The BeastsMovies like The Beasts
- Key Features:
- Cultural clash, Environmentalism, Community, Xenophobia, Isolation, Tension, Tragedy, Moral dilemma, Slow burn, Character study
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Drama lovers, Foreign film enthusiasts, Character-driven story appreciators, Thought-provoking cinema seekers
- Emotional Arc:
- Hope → Tension → Despair
The Beasts

Antoine and Olga, a French couple, have been living in a small village in Galicia for a long time. They practice eco-responsible agriculture and restore abandoned houses to facilitate repopulation. Everything should be idyllic except for their opposition to a wind turbine project that creates a serious conflict with their neighbors. The tension will rise to the point of irreparability.
The Beasts
The head of a failing French family thinks that fate has smiled down on him when the daughter of a wealthy man agrees to be married to his son. The daughter and her aunt then travel out to the French countryside to meet with the family, unaware that a mysterious 'beast' is stalking the vicinity.

Following the disappearance of the glamorous and secretive Evelyne Ducat during a blizzard in the highlands of southern France, the lives of five people inextricably linked to Evelyne are brought together to devastating effect as the local police investigate the case.

Raf and Julie, a couple on the verge of breaking up, find themselves in an emergency ward bordering on collapse on the evening of a Parisian Yellow Vest protest. Their encounter with Yann, an angry and injured demonstrator, will shatter each person's certainties and prejudices. Outside, the tension escalates.

In the near future where emotions have become a threat, Gabrielle finally decides to purify her DNA in a machine that will immerse her in her past lives and rid her of any strong feelings. She then meets Louis and feels a powerful connection, as if she had known him forever.

In a world hit by a wave of mutations transforming humans into animals, François does everything he can to save his wife. As some of the creatures disappear into a nearby forest, he and their son Émile embark on a quest that will change their lives forever.

To rescue his daughter, an unstable Special Forces veteran unleashes his inner beast as he pursues her kidnappers — and soon becomes a suspect himself.

The harmony of a seemingly idyllic neighborhood is disrupted when a dog attacks a young girl.

During the war in Afghanistan a Soviet tank crew commanded by a tyrannical officer find themselves lost and in a struggle against a band of Mujahadeen guerrillas in the mountains.

A troubled woman living in an isolated community finds herself pulled between the control of her oppressive family and the allure of a secretive outsider suspected of a series of brutal murders.

A shallow, provincial wife finds her relationship with her preoccupied husband strained by romantic notions, leading her further towards Paris and the country wilderness.

The body of a young woman is discovered near a farm. The judge, Larcher is in charge and thinks that the farmers have something to do with the murder.

In a rural French village, an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water for growing their flowers, and are dismayed to hear that the man who has inherited it is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield through the hot summer. Though they see his desperate efforts are breaking his health and his wife and daughter's hearts, they think only of getting the water.

Lucía and her son live isolated from society in a flat place where there’s practically no life. The small family unit formed by mother and son hardly ever receives visitors, and their goal is to lead a quiet existence. At first they succeed, but the appearance of a mysterious, violent creature that starts stalking their small house will put the relationship that unites them to the test.

In the middle of a snowy no man's land, Charlotte picks up Max, a hitchhiker; they stop in a truck-stop restaurant, and when Max doesn't come back from the bathroom, Charlotte starts looking for him in vain. She decides to return during the night but gets kidnapped by the bartender, La Spack, who turns out to be Max's mother and needs to feed her kids, 'The pack', a bunch of blood lusting ghouls. Charlotte now faces a terrifying reality: these ghouls are already dead... and hungry. Alone and in the middle of nowhere, she quickly realizes... she's next on the menu!

Two rival detectives with different methods try to solve the murder of a missing girl after discovering her mutilated body in the tidelands of Incheon.

Martinón is the last inhabitant of Auzal, a village in the mountains where he lives in communion with nature. He only goes down to the valleys twice a year to trade and to buy provisions. But one day he’s convinced to take a wife, a decision intended to soften his calloused soul—but in some ways his real struggle is only just beginning.

The eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull causes major disruptions to travelers' plans around the world. For Alain and Valérie, it's a catastrophe. Because to make it to the small Greek village in time for their daughter's wedding, this divorced couple, whose mutual hatred knows no bounds, will be obliged to set out on the road together.

In this ensemble drama set in rural France, the women of the Paridier farm are left to run it by themselves while their men are off fighting in World War I. But things become complicated with the arrival of American troops.

Along with her husband and three children, Marthe lives in an eden of her own creation, nearly isolated from the rest of the world. The arrival of a construction vehicle, however, pierces their tranquil, hermetic existence—before long a disused highway has been re-opened, and the family finds their home situated in the midst of rush-hour traffic. While the privileges of clean air, quietude and privacy are thus denied them, Marthe remains determined to stay no matter the cost.

As a heat wave brings a Marseille neighbourhood to the boil, three roommates gleefully meddle in the lives of their neighbours from their balcony. Until a late night drink turns into a bloody affair.

A couple becomes lost in a massive storm and seek refuge at a nearby farmhouse, only to be captured by deranged killers.

In the heart of a city, the inhabitants of a tower wake up one morning to find that their building is shrouded in an opaque fog, obstructing doors and windows - a strange dark matter that devours anything that tries to pass through it. Trapped, the residents try to organize themselves, but to ensure their survival they gradually succumb to their most primitive instincts, until they sink into horror...

Residents of a small rural town discover that a demon is about to be born among them. They desperately try to escape before the evil is born, but it may be too late.

Kirikou's Grandfather says that the story of Kirikou and The Witch was too short, so he proceeds to explain more about Kirikou's accomplishments. We find out how little boy became a gardener, a detective, a maker of pottery, a merchant, a traveler and a doctor.

During a heat wave, strange clouds start pouring down acid rain, wreaking devastation and panic throughout France. In a world teetering on the edge, a girl and her divorced parents must join forces to confront and try to escape this climate catastrophe.

In a quiet fishing village on northern France's Opal Coast, the birth of a peculiar child sparks a hidden war between extraterrestrial forces of good and evil.

In a windswept fishing village, a mother is torn between protecting her beloved son and her own sense of right and wrong. A lie she tells for him rips apart their family and close-knit community.

When Anna and her family arrive at their holiday home, they find it occupied by strangers. This confrontation is just the beginning of a painful learning process.

Abel, Marianne and their 13-year-old son Joseph live together in Paris. Their everyday existence is thrown into turmoil when Abel and Marianne discover that Joseph has secretly sold valuables from the family home to finance a mysterious ecological project he and his friends have in Africa. They’re about to save the planet.

Emilia arrives at her Aunt Inés' hostel located on the Argentina-Brazil border, looking for her missing brother. In this lush jungle a dangerous beast which takes the form of different animals seems to be roaming around.

Greg is a police lieutenant; he must collect informations on eco-activists, infiltrating them for months. Myriam, a young free woman, is fighting to save a forest from the building of a dam. They meet and fall in love on the Zone. A beautiful life, a joy that Greg discovers, despite the risks of being unmasked. For each of them, time is short: soon everything will disappear.

In the 1980 French countryside, farmer Jojo and his ill-tempered wife Lulu hate each other, though their respective interests speak against divorce. The only thing that keeps the oppressed Jojo from murder is the threat of the guillotine...

Flanked by their two children, Simon and Adélaïde decide, like many Parisians today, to leave their two-room apartment for a quieter and more comfortable life in the country. They are seduced by a house in the middle of nature: space, a vegetable garden, a wood adjoining their garden and above all villagers who welcome them with open arms. A dream come true! But the young couple was soon to be disillusioned: the wood was actually a hunting ground for big game! Although the hunters are friendly, they are not willing to give up their territory, making Simon and Adélaïde's dream of the countryside a living hell. But true to their reputation, our Parisians are not going to let them do it.

