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Movies like Tanna

Key Features:
Forbidden love, Tribal society, Cultural conflict, Arranged marriage, South Pacific, Tradition vs. modernity, Survival, Romance, Cultural preservation
Tone:
earnest, poetic
Target Audience:
Romance viewers, Cultural film enthusiasts, Viewers interested in indigenous cultures
Emotional Arc:
Hope → Conflict → Resolution

Tanna

2015-10-16
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In a traditional tribal society in the South Pacific, a young girl, Wawa, falls in love with her chief’s grandson, Dain. When an inter-tribal war escalates, Wawa is unknowingly betrothed as part of a peace deal. The young lovers run away, refusing her arranged fate. They must choose between their hearts and the future of the tribe, while the villagers must wrestle with preserving their traditional culture and adapting it to the increasing outside demands for individual freedom.

Genres
Romance, Drama
Cast
Mungau Dain, Marie Wawa, Marceline Rofit, Kapan Cook, Charlie Kahla, Lingai Kowia, Dadwa Mungau, Albi Nagia
Crew
Martin Butler, Bentley Dean, Martin Butler, John Collee, Bentley Dean
Rating
6.618(102 votes)
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Hala
Hala(2019)
6.214

Seventeen-year-old Pakistani American teenager Hala struggles to balance desire with her family, cultural, and religious obligations. As she comes into her own, she grapples with a secret that threatens to unravel her family.



One Million Years B.C.

As the Earth wrestles with its agonizing birth, the peoples of this barren and desolate world struggle to survive. Driven by animal instinct they compete against the harsh conditions, their giant predators, and warring tribes. When two people from opposing clans fall in love, existing conventions are shattered forever as each tribe struggles for supremacy and Man embarks on his tortuous voyage of civilization.



Profound Desires of the Gods

Tokyo engineer Kariya arrives on a primitive tropical island, where he interacts with the Futori clan, to drill a well to power a sugar mill.



Rafiki
Rafiki(2018)
7

Kena and Ziki long for something more. Despite the political rivalry between their families, the girls resist and remain close friends, supporting each other to pursue their dreams in a conservative society. When love blossoms between them, the two girls will be forced to choose between happiness and safety.



Whale Rider
7.057

A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.



Rapa Nui
Rapa Nui(1994)
6.4

Inter-tribal rivalry leads to a competition to erect a huge Maoi statue in record time before Make can take part in the race to retrieve the egg of a Sooty Tern. The reward for winning this race is to rule the island for one year.



Water and Fire
7.9

A pretty young girl falls for an enigmatic, shy man who sweeps her off her feet. She becomes pregnant but is not allowed to tell him. His advisers are adamant. Back home, they have set up a wedding with the daughter of an antagonistic family and marriage will put an end to the blood feud between them.



Running for Grace
6.5

An orphan boy of mixed race finds family with the newly arrived white village doctor in Hawaii. The boy can run like the wind, and begins bringing Doc's medicine to coffee pickers throughout the mountainous region. On an errand, the medicine runner meets the daughter of the plantation owner and a forbidden, young love blossoms like the white "Kona Snow" of the surrounding coffee trees.



South Pacific
6.1

Can a girl from Little Rock find happiness with a mature French planter she got to know one enchanted evening away from the military hospital where she is a nurse? Or should she just wash that man out of her hair? Bloody Mary is the philosopher of the island and it's hard to believe she could be the mother of Liat who has captured the heart of Lt. Joseph Cable USMC. While waiting for action in the war in the South Pacific, sailors and nurses put on a musical comedy show. The war gets closer and the saga of Nellie Forbush and Emile de Becque becomes serious drama.



The White Masai
6.269

A girl, Carola, whose vacation in Kenya takes an interesting turn when she becomes infatuated with a Masai. Carola decides to leave her boyfriend to stay with her lover. There, she has to adapt to the Masai's way of life and get used to their food which includes milk mixed with blood. She also has to face her husband's attitude towards women and what he expects from a wife. Nonetheless, Carola is welcomed warmly into the tribe she has chosen to join.



