The Bothersome ManMovies like The Bothersome Man
- Key Features:
- Existential crisis, Dystopian society, Loss of identity, Search for meaning, Social alienation, Surrealism, Escape, Monotony, Conformity, Philosophical, Satire
- Tone:
- cynical, deadpan, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Fans of surreal films, Viewers interested in existential themes, Art house cinema enthusiasts, Those who appreciate dark humor
- Emotional Arc:
- Confusion → Discomfort → Yearning
The Bothersome Man

Forty-year-old Andreas arrives in a strange city with no memory of how he got there. He is presented with a job, an apartment - even a wife. But before long, Andreas notices that something is wrong. Andreas makes an attempt to escape the city, but he discovers there's no way out. Andreas meets Hugo, who has found a crack in a wall in his cellar. Beautiful music streams out from the crack. Maybe it leads to "the other side"? A new plan for escape is hatched.
The Bothersome Man
The chronicles of four years in the life of Julie, a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is.

Despite being deposed as president of his condominium association, grumpy 59-year-old Ove continues to watch over his neighbourhood with an iron fist. When pregnant Parvaneh and her family move into the terraced house opposite Ove and she accidentally back into Ove’s mailbox, it sets off a series of unexpected changes in his life.

A recovering drug addict is granted a day’s leave from rehab and returns to Oslo, where he reconnects with friends, faces the weight of his past, and struggles with uncertainty about his future. Over the course of one day, he drifts through encounters that reflect his longing for connection and his deep sense of alienation.

The film tells the story of two good friends who live together, Andrew, an agoraphobic travel agent who works from his home, and Dave, a loser who works in an office where he is treated with contempt. Just when it seems things can't get any worse for the two, the entire world outside of their house disappears and is replaced with an endless white void.

A group of people gather at a Copenhagen suburban home to break all the limitations and to bring out the 'inner idiot' in themselves.

A man wakes up one morning with an annoying ringing sound in his ears. A note on the fridge says: "Your friend Luigi has died. P.S. I took the car". The problem is that he does not even remember who this guy Luigi is. This is just the beginning of a tragicomic day during which he will be plunged into the folly of the world. One of those days that changes your life forever.

Bruno is a young film editor who has just broke up his marriage with Regina, and returned living in his mother's house. Drowned in deep sorrow, something very weird happens in his life: people around him are gradually disappearing. But only for him. Some kind of blindness.

Late one evening Alex suddenly abandons his girlfriend, Simone, to pursue the beautiful Aimee. In his encounter with Aimee time and place dissolve for him and he becomes a stranger to Simone, to whom he cannot return.

Armed only with a bow and an ensemble of animal skins, Martin sets off into the forest in a misguided attempt to overcome his midlife crisis. A chance meeting with a fugitive named Musa leads to a twisted trip through the fjords with police, drug runners, and Martin's family not far behind. As an unlikely friendship develops and wildly original set-pieces unfold, Martin's quest for manhood leads to deep and hilariously uncomfortable realizations about the presumed masculine ideal.

A monumental traffic jam serves as the backdrop for the lives of the inhabitants of a Swedish city.

A young man becomes convinced that the solution to all his problems is to live in jail, and he will do whatever it takes to get it.

A man is abandoned by his wife and then falls in love with his neighbor, the perfect, ideal woman. The only problem: she doesn't exist!

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

A man with a troubled past is released on parole. He finds work as a church organist and develops a rewarding relationship with a priest and her young son. However, his past soon catches up with him.

Having recently lost her sight, Ingrid retreats to the safety of her home—a place where she can feel in control, alone with her husband and her thoughts. After a while, Ingrid starts to feel the presence of her husband in the flat when he is supposed to be at work. At the same time, her lonely neighbor who has grown tired of even the most extreme pornography shifts his attention to a woman across the street. Ingrid knows about this but her real problems lie within, not beyond the walls of her apartment, and her deepest fears and repressed fantasies soon take over.

Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.

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.

Overweight loner Rino spends his days in seclusion, until his dad rents a room to an overtly sexual girl who challenges Rino to break down his walls.

The heterosexual man Axel is thrown out of his girlfriends home for cheating and ends up moving in with a gay man. Axel learns the advantages of living with gay men even though they are attracted to him and when his girlfriend wants him back he must make a tough decision.

After Ingrid leaves John, he allows himself to be pulled into a mystical and scary world where it is impossible to separate truth from lies.

Odd Horton is dependable and contained: he's a train driver retiring after 40 years of service, living a simple life. His idea of adventure is to fly from one city in Norway to another. Starting on the night of his retirement dinner, Odd has a series of dislocating experiences: a boy insists that Odd sit by his bedside while he falls asleep; misadventure causes Odd to miss his last run; he witnesses an arrest; he assists an old man and makes a friend; he takes a trip with a blindfolded driver; he adopts a dog; he takes stock late one night at the roundhouse; he revisits his mother's disappointment in him. How should he live the rest of his life?

A young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him.

Have you ever wondered "What is the meaning of life? Why do we exist?" The answer to this vexing question is now within your reach! You'll find it in a small yet amazing booklet, which will explain, in easy to follow, simple terms your reason for being! The booklet, printed on the finest paper, contains illuminating, exquisite colour pictures, and could be yours for a mere $9.99.

As she does every morning, Lucie takes advantage of her journey to work to lose herself for a while in the pages of a good book. And as she does every morning, she joins her colleagues at the office with a smile. It's a working day just like any other. Then suddenly all activity in the office stops. All attention is turned towards the window of the opposite building opposite and abanner reading: Man Alone. Is it a hoax? A cry for help? Everyone has his own interpretation, and will try, by any means possible, to discover what lies behind this mysterious message.

Two disaffected, unemployed Chinese youth drift through life on the streets of their industrial town, their paths crossing with that of a local young singer and dancer working for a liquor company as a spokesmodel.

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.

A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality, guided by a Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments have the same significance as historical events. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

The film follows Kaspar Hauser, who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him.

Meursault is a man who feels utterly isolated from everyone and everything around him. This alienation results in sudden, inexplicable bursts of violence, culminating in murder.

A ship carrying settlers to a new home on Mars after Earth is rendered uninhabitable is knocked off-course, causing the passengers to consider their place in the universe.

A college student starts to experience extreme seizures. She soon learns that the violent episodes are a symptom of inexplicable abilities.

40-year-old Elling, sensitive, would-be poet, is sent to live in a state institution when his mother, who has sheltered him his entire life, dies. There he meets Kjell Bjarne, a gentle giant and female-obsessed virgin, also in his 40s.

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...

After serving a 12-year sentence for killing the man that slept with his wife, a man ponders whether he should try and reconcile with his family, or take revenge on those who turned him in.

A director and screenwriter pen a script and, in the process, blur the line between fiction and reality.

Giuseppe Di Noi, an Italian surveyor living in Swiden, gets arrested at the border while going back to Italy with his family for a vacation. But can someone tell the man why?

As an unpredictable, sweeping pandemic causes people to develop sudden amnesia, a man finds himself enrolled in a recovery program designed to help him build a new life. His treatment: performing daily tasks prescribed by his doctors on cassette tape, and capturing those with a Polaroid camera.

The narrative portrays a plain man who guides the viewer through his life in a bleakly stylised world.

A perfect housewife, who just happens to be sex-starved, struggles to keep her emotions in check when an attractive family moves in next door.

A man who has a body almost completely covered in tattoos is searching for the woman who cursed him with the "skin illustrations". Each tattoo reveals a bizarre story, which is experienced by staring at the scene depicted. When the illustrated man meets a fellow tramp on the road a strange voyage begins.

The surreal tale of an unassuming man who is accused of a never-specified crime and shambles through bizarre encounters to escape this nightmare.