Amid the sweltering summer heat in northern Argentina, two middle-class families retreat to a crumbling country estate and a modest townhouse, where strained relationships, simmering tensions, and the presence of children and servants quietly expose the fractures of family life. Between idle days, gossip, and unspoken desires, the boundaries of class, tradition, and faith are reflected in their everyday interactions.

A mysterious exterminator falls in love with two women who live in a distinctive wine-producing region in Spain.

A tough young man, who helps to kick poor people out of their houses, falls in love with a girl. She lives with her father in the building about to be demolished.

Nathalie and Jean-Pierre have been together for five years, to celebrate their anniversary, Jean-Pierre prepare a surprise present for his girlfriend: a cute four month english bullgod. Nathalie loves her present and calls the puppy "Tresor"; her relationship with the dog is close and strong since the begining but causes problems in the couple.

Stéphane decides to move to the beautiful mountains of Cantal in order to reconnect with his 8-year-old daughter, Victoria, who has been silent since her mother's disappearance. During a walk in the forest, a shepherd gives Victoria a puppy named "Mystery" who will gradually give her a taste for life. But very quickly, Stéphane discovers that the animal is in reality a wolf… Despite the warnings and the danger of this situation, he cannot bring himself to separate his daughter from this seemingly harmless ball of hair.

In a rural French town, twenty-something Teddy is scratched by an unknown beast and slowly undergoes frightening changes.

Marc and Rebeca, a young couple, travel to an old country house that used to belong to their family. Once there, they write the shared history of their roots, creating a huge family tree that harbours relationships of love, heartbreak, sex, madness, jealousy and infidelity, and under which also lies a history laden with secrets.

A young couple moves to a quaint southern town. Soon their perfect getaway turns out to become a living hell when dark secrets and lethal passions spiral out of control.

Manuel, a Spanish politician whose high-class lifestyle is based on nefarious and illegal business threatens to break his entire party after a newspaper exposes him to the public eye. Rather than admit to any wrongdoing, he decides to sell out his whole party in an effort to avoid jail time. It's a decision that will put many lives at risk.

The young but traveled Ana arrives in a manor in the countryside of Spain to work as nanny of three girls and finds a dysfunctional family.

Guillaume has made it: A machine that can clean dirty air by simply sucking all dirt into air balloons and then shipping them far far away so his explanation. Some Japanese business guys, after dinner with a lot of alcohol, order 5,000 pieces. His only problem: His production capacity is way to small so he gets to produce the machines in his private house. His wife Bernadette is far from being happy about it. Her private life goes down the line so she decides to leave Guillaume and to finally have revenge she candidates for major against her husband...

Ten years have gone by since Elena's six-year old son has disappeared. The last thing she heard of him was a phone call he gave her, saying that he was lost on a beach in France and couldn't find his father. Nowadays, Elena lives on this same beach and manages a restaurant. She is finally beginning to emerge from this tragic episode when she meets a French teenager who strongly reminds her of her lost son. The two of them will embark on a relationship which will sow chaos and distrust around them.

An old couple, their only son, the son's wife, a young man and his lover live peacefully in a village. Then, a terrifying earthquake strikes that causes a nearby nuclear station to explode. The residents must evacuate, but the family lives on a farm, with only half of the area designated as an evacuation area.

Brothers John and Matt have inherited an island cabin from their recently deceased uncle. Along with Matt's girlfriend, Nicki, and other mutual friends, the siblings travel to the cabin for a relaxing weekend getaway. But, not long after arriving, the group is besieged by ravenous dogs. They watch in horror as another vacationer, Luke, is eaten alive. Soon, they discover a training facility where the dogs have been bred to kill.

In a small French village, everything would be quiet if the local wildlife cop was not being ridiculed by a smart poacher.

In the Bolivian altiplano, Virginio and Sisa, an elderly Quechua couple who have lived a quiet life for years, face an impossible dilemma during an unusually long drought: resist or be defeated by the hostile environment and the relentless passage of time.