Ae Fond Kiss...
6.437

A young man upsets his Punjabi family when he falls in love with an Irish schoolteacher.



The Third Wife
6.447

Though only 14 years old, May is selected to be the third wife of a wealthy landowner. Her new home seems idyllic, her husband favours her, and she quickly becomes pregnant with what she is certain will be the desired male progeny. But trouble is quietly brewing: she witnesses a forbidden tryst that will spark a chain reaction of misfortunes — and stir in May urges that until now had been dormant.



Down in the Valley
5.926

On a trip to the beach, a teenage girl named Tobe meets a charismatic stranger named Harlan, who dresses like a cowboy and claims to be a former ranch hand. The pair feel an instant attraction and begin a relationship, but her father, a lawman, is suspicious of her lover.



Fireworks
Fireworks(2023)
7.454

The troubled relationship between Gianni and Nino, set in the narrow-minded and prejudicial Sicily of 1982.



High Ground
6.3

In a remote corner of the wild country, a bloody war rages. Travis is a bounty hunter with one last hope of redemption. Gutjuk is a young Indigenous man trying to save the last of his family. Together they embark on a manhunt, which unravels a secret that ultimately pits them against each other.



Charlie's Country
7.067

Blackfella Charlie is getting older, and he's out of sorts. The intervention is making life more difficult on his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws that don't generally make much sense, and Charlie's kin and ken seeming more interested in going along with things than doing anything about it. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in doing so sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser.



Ali's Wedding
6.921

After a "white lie" which spirals out of control, a neurotic, naive and musically gifted Muslim cleric's eldest son must follow through with an arranged marriage, except he is madly in love with an Australian born-Lebanese girl.



Sappho
Sappho(2008)
4.3

On honeymoon on the island of Lesbos, a woman falls for the daughter of a Russian archaeologist.



A Wedding
A Wedding(2017)
6.612

Zahira, 18, is close to her family until her parents ask her to follow Pakistani tradition to choose a husband. Torn between family customs and her western lifestyle, the young woman turns for help to her brother and confidant Amir.



Japanese Story
6.309

Sandy, a geologist, finds herself stuck on a field trip to the Pilbara desert with a Japanese man she finds inscrutable, annoying and decidedly arrogant. Hiromitsu's view of her is not much better. Things go from bad to worse when they become stranded in one of the most remote regions on Earth.



Sand Storm
6.1

A Bedouin village in Northern Israel. When Jalila's husband marries a second woman, Jalila and her daughter's world is shattered, and the women are torn between their commitment to the patriarchal rules and being true to themselves.



Three
Three(2005)
5.6

After a yachting accident, a millionaire and his wife are shipwrecked on a desert island along with their former deckhand, Manuel.



The Piano
The Piano(1993)
7.38

When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.



Undertow
Undertow(2009)
7.36

A married fisherman struggles to reconcile his devotion to his male lover within his town's rigid traditions.



Ju Dou
Ju Dou(1990)
7.1

A woman married to the brutal and infertile owner of a dye mill in rural China conceives a boy with her husband's nephew but is forced to raise her son as her husband's heir without revealing his parentage in this circular tragedy. Filmed in glowing technicolour, this tale of romantic and familial love in the face of unbreakable tradition is more universal than its setting.



Moana
Moana(2016)
7.6

In Ancient Polynesia, when a terrible curse incurred by Maui reaches an impetuous Chieftain's daughter's island, she answers the Ocean's call to seek out the demigod to set things right.



The High Sun
6.904

Three different love stories, set in three consecutive decades, in two neighbouring Balkan villages burdened with a long history of inter-ethnic hatred: this is a film about the dangers – and the enduring strength – of forbidden love.