Hapless family man Paul Matthews finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. But when his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, Paul is forced to navigate his newfound stardom.

A pandemic strikes the world. What does quarantine do to a lonely woman's mind? Follow her from sense to insanity. No filters. Just you, her, and her more and more twisted mind.

Arthur is invited to a New Year's Eve party to celebrate the year 2000. His girlfriend Lucie would like a baby from him but he refuses. Through the ceiling of the toilets, he discovers a passage leading to this futurist Paris. There, he meets an old man Ako who affirms he is his son and that he wants to exist. Otherwise he will vanish into the air. Arthur is still hesitant because his life is an unfulfilled one: a has a little lucrative job, is uncertain about his future and things are getting out of hand when Ako discovers the passage and interferes in the party.

A man who is being driven crazy by the noise in New York City decides to take vigilante action against it.

A film director who no longer makes films arrives in Seoul to meet a close friend. When the friend doesn't show up, he wanders the city aimlessly for three days, grabbing drinks and meeting women, with each day playing out like a version of the last.

A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.

A mind-bending love story following Greg who, after recently being divorced and then fired, meets the mysterious Isabel, a woman living on the streets and convinced that the polluted, broken world around them is just a computer simulation. Doubtful at first, Greg eventually discovers there may be some truth to Isabel’s wild conspiracy.

When kitchen fitter Niller comes to install Sus's new suite, their immediate attraction to one another proves a sweet escape from both of their problematic relationships.

Kresten, newly wed, is on the threshold of a great career success in his father-in-law’s company. But when the death of his own father takes him back to his poverty-stricken childhood home, far out in the country, his career plans fall apart. For one thing he has to deal with his loveable, backward brother, who is now all alone; for another, he meets a stunning woman who comes to the farm as a housekeeper, in disguise of her real profession as a call-girl.

Algiers, 1938. Meursault, a quiet and unassuming employee in his early thirties, attends his mother's funeral without shedding a tear. The next day, he begins a casual affair with Marie, a work colleague. He quickly slips back into his usual routine. However, his daily life is soon about to be disrupted by his neighbor, Raymond Sintès, who draws Meursault into his shady dealings. Until one blisteringly hot day, a tragic event occurs on a beach...

Executive Harold Pelham suffers a serious accident after which he faces the shadow of death. When, against all odds, he miraculously recovers, he discovers that his life does not belong to him anymore.

Lacking inspiration, a composer isolates himself at a desolate house, on a small island, in Brittany. There he finds an old piano and receives visits from people who won't let him rest.

Ana is confronted with body and desire at three key moments of her life. As a young girl, she brings her dead grandpa back to life. In her puberty, she discovers the power of decay and sexuality. Finally, she wrestles with loss and loneliness when she returns to her parental home, now derelict.

A young East German woman leaves her husband and business partner and relocates to a West German city to start anew as an accountant, but he soon catches up with her.

Increasingly overshadowed by her boyfriend's recent rise to fame as a contemporary artist creating sculptures from stolen furniture, Signe hatches a vicious plan to reclaim her rightfully deserved attention within the milieu of Oslo's cultural elite.

November 1999. 67-year-old Trond lives in new-found solitude and looks forward to spending New Year's Eve 2000 alone. As winter arrives he discovers he has a neighbor, a man Trond knew back in 1948, the summer he turned 15 and the summer Trond's father prepared him to carry the burden of his forthcoming betrayal and disappearance.

One day, hospital orderlies, watching corpse in the morgue, recognize film director. Man, even though he died, he begins to remember his life. He made a career making movies, had numerous mistresses, but never realized their dreams. His life was interspersed with many setbacks that enfeebled him from the inside. Although he made a career in film, he was not happy with his life.

Entrenched in a midlife crisis, Aziz seeks solace from his mundane job, lonesome friends and rowdy family while pretending to have his act together.

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.

When a mysterious brick wall encloses their apartment building overnight, Tim and Olivia must unite with their wary neighbors to get out alive.