What would you choose: be a little rich now, or wait ten years and be filthy rich? Could you wait this long? Why? And most importantly, could you come to terms with your life partner? The protagonists will have to choose between the possibility of opting for 100,000 euros at the present time or obtaining a million euros after ten years... Adaptation of the work by Jordi Vallejo.

Auguste Maroilleur, an elderly farmer, exploits 400 hectares of crop land with the help of his family, over which he rules with an iron hand. Things go awry the day he discovers one of his grandsons is involved in drug traffic. To make matters worse, the reckless youth has hidden the white powder in the Maroilleur farm. Without a moment's hesitation, Auguste gets rid of the toxic substance but, of course, the mob has different views...

Simone inherits a dilapidated farmhouse in France and makes her way there with her husband Eric and their two children. Her dream is to turn the house into a bed and breakfast but as the hectic pace of the rebuilding gets underway, she gets caught up in the romance and chaos of it all. Losing sight of her goals, she must find her way back to the dreams and ambitions which brought her there in the first place.

An English couple's holiday in Spain is interrupted when they discover a girl imprisoned in a cabin.

When Amador Coro gets out of prison for having provoked a fire, nobody is waiting for him. He returns to his home town, a small village hidden in the mountains of rural Galicia, to live with his elder mother, Benedicta, and three cows. Life goes on calmly, following the rhythm of the nature. Until the night when a fire devastates the region.

The accidental breakdown of an irrigation valve launches a hot confrontation between the mainly Latino farmers in a tiny New Mexico town and the real estate developers and politicians determined to acquire their land for a golf resort.

A local activist and a budding young mayor clash over the best path forward for their impoverished suburb.

Annie lives in harmony with her husband Laurent and her children: the sensitive elders Maximilien and César; the younger Antoine whom Poupi, never-complaining teen, helps raising him. But a positive pregnancy test will disturb the harmony.

Lesia, a teenager, is taken by a man to a villa where her fugitive father and his men are hiding. A war erupts, leading to death and a chase where father and daughter bond.

Young and full of life, Murielle has a promising future ahead of her when she meets and falls head over heels for Mounir. A wedding soon follows, and the happy couple quickly set about preparing to make a family. However, with family come ties, and none come as tight as that between Mounir and his adoptive father. As Murielle continues to bring new life into the family, frictions between Mounir and Doctor Pinget reach boiling point. Helpless to extract her husband and children from the wealthy nest that Doctor Pinget has provided for them, Murielle is drawn into an unhealthy family dynamic. There is only one way out of this nightmare, and for Murielle all sense of reasoning begins to abandon her.

Man’s best friend becomes his worst nightmare when a horde of bloodthirsty wild dogs descends upon a family’s farmhouse in a fang-bearing fight for survival.

In this, the sequel to Jean de Florette, Manon has grown into a beautiful young shepherdess living in the idyllic Provencal countryside. She plots vengeance on the men who greedily conspired to acquire her father's land years earlier.

After suffering from a heart attack, a wealthy elderly Russian man plans to will most of his estate to his estranged daughter, but his titular wife has other plans.

Alone on a farm, a man spends his days tending to his animals, with a particular love for his sow. After an illicit encounter between the two creatures, the pig gives birth. However, tragedy strikes when the man tries to force the newborn piglets to love him as he loves them.

A family lives in the Mexican countryside raising fighting bulls. Esther is in charge of running the ranch, while her husband Juan, a world-renowned poet, raises and selects the beasts. Although in an open marriage, their relationship begins to crumble when Esther falls in love with an American horsebreaker and Juan is unable to control his jealousy.

It's summer, somewhere in the Dordogne, young people disappear. The wildest rumors circulate, we are talking about a feline prowling. Laura, seeks to elucidate the mystery and meets Paul, a strange writer who attracts him as much as he scares her. As they get closer, a lover spurned by Laura disappears in turn.