The Sleeping Dictionary

A young Englishman is dispatched to Sarawak to become part of the British colonial government. He encounters some unorthodox local traditions, and finds himself faced with tough decisions of the heart involving the beautiful Selima, the unwitting object of his affections.



UFO
UFO(2022)
6.1

When aspiring musician and student Deniz falls for a rough-hewn motorbike racer, tragedy and family opposition obstruct their path to love.



Upside Down
6.279

In an alternate universe where twinned worlds have opposite gravities, a young man battles interplanetary prejudice and the laws of physics in his quest to reunite with the long-lost girl of his dreams in this visually stunning romantic adventure that poses the question: what if love was stronger than gravity?



Ali and Nino
6.615

Muslim prince Ali and Georgian aristocrat Nino have grown up in the Russian province of Azerbaijan. Their tragic love story sees the outbreak of the First World War and the world’s struggle for Baku’s oil. Ultimately they must choose to fight for their country’s independence or for each other.



Endless Love
6.908

A privileged girl and a charismatic boy's instant desire sparks a love affair made only more reckless by parents trying to keep them apart.



Samson and Delilah
6.2

Samson, a cheeky 15-year-old boy, and Delilah, live in an isolated Aboriginal community in the Central Australian desert. The two teenagers soon discover that life outside the community can be cruel. Lost, unwanted and alone they discover that life isn’t always fair, but love never judges.



Mississippi Masala
6.319

Years after her Indian family was forced to flee their home in Uganda, twentysomething Mina finds herself helping to run a motel in the faraway land of Mississippi. It's there that a passionate romance with the charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius challenges the prejudices of their conservative families and exposes the rifts between the region's Indian and African American communities.



Black
Black(2015)
6.62

Mavela, 15 years old, is a Black Bronx. She falls madly in love with Marwan, an extremely charismatic member of a rival gang, the 1080s. The young couple is forced to make a brutal choice between gang loyalty and the love they have for one another. An impossible dilemma.



Leila
Leila(2011)
6

Gab has a well-ordered life: a fiancée, a wealthy family. Leïla, who struggles to juggle her studies, odd jobs, and a brother to support, does not allow herself to live her own life... When Gab meets Leïla, it is a clash of worlds, the beginning of a great love story that will collide violently with reality.



Ay Lav Yu
Ay Lav Yu(2010)
4.95

Mukhtar Yusuf Ağa’s unregistered village in eastern Anatolia has been championed through letters to government officials, and his lost son İbrahim, rescued and registered by Father Hana, is finally returning at age 30 with his American love Jessica; the question is whether Tinne can become their true homeland.



Equinox Flower
7.428

Wataru Hirayama's outwardly liberal views on marriage are severely tested when his daughter declares that she is in love with a coworker and is adamant to live life her own way, instead of agreeing to an arranged marriage. Outwitted by his female relatives, Hirayama stubbornly refuses to admit defeat.



The Young Lovers
6.528

Elegant, retired architect Shauna (70) crosses paths with Pierre, a happily married doctor in his 40s, who first made an impression on her in a brief meeting 15 years previously. Both are quite troubled to meet again and begin an affair. While Pierre’s family life is soon turned upside down, Shauna struggles with feelings she thought belonged to the past.



The Dead Lands
6.1

Hongi, a Maori chieftain’s teenage son, must avenge his father’s murder in order to bring peace and honour to the souls of his loved ones after his tribe is slaughtered through an act of treachery. Vastly outnumbered by a band of villains led by Wirepa, Hongi’s only hope is to pass through the feared and forbidden “Dead Lands” and forge an uneasy alliance with a mysterious warrior, a ruthless fighter who has ruled the area for years.



Fire
Fire(1997)
6.652

In a barren, arranged marriage to an amateur swami who seeks enlightenment through celibacy, Radha's life takes an irresistible turn when her beautiful young sister-in-law seeks to free herself from the confines of her own loveless marriage.



