The ClownMovies like The Clown
- Key Features:
- Circus, Clown, Father-son relationship, Existential crisis, Melancholy, Disillusionment, Tradition, Family business, Self-discovery, Performance, Artistic expression, Brazilian cinema
- Tone:
- serious, poetic, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Art house cinema enthusiasts, Fans of character-driven stories, Those interested in Brazilian culture
- Emotional Arc:
- Sadness → Reflection
The Clown

The life of the owners of Circus Esperança, Puro Sangue e Pangaré, father and son, who plays two clowns. At a certain point, Pangaré starts showing tiredness and sadness for being an unhappy clown.
The Clown
Lucien, 14, can’t understand why his father, a serious and respected teacher, makes a fool of himself by dressing up as a clown and giving a show. André, Lucien’s father’s best friend, feels for the teenager and decides to reveal something from their mutual past that will explain the reason for Lucien’s father’s strange behavior.

Street vendor Denilson's life changes when his father dies and leaves him his entire legacy. Along with the fortune, however, Denilson also inherits the family that will do everything to get their hands on this inheritance.

A loving father finds a clown suit for his son's birthday party, only to realize the suit is part of an evil curse that turns its wearer into a killer.

Joseph and his two sons, Joachim and Ivan, form a close-knit family but fail to see that each one is losing control of his life. Joachim is supposed to be studying psychiatry but spends most of his time daydreaming about his ex-girlfriend, Ivan cannot fit in at school despite being very smart, and Joseph has secretly quit his job as a doctor and is trying to become a writer. While there is plenty of affection at home, all three are also, clumsily, searching for love...

Iremar works at the rodeo in North East of Brazil. From his home, the truck he uses to transport the animals, he dreams of a future in the region's booming clothing industry.

Raju faces many hurdles and disappointments in matters of the heart throughout his life. But as a clown in a circus, he tries to make his audience laugh at the cost of his own sorrows. Along the way, Raju loves and loses, but must always keep a smile on his face because, in the words of his circus manager, "The show must go on."

A pawn shop proprietor buys used goods from desperate locals – as much to play perverse power games as for his own livelihood, but when the perfect rump and a backed-up toilet enter his life, he loses all control.

An aged father and his younger, mentally challenged son have been working hard every day to keep the bathhouse running for a motley group of regular customers. When his elder son, who left years ago to seek his fortune in the southern city of Shenzhen, abruptly returns one day, it once again puts under stress the long-broken father-son ties. Presented as a light-hearted comedy, Shower explores the value of family, friendship, and tradition.

Whilst on their way to a concert four friends get sidetracked and stranded in a seemingly abandoned town and whilst looking for help find themselves stalked and terrorised by a gang of violent clown dressed psychopaths who will stop at nothing ensnaring them into their sinister blood thirsty games.

Fellini exposes his great attraction for the clowns and the world of the circus first recalling a childhood experience when the circus arrives nearby his home. Then he joins his crew and travel from Italy to Paris chasing the last greatest European clowns still live in these countries. He also meets Anita Ekberg trying to buy a panther in a circus.

While her mom is away, a teen sneaks out of the hippie commune where she lives and embarks on a life-changing adventure to discover who her father is.

Painter Lorenzo's life spirals out of control as he fears his wife is trying to isolate him from their infant son.

When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.

Lis is a teenager whose dream is to become a circus artist and leave her hometown, even if she knows that to do it she’ll have to fight her side against her parents. It’s summer and she spends her days playing with her friends and flirting with her boyfriend, a few years older than herself. The lack of privacy and the neighbours’ gossip force Lis to keep their relationship secret so that her parents won’t find out. A relationship which change her live forever.

Theo is living the good life in an upscale Brazilian neighborhood. He’s a hardworking doctor, husband, and father. However, Theo has chosen his career over his family, and little by little he discovers that his world is crumbling around him. His beloved mentor and surrogate father is dying, and his wife announces that she wants a divorce. Yet nothing prepares him for the day when he comes home to discover that his 15-year-old son, Pedro, has disappeared. Theo takes to the road in search of his son. In a journey that leads him throughout Brazil, Theo discovers what really matters to him. Searching for his missing son, Theo finds himself.

A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his armless, cult leader mother, and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name.

Dona Hermínia will have to rediscover and reinvent herself because her children are forming new families. This supermom will have to deal with a new life scenario: Marcelina is pregnant and Juliano is getting married.

Victor is a legal advisor who finds himself abandoned by his wife and fired the same day. He tries to seek comfort from different friends and family members, but everyone he meets is concerned with their own problems. His morale begins to falter when he realizes that no one cares about him.

The sierras of southern Brazil, 1963. The son of an French man and a Brazilian woman, Tony is a young man with a profound love of cinema and poetry. After graduating from college he returns to his small town in rural Brazil, to find out that his father had left for good, back to France. Tony then looks for the company of his fathers friends in search of information and references of a lost male role-model. He becomes a school teacher and a male figure to kids, in an attempt to provide them with something he lacks himself. A series of developments lead him to a surprising final lead on his fathers' whereabouts and reasons for leaving.