A young couple's dream of starting a family shatters as they descend into the depths of paranoia and must struggle to survive an evil presence that wants nothing more than their very own lives.

David Sumner, a mild-mannered academic from the United States, marries Amy, an Englishwoman. In order to escape a hectic stateside lifestyle, David and his wife relocate to the small town in rural Cornwall where Amy was raised. There, David is ostracized by the brutish men of the village, including Amy's old flame, Charlie. Eventually the taunts escalate.

In a time of starvation, a survivalist lives off a small plot of land hidden deep in forest. When two women seeking food and shelter discover his farm, he finds his existence threatened.

Anna happily lives with her husband, their two boys, and Simon, 6 years-old, who was placed with her by the Social Care services when he was only 18 months. When Simon’s father decides that he is ready to take his son back with him, the family’s balance is at stake. Anna is torn apart: how could she possibly let go a of child who has always called her ‘Mom’?

Three generations of a wealthy Bordeaux family are caught in the crossfire when Anne decides to run for mayor, thanks to a political pamphlet that revives an old murder scandal.

Not less than 3 men and 40 animals were found dead on the Breton beaches. The identity of the killer is an open secret: green algae. Inès Léraud is still a young journalist when, driven by an ecological conscience, she decides to go to Brittany to investigate this phenomenon. Through her encounters with whistleblowers, scientists, farmers and politicians, she elucidates, not without difficulty, half a century of silence: samples that disappear in laboratories, bodies buried before being autopsied, influence games, pressure... Will the truth win?

Lui, a struggling author with a heart condition, and his wife Elle, a retired psychiatrist, find their idyllic life shattered when Elle begins to succumb to the effects of dementia.

In 1969, a young Beijing student, Chen Zhen, is sent to live among the nomadic herdsmen of Inner Mongolia. Caught between the advance of civilization from the south and the nomads' traditional enemies - the marauding wolves - to the north; humans and animals, residents and invaders alike, struggle to find their true place in the world.

Two men, both hiding a deadly secret, are on a murderous rampage through the desert.

While Olivier, a 39 year-old foreman gives his job everything he’s got, Laura, his wife and the mother of their two children, abandons the family home, leaving Olivier alone to face his responsibilities. Lost and completely thrown, Olivier is going to have to come to terms with his new status as a single father raising his children alone. Because Laura’s not coming back.

In 200,000 years of existence, man has upset the balance on which the Earth had lived for 4 billion years. Global warming, resource depletion, species extinction: man has endangered his own home. But it is too late to be pessimistic: humanity has barely ten years left to reverse the trend, become aware of its excessive exploitation of the Earth's riches, and change its consumption pattern.

The Marquis d’Urfé finds refuge in the home of a strange family after becoming lost in a hostile forest while working as an emissary for the King of France.

An Icelandic couple live with their herd of sheep on a beautiful but remote farm. When they discover a mysterious newborn on their land, they decide to keep it and raise it as their own. This unexpected development and the prospects of a new family brings them much joy before ultimately destroying them.

Charlotte flies to East Africa to build a tourist center near Lake Williams where the pygmies live. Here she meets her husband Victor, a devoted conservationist who left her three years ago to live in the jungle. Can you imagine his enthusiasm when she arrives at the conclusion that the ideal place to build this holiday resort is his kitchen garden?

Montse, divorced and with two children who have long ignored her, prepares for a family reunion at her home on the Costa Brava.

A film set in the Spanish side of the Basque Country, beginning in the Carlist war of 1875 and ending during the Spanish Civil war of 1936. The film portrays how one single act of cowardice shapes the life of the next three generations of two families and fuels the intense rivalry which will span the next sixty-one years.

In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.

A political activist is convinced that her guest is a man who once tortured her for the government.

An affluent, middle-aged couple's uneventful lives are forever changed when they move into an isolated house in the country and befriend an odd, younger couple.