Australia
Australia(2008)
6.6

Set in northern Australia before World War II, an English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling ranch reluctantly pacts with a stock-man in order to protect her new property from a takeover plot. As the pair drive 2,000 head of cattle over unforgiving landscape, they experience the bombing of Darwin by Japanese forces firsthand.



Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna

Dev and Maya are both married to different people. Settled into a life of domestic ritual, and convinced that they are happy in their respective relationships, they still yearn for something deeper and more meaningful, which is precisely what they find in each other.



Like Water for Chocolate

Tita is passionately in love with Pedro, but her controlling mother forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares, infecting all who eat it with her intense heartbreak.



Heatwave
Heatwave(2022)
6.3

A woman's life takes an unexpected turn when she falls for her boss's wife. She must soon defend herself as she becomes entangled in a web of malice.



Rabbit-Proof Fence

In 1931, three Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a trek across the Outback.



Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela

Ran and Leela are passionately in love with each other. The only problem is that their respective clans have been enemies for 500 years.



The Blue Lagoon
6.2

Two small children and a ship's cook survive a shipwreck and find safety on an idyllic tropical island. Soon, however, the cook dies and the young boy and girl are left on their own. Days become years and Emmeline and Richard make a home for themselves surrounded by exotic creatures and nature's beauty. But will they ever see civilization again?



Palm Trees in the Snow

Spain, 2003. An accidental discovery leads Clarence to travel from the snowy mountains of Huesca to Equatorial Guinea, to visit the land where her father Jacobo and her uncle Kilian spent most of their youth, the island of Fernando Poo.



Monsoon Wedding
6.8

As the romantic monsoon rains loom, the extended Verma family reunites from around the globe for a last-minute arranged marriage in New Delhi. This film traces five intersecting stories, each navigating different aspects of love as they cross boundaries of class, continent and morality.



Sairat
Sairat(2016)
7.564

Archi, a local politician’s daughter, and Parshya, a fisherman’s son, fall in love resulting in violence between the families due to the stringent casteism in the village.



Malena
Malena(2000)
7.433

During WWII, a teenage boy discovering himself becomes love-stricken by Malèna, a sensual woman living in a small, narrow-minded Italian town.



Wedding Season
6.275

Pressured by their immigrant parents to find spouses, two Indian-Americans pretend to date in order to survive a summer of weddings – but find themselves falling for each other as they struggle to balance who they are with who their parents want them to be.



From the Land of the Moon

In 1950s France, a free-spirited woman trapped in an arranged marriage falls in love with an injured veteran of the Indochinese War.



Pride
Pride(2004)
6.2

The story of Suki, a lioness cub, who rebels against her mother and her Pride to mate with an unsuitable lion from the other side of the river.



When Time Ran Out...

An active volcano threatens a south Pacific island resort and its guests as a power struggle ensues between the property's developer and a drilling foreman.



The Peasants
7.524

Peasant girl Jagna is forced to marry the much older, wealthy farmer Boryna, despite her love for his son Antek. With time, Jagna becomes the object of envy and disdain with the villagers and she must fight to preserve her independence.



Finding ʻOhana
6.2

Two Brooklyn siblings' summer in a rural Oahu town takes an exciting turn when a journal pointing to long-lost treasure sets them on an adventure, leading them to reconnect with their Hawaiian heritage.



Dirt Music
6.228

Georgie is slowly suffocating in a loveless marriage to fishing tycoon Jim Buckridge. Handsome poacher Lu is an irresistible symbol of the excitement she craves. A passionate affair follows that reveals the dark secrets in Lu’s past and forces him to take flight into the blistering heat of the outback. Georgie follows, determined to find him and bring him back.



The World Unseen
7.077

A drama centered on two women who engage in a dangerous relationship during South Africa's apartheid era.



Pearl in Paradise

Magazine photographer Alex Anderson and author Colin Page head to Fiji in search of the illusive blue pearl that Colin wrote about in his bestselling novel Pearl in Paradise. Alex stands to land the creative director position if she can photograph the pearl for the magazine’s 30th anniversary issue, and Colin hopes that by writing a guest article about the long-lost gem he can boost sales of his failing other books and not lose his publisher. As the two head off to their search, neither is aware yet that finding love could be the rarest adventure of all.