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

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

An old villager deeply in love with his cow goes to the capital for a while. While he's there, the cow dies and now the villagers are afraid of his possible reaction to it when he returns.

During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.

A father and his son who lived seperated for some time meet each other one day and try to talk their problems over and understand their diametrical differences.

A trapeze artist must decide between her lust for Sergio, the Happy Clown, or her affection for Javier, the Sad Clown, both of whom are deeply disturbed.

Every day, a father and his son jump with a parachute from their vertiginous cold house, attached to a cliff, to go to the village on the ground, far away where they sell the ice they produce daily.

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

Two clowns living in Korea's Chosun Dynasty get arrested for staging a play that satirizes the king. They are dragged to the palace and threatened with execution but are given a chance to save their lives if they can make the king laugh.

The story of a widower and his two sons, focusing on their complex and sometimes difficult relationships.

The story of Francisco, a very simple and poor man whose dream was to see his children become country music stars, and who made all the efforts to make it happen.

Brazilian badlands, April 1910. Tonho is ordered by his father to avenge the death of his older brother. The young man knows that if he commits this crime, his life will be divided in two: the twenty years he has already lived and the few days he has left to live, before the other family avenges their son's death. He is torn between fulfilling his ancestral duty and rebelling against it, urged by his younger brother Pacu. That's when a tiny travelling circus passes through the vast badlands where Tonho's family lives.

Two silent movie actors escape from their film. Forced to find a way to survive in the real world, they will only cause troubles to the people they will meet along the way.

A prestigious Stockholm museum's chief art curator finds himself in times of both professional and personal crisis as he attempts to set up a controversial new exhibit.

A poor young Belgian mother wants her petty thief of a boyfriend to be gainfully employed to raise their newborn child, but he has other ideas.

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.

On the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Irene has only a few days to overcome her anxiety and renew her strength before sending her eldest son out into the world.

Public functionary and family man Lineu and his beloved wife Nenê celebrate the 40th anniversary of their first date. In the present day, Lineu feels uncomfortable when colleague Pacheco dies and goes to the doctor for an examination. When the result of his tomography arrives, Lineu steals the document, afraid of having a tumor, but he believes he will die sooner. Meanwhile, Nenê meets Lineu's old rival Carlinhos, who manages the local market, and invites him to dinner.

As a couple goes on a trip to find their way back to each other, a sideshow artist and his shady entourage emerge from the woods, terrorizing them, luring them deeper into a maelstrom of psychological terror and humiliating slapstick.

Two dramatic stories. In an undetermined past, a young cannibal (who killed his own father) is condemned to be torn to pieces by some wild beasts. In the second story, Julian, the young son of a post-war German industrialist, is on the way to lie down with his farm's pigs, because he doesn't like human relationships.

A cop and his son have to put away their differences while undercover on a therapeutic trip.

Two brothers develop a very close relationship as they are growing up in an idyllic and happy family. When they are young adults their relationship becomes very intimate, romantic, and sexual.

During the Carnival in the historical site of Pelourinho, Salvador da Bahia, we follow the lives of the tenants of a falling-to-pieces tenement house who try to get by using creativity, irony, humor, and music.

"The Family," an album with a velvet cover, is meant to touch the extended family of man. Formal portraits, bookends in this 80-year saga, enclose the central story, which opens with the baptism of Carlo, a baby in his grandfather's lap, and ends with Carlo as a grandfather with a baby in his arms. And never once do we get out of the house, whose rooms provide the film's structure. Comfort or passion? Carlo couldn't really decide until it was too late.

A number of complicated relationships develop between a circus ringmaster, his estranged wife and his lover.

Michele Apicella lives in Rome, in an apartment paid for by his father. Abandoned by his wife and his son Andrea, he occupies his time acting in an experimental theater company under the artistic direction of his friend Fabio.

Three teenage brothers are terrorized by a trio of escaped mental patients disguised as clowns.

The selfish Dr. André Luiz dies and awakes in the limbo called "Umbral". After a painful period in the gruesome swamp, he is rescued and brought in a white light to "Nosso Lar" (meaning "Our Home"). He finds a place of harmony, where people live in peace awaiting

An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.

A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls.

A middle-class Black family in Brazil copes with the election of a far-right extremist president. The mother believes that she's cursed after an unexpected encounter, while her husband puts all of his hopes into their son's soccer career.

A successful lawyer, with a new wife and infant, agrees to care for his teenage son from a previous marriage after his ex-wife becomes concerned about the boy's wayward behavior.

Margherita, a director in the middle of an existential crisis, has to deal with the inevitable and still unacceptable loss of her mother.

Circus owner Matt Masters is beset by disasters as he attempts a European tour of his circus. At the same time, he is caught in an emotional bind between his adopted daughter and her mother.

A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.

Don Anselmo, a retired old man, decides to buy a motorized disabled stroller since all his pensioner friends own one. His family strongly refuses him to purchase the vehicle, so don Anselmo decides to take extreme measures to achieve his goal…

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.