Patrick is a tenacious lawyer specializing in environmental law. France is a schoolteacher who becomes an activist after her husband develops cancer from exposure to a pesticide. Mathias is an ambitious lobbyist working for an international chemical corporation. The paths of these characters collide as the lives of thousands are affected by a tragic act that sparks a powerful movement while the corporation fights to prevent the truth from being revealed.

Teacher in the most prestigious highschool in the country, François enjoys the life he’s always known, in the intellectual and bourgeois society of Paris. Trapped in a situation where he’s forced to accept a job in a school of a tough underprivileged suburb, he finds himself confronted to his own limits and to the upheaval of his values and certainties.

When he inherits the family house and property after his mother's death, aspiring novelist Fane returns home with his bimbo girlfriend Lilas. He must care for his idiot brother Mo and contend with a greedy garage owner who covets Fane's property to expand his business. When efforts to buy the property are fruitless, the mechanic incites the townsfolk against the strange trio.

Vacations in the French countryside. Daphne, three months pregnant, finds herself alone to welcome Maxime, her boyfriend François’ cousin. François had to leave in a hurry for Paris to cover for a sick colleague. For four days, while waiting for his return, Daphne and Maxime get to know each other and share very intimate stories that bring them closer...

Claude and Marie Verneuil face a new crisis. The four spouses of their daughters, David, Rachid, Chao and Charles decided to leave France for various reasons. Here they are imagining their lives elsewhere.

Driss and Manuel both grew up on the same council estate. An estate where the sense of belonging to your patch is much stronger than the sense of belonging to a country, a nation or a culture... Manuel has assimilated this belonging, and he has even benefited from it and built his life on it. Driss, meanwhile, has shunned it. They will both have to face up to the consequences of their decisions – because they will each have a price to pay…

The municipality of a small Breton village has decided to welcome a family of Ukrainian refugees. To their surprise, they receive Fayad family – coming from Syria. They thwart all the clichés that the French expected: they are friendly, refined, educated… So much so that, in this small, humming village, it is no longer clear which side the barbarians are on…

The idea is simple / A married woman and a single man meet / They love, they argue, fists fly / A dog strays between town and country / The seasons pass / The man and woman meet again / The dog finds itself between them / The other is in one, / the one is in the other / and they are three / The former husband shatters everything / A second film begins: / the same as the first, / and yet not / From the human race we pass to metaphor / This ends in barking / and a baby's cries / In the meantime, we will have seen people talking of the demise of the dollar, of truth in mathematics and of the death of a robin." - JLG

Londoners Maya and Jamie escape their urban nightmare to the tranquility of rural Ireland only to discover malevolent, murderous goblins lurking in the gnarled, ancient wood at the foot of their new garden. When heavily pregnant Maya’s relationship with a local family turns sour, who – or what – will come to her rescue and to what extremes will she go to protect her unborn child?

In an isolated rural community of Quebec, Canada, some inhabitants attack other people, hungry for human flesh. A few survivors gather and go deep into the forest to escape them.

The story centres on a group of teenagers street cast in their neighbourhood and selected to play in a feature film during the summer. The film tells the story of this film shoot and of the connections that will be formed during it.

Two young men seek the solitude of the country; their peace is disturbed when a set of random occurrences suggest to their susceptible minds a pattern with sinister meanings.

Twenty-something Freddy is becalmed in a podunk French village where the only sign of life is the local amateur brass band and youth aimlessly roaming around the countryside on scooters. He has an intense sexual connection with his girlfriend but has no joy or passion to give her. When she falls for a handsome Arab youth a tragedy unfolds.

Pierre, a Parisian engineer, goes up in the Alps for his work. Irresistibly attracted by what surrounds him, he camps out alone high in the mountains and leaves behind his everyday life. Up there he meets Léa, a chef of an alpine restaurant, while mysterious glows glitter in the deep mountains…

The relationship between a middle-aged French widow and a young drifter takes a turn when her young niece pays a visit.