Circumstance
6.632

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.



Once Were Warriors
7.4

A drama about a Maori family living in Auckland, New Zealand. Lee Tamahori tells the story of Beth Heke’s strong will to keep her family together during times of unemployment and abuse from her violent and alcoholic husband.



The Chinese Botanist's Daughters

At the house of a famous Chinese botanist teacher his daughter and a female intern fall in love with each other - a forbidden love that must be kept secret.



Slave of the Cannibal God

A woman and her brother fly to New Guinea to look for a lost expedition, led by her husband, which has vanished in the great jungle.



Devdas
Devdas(2002)
7.5

In 1900s India, Calcuttan zamindar Devdas Mukherjee — unable to marry his lover — takes up alcohol and the company of a courtesan to alleviate the pain.



Paradise: Love
6.7

On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as "Sugar Mamas" —European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise, moving from beach to beach.



The Bow
The Bow(2005)
6.89

On a fishing boat at sea, a 60-year old man has been raising a girl since she was a child. It is agreed that they will get married on her 17th birthday. They live a quiet and secluded life, renting the boat to day fishermen and practicing strange divination rites. Their life changes when a teenage student comes aboard.



Embrace of the Serpent

The epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman, last survivor of his people, and two scientists that, over the course of 40 years, travel through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant that can heal them. Inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.



Sugar Baby
7.074

Love comes without asking. Often not to those, not so and not then. Can a genuine feeling survive when everything started wrong and the whole world is against it? Give up everything or give up? Burn or survive?



Pocahontas
6.9

Pocahontas, daughter of a Native American tribe chief, falls in love with an English soldier as colonists invade 17th century Virginia.



Moolaadé
Moolaadé(2004)
7.158

When a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.



The Wound
The Wound(2017)
6.2

Eastern Cape, South Africa. A lonely factory worker, Xolani, takes time off his job to assist during an annual Xhosa circumcision initiation into manhood. In a remote mountain camp that is off limits to women, young men, painted in white ochre, recuperate as they learn the masculine codes of their culture. In this environment of machismo and aggression, Xolani cares for a defiant initiate from Johannesburg, Kwanda, who quickly learns Xolani's best kept secret, that he is in love with another man.



3 Faces
3 Faces(2018)
6.717

Filmmaker Jafar Panahi and actor Behnaz Jafari travel to a tiny village after receiving a plea for help from a girl whose family has forbidden her from studying acting. Amusing encounters abound, but they soon discover that the local hospitality is rivaled by the desire to protect old traditions.



Frequencies
6.5

The story of the forbidden relationship between a 'low born' boy and a 'high born' girl in an alternate reality where every person's relationships and life worth are determined by their innate 'frequencies'.



Flirting
Flirting(1991)
6.7

Two freethinking teenagers - a boy and a girl - confront with authoritarian teachers in their boarding schools. The other students treat this differently.



Return to the Blue Lagoon

In this sequel to the 1980 classic, two children are stranded on a beautiful island in the South Pacific. With no adults to guide them, the two make a simple life together and eventually become tanned teenagers in love.



Bajirao Mastani
7.249

Peshwa Bajirao married to Kashibai, falls in love with Mastani, a warrior princess in distress. They struggle to make their love triumph amid opposition from his conservative family.



Atlantics
Atlantics(2019)
6.8

Arranged to marry a rich man, young Ada is crushed when her true love goes missing at sea during a migration attempt — until a miracle reunites them.



The Big Heart of Girls

Carlino Vigetti is pushed by his family to court the daughters of the Osti, landowners. But the return of their third daughter, the beautiful Francesca, will shatter the plans ...



