrations in nearby Mexico City and rallies the townsfolk to lynch them. Based on a true story.

The funny clown Bratislav Metulskie is found dead in circus "Apollo". The retired commissioner 00 Schneider is asked to assume control of the case. Schneider and his aged sidekick Körschgen investigate to find the murderer.

The newly elected Pope suffers a panic attack just as he is about to greet the faithful who have gathered to see him. His advisors, unable to convince him he is the right man for the job, call on a renowned therapist who also happens to be an atheist. But the Pope's fear of his newfound responsibility is one he must face alone. Winner Best Film at the Italian Golden Globes.

A man receives a mysterious email appearing to be from his wife, who was murdered years earlier. As he frantically tries to find out whether she's alive, he finds himself being implicated in her death.

Toronto, Canada. A few days before Christmas, Miles Cullen, a bored teller working at a bank branch located in a shopping mall, accidentally learns that the place is about to be robbed when he finds a disconcerting note on one of the counters.