A gravity-defying boy raised in seclusion matures into an extraordinary man -- and an international celebrity -- who longs for human connection.

What a man is a comedy that tells the story of a young professor, Alex (Matthias Schweighofer), who after being left by his girlfriend Caroline (Mavie Hörbiger), begins a journey to know himself. But how do you overcome the difficulties of a man today? Or rather what is it that makes a man a man?

The two tradesmen Ib and Edward are tired of their lifeless marriages and dream of living the good life from the stash of money they've earned moonlighting for years. After a huge fight with their wives the two men get drunk and hire a Russian contract killer to do a hit on their spouses. But they have badly underestimated their wives, and this becomes the start of an absurd journey where Ib and Edward to their own horror end at the top of a kill list.

A young and talented architect comes to his senses after a horrific accident only to find himself in the odd dystopian world. A world that is filled with the memories of all current coma patients. Just like a human memory this world is fragmental, chaotic and unstable. This is COMA: icecaps, rivers and cities can all exist in a space of a single room and laws of physics are no longer laws as they can be bent.

Dumped by his girlfriend and finding himself stranded on different couches at friends’ places, Guido tries to transform his drift into an opportunity for a new beginning.

A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun and run by beings with telekinetic powers who seek the souls of humans.

Georges, one morning, became uncontrollable despite himself. Something that has the donkey's voice in Shrek, can control his body.

Eva, an idealistic prison officer, is faced with the dilemma of her life when a young man from her past gets transferred to the prison where she works. Without revealing her secret, Eva asks to be moved to the young man’s ward – the toughest and most violent in the prison. Here begins an unsettling psychological thriller, where Eva’s sense of justice puts both her morality and future at stake.

Retired Englishman George Hall's hypochondria worsens and takes its toll on his family.

Six outwardly average individuals have elaborate fetishes they indulge with surreptitious care. A mousy letter carrier makes dough balls she grotesquely ingests before bed. A shop clerk fixates on a TV news reader while he builds a machine to massage and masturbate him. One of his customers makes an elaborate chicken costume for a voodoo-like scene with a doll resembling his plump neighbor. She, in turn, has a doll that resembles him, which she whips and dominates in an abandoned church. The TV news reader has her own fantasy involving carp. Her husband, who is indifferent to her, steals materials to fashion elaborate artifacts that he rubs, scrapes and rolls across his body.

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

A group of young slackers spend most of their time hanging out in front of a Munich apartment building. When a Greek immigrant named Jorgos moves in, however, their aimless lives are shaken up. Soon, new tensions arise both within the group and with Jorgos.

Insurance broker Max's life is about one thing - keeping his walnut brain tumour in check. He eats properly, exercises and lives properly, but all of this self-consciousness makes him more and more depressed. When he realises that his beloved wife plans to leave him, he decides to take his own life.

Zeynap Altin is at the end of her tether: she works far too much and is not valued at all by her husband, daughter and father. To make matters worse, the funeral home dressed her beloved late mother in a man's suit instead of her favorite dress. Enough is enough: Zeynep flees from Munich to the previously unknown holiday home on a Croatian island that her mother secretly bought years ago - with the hope of finding quiet, peace and herself there. If only the previous owner Josip, a rough islander, didn't still live on the same property and annoy her with his views and wisdom.

An unemployed Brit vents his rage on unsuspecting strangers as he embarks on a nocturnal London odyssey.

In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.

A successful artist loses control of his life after his young daughter's death. A chance for a new start appears, but all is not what it seems.

An inspirational speaker becomes reinvigorated after meeting a lively woman who shakes up his mundane existence.

Man was made to be happy for simple reasons and unhappy for even simpler ones – just as he is born for simple reasons and dies for even simpler ones... Isa and Bahar are two lonely figures dragged through the ever-changing climate of their inner selves in pursuit of a happiness that no longer belongs to them.