Teenage Caveman
3.7

In a post-apocalyptic future mankind is lives in a prehistoric manner. After killing his father for sexually assaulting his girlfriend, the son of a tribal leader runs away with a group of his teenage friends. They are taken in by Neil and Judith who introduce them to the vices outlawed by their tribes namely sex and drugs.Neil and Judith, however, are genetically altered indestructible mutants who have their own plans for the future of the human race.



Midnight Sun
7.812

Katie, a 17-year-old, has been sheltered since childhood and confined to her house during the day by a rare disease that makes even the smallest amount of sunlight deadly. Fate intervenes when she meets Charlie and they embark on a summer romance.



Flirting with Forty

A divorcee has a passionate affair with a much younger surfing instructor in Hawaii.



Horizon Line
5.5

A couple flying on a small plane to attend a tropical island wedding must fight for their lives after their pilot suffers a heart attack.



The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice

The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet and rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.



Dhadak
Dhadak(2018)
6.9

Madhukar and Parthavi fall head over heels in love with each other, but the fact that they belong to different castes of society, becomes an obstacle in their romance. The lovers dare to go against societal norms and battle all odds for the sake of love.



The Blue Caftan
7.274

A middle-aged tailor and his wife find their relationship challenged by the arrival of a handsome new apprentice.



Slow West
Slow West(2015)
6.7

In the Old West, a 17-year-old Scottish boy teams up with a mysterious gunman to find the woman with whom he is infatuated.



Blue Lagoon: The Awakening

Two high school students become stranded on a tropical island and must rely on each other for survival. They learn more about themselves and each other while falling in love.



Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)

Biarritz. Sixteen-year-old George, the high school hottie, falls in love with Alex. To get his attention, she initiates a group game with Alex, Nikita, Laetitia and Gabriel. They will discover, test, and push the limits of their sexuality.



Come See the Paradise
6.175

In this drama from director Alan Parker, on-the-lam Jack McGurn flees to Los Angeles and takes a job as a projectionist at a movie theater owned by a Japanese-American man. Jack falls for the owner's daughter, Lily, but they are forced to elope to Seattle when her father forbids the relationship. The couple marry and have a daughter, but when World War II breaks out, Jack is powerless to stop his new family's forced internment.



Bombay
Bombay(1995)
7.169

A Hindu man and a Muslim woman fall in love in a small village and move to Mumbai, where they have two children. However, growing religious tensions and erupting riots threaten to tear the family apart.



Suntan
Suntan(2016)
6.286

Kostis is a 40-year-old doctor that finds himself in the small island of Antiparos, in order to take over the local clinic. His whole life and routine will turn upside down when he meets an international group of young and beautiful tourists and he falls in love with Anna, a 19-year-old goddess.



Jindabyne
Jindabyne(2006)
5.46

Outside the Australian town of Jindabyne, local man Stuart Kane is on a fishing trip with friends when they discover the body of a murdered girl.



The Descendants
6.8

With his wife Elizabeth on life support after a boating accident, Hawaiian land baron Matt King takes his daughters on a trip from Oahu to Kauai to confront a young real estate broker, who was having an affair with Elizabeth before her misfortune.



Rip Girls
Rip Girls(2000)
6.265

A teen-age girl and her father come to an island on Hawaii, they find a closer relationship to each other and think about changing the island. During her adventures, Sydney finds friends, a new hobby with her fantastic photography, and the truth about her mother.



Tanu Weds Manu
6.821

Manu comes to India to find a bride for himself and falls for Tanu at first sight but she is a free spirited girl has no plans of marrying him.



In the Land of Blood and Honey

During the Bosnian War, Danijel, a soldier fighting for the Serbs, re-encounters Ajla, a Bosnian who's now a captive in his camp he oversees. Their once promising connection has become ambiguous as their motives have changed.



The Forbidden Door
6.5

A successful sculptor's life is turned upside down when he starts to receive mysterious messages from someone asking for his help. As he digs deeper, he discovers a boy is being abused and has to choose between saving the boy or losing everything.

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