Forced to work extremely hard to keep things afloat, Paul begins hearing voices in his head questioning his past choices. Convinced that his wife has been unfaithful, he begins to see every male guest as a potential threat. What follows is Paul's downward spiral into the madness of deranged jealousy where he finally discovers that hell is not a state of mind – hell is himself.

When recently widowed, it is difficult to get used to a new life ... This is the case for Hubert Jacquin, who spends most of his time in his huge apartment, depressed, in front of his TV. One day, after a misunderstanding, his life will change. Manuela, a young and bubbly adventurer in search of a dwelling calls his home! At first reluctant, Hubert will quickly get used to the presence of this energy storm, who even manages to convince him to allow two other people to stay. There are many surprises in store for Hubert ...

Louis just found the corpse of a man in front of his apartment building. Taken in for custody by Captain Buron, he finds himself on the wrong end of a surreal interrogation. But how can you prove you are innocent when the cops are crazy?

There's something in his apartment. A man looking for an insect-like thing devolves into a bout of insanity as his subconscious mind begins to strangle his waking one.

Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic odyssey back home.

After weeks of traveling through Europe, the immature William finds himself in Copenhagen, the place of his father’s birth. He befriends the youthful Effy, who works in William’s hotel as part of an internship program, and they set off to find William’s last living relative. Effy’s mix of youthful exuberance and wisdom challenges William unlike any woman ever has. As the attraction builds, he must come to grips with destabilizing elements of his family’s sordid past.

Ralf Milan, a hitman, arrives in Montpellier to kill an important witness. He checks in a hotel without knowing that his neighbour has become neurotic after his wife left him.

Detectives Jonas and Erik are called to the midnight sun country of northern Norway to investigate a recent homicide, but their plan to arrest the killer goes awry, and Jonas mistakenly shoots Erik. The suspect escapes, and a frightened Jonas pins Erik's death on the fugitive. Jonas continues to pursue the killer as he seeks to protect himself; however, his mounting guilt and the omnipresent sun plague him with an insomnia that affects his sanity.

A lonely private investigator is contacted by a mysterious woman who pulls him into a mind game known as “telephone walking”. Fascinated by her voice, Aloys discovers an imaginary universe that allows him to break out of his isolation.

Ambitious overachiever Hanna just needs one more kid before her life is perfect. Instead, her baby daddy unexpectedly dumps her. Suddenly, she finds herself without a place to live, job or family. With every fiber of her being set for victory, Hanna refuses to give up and decides to win him back. But to get there means having to win something much more important, love and desire for herself and who she is.

How much do we really know about ourselves when we make a decision? What if there are multiple versions of our I within us, each with something to say?

Struggling to survive in post-WWI Copenhagen, a newly unemployed and pregnant young woman is taken in by a charismatic elder to help run an underground adoption agency. The two form an unexpected bond, until a sudden discovery changes everything.

A new patient mysteriously appears in a psychiatric ward. He claims to come from another planet to study humans and their behavior. The alien is gentle but criticizes humans for their harsh treatment of each other. The assigned psychiatrist is himself unhappy, and affected by the patient's insight. But he is ordered to treat the patient according to institutional procedure.

A good looking female social welfare worker makes Egon Olsen forget about crimes for some time, but when an American gangster breaks into a local bank and the police think its Egon's work, he has to get back to work to prove he's innocent.

Police officer Asger Holm, demoted to desk work as an alarm dispatcher, answers a call from a panicked woman who claims to have been kidnapped. Confined to the police station and with the phone as his only tool, Asger races against time to get help and find her.

Sergio is a brooding, alienated man who works as a trash collector in Lisbon by day and roams the city streets by night seeking rough, anonymous sex with men. One night he meets a man who seems to be the embodiment of his tormented fantasies, and he becomes obsessed with the stranger until loneliness and unfulfilled desire propel him finally into a dark and dangerous animalistic state.

A man who has been having visions of an impending danger begins an affair with a woman who may lead him to his doom.