Prompted by the death of his father and the grief of his mother, a man recalls the story of how they met in flashback.

A Parisian teacher loses his cool when his teenage daughter tells him she plans to drop out of school and move in with her boyfriend.

The lives of a macho butcher, his wife, a lonely waitress, a sadist and a flophouse manager intersect in Recife, Brazil.

A boy and a girl fall in love but their fathers take a strong dislike to each other, clashing repeatedly during the preparations for the upcoming marriage.

Neto is a middle class teenager living a normal life. After his father finds a marijuana cigarette on his pocket, he is sent to a mental institution, where he gets to know a completely absurd and inhumane reality in which people are devoured by a corrupt and cruel system.

A monumental windstorm and an abused horse's refusal to work or eat signal the beginning of the end for a poor farmer and his daughter.

An old film director, unhappy with the movie he's shooting about a Hungarian circus stranded in Rome during the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising, faces divorce from his producer wife and other problems.

A comedian's relationship with his family crumbles when his career begins to take off.

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.

Costi is a family man whose cash-strapped neighbor makes him an intriguing proposition: help him find the fortune reportedly buried somewhere on the grounds of his family’s country home in Romania and split the profits.

When Francois, a journalist, tours a big store for an article, he is chosen by the son of the newspaper's owner, Rambal-Cochet, as his new toy. Needing money and unwilling to quit his job, Francois agrees to this ridiculous assignment. Gradually befriending the spoiled boy, he induces him to play at making a newspaper, unveiling publicly the tyrannical way of life of the father. The powerful emotional climax we experience with the child astonishes both men.

Rosa's life, a highly valued professional, is turned upside down when her grandfather Marcelino dies.

The story of a man who feels happy only when he is unhappy: addicted to sadness, with such need for pity, that he’s willing to do everything to evoke it from others. This is the life of a man in a world not cruel enough for him.

Life as the sole sale item in the clearance corner of Eben's Bikes can get lonely. So Red, a unicycle, dreams up a clown owner and his own juggling act that steals the show. But all too soon, the applause turns into the sound of rainfall, as reality rushes back. Red must resign himself to sitting in the corner and await his fate.

The erotic novelist Taeko is writing a morbid story of a family destroyed by incest, murder and abuse. Her assistant, Yuji, sets on a mission to uncover the reality of this story, but the reality might be too much to bear.

Otavio is an idealistic union leader trying to organize workers at a factory to resist the company's exploitative practices. His son, Tião, one of the employees, is more of a realist and doesn't want to risk losing his job by striking. This clash of perspectives puts the father and son at odds. Fortunately, Tião's mother, Romana, is on hand to act as a moderator between the two opinionated men.

Giulio suddenly finds himself having to change his life when his wife, after discovering his betrayal, asks for a separation and, suddenly, the reality around him is no longer the same. Forty years old and father of two children, Giulio is forced by circumstances to say goodbye to family and economic well-being and to study new solutions in order to stay afloat and not drown in a new poverty made of double rents and double bills to pay, solitary lunches in fourth-rate restaurants, children's wishes not to be ignored and creditors to hide from.

Giorgio and Tito, father and son. A successful journalist and a lazy teenager apparently impossible to understand. Giorgio's dream is to take Tito to the Nasca Hill in Liguria, but Tito prefers to spend his entire day with his group of friends, eating, talking about nothing and playing video games. Until one day when he suddenly informs his father that he would join him in this trip. After a series of accidents and misunderstandings, at the end, somehow father and son will find the way to communicate … or at least they will try.

A lonely beach on the southernmost coast of Brazil is the scene for two friends, on the brink of adulthood, to explore their understanding of themselves and one another. Martin has been sent by his father to retrieve what appears to be an inheritance-related document from the family of his recently deceased and estranged grandfather. Tomaz accompanies him, seemingly hoping to regain some of their former closeness. The two boys shelter themselves in a glass house, in front of a cold and stormy sea.

Suffering from a severe case of depression, toy company CEO Walter Black begins using a beaver hand puppet to help him open up to his family. With his father seemingly going insane, adolescent son Porter pushes for his parents to get a divorce.

The life of a melancholy professor is turned upside down when he discovers that a rebellious teenager he is tutoring is actually his son.

A psychoanalyst and his family go through profound emotional trauma when their son dies in a scuba diving accident.

Convinced that his daughter has forgotten how to laugh, a father shows up unannounced while she's living abroad and bombards her with outrageous jokes.

Wang Bianlian is an aging street performer known as the King of Mask for his mastery of Sichuan Change Art in a true story. His wife left him with and infant son over 30 years ago. The son died from illness at age 10. This left Wang a melancholy loner aching for a male descendent to learn his rare and dying art.

Failed magician Iskender decides to do a tour to save his career, but has to bring his grumpy and senile father along. The tour is quite unexpectedly interrupted when a bride actually disappears from the stage.

Alina is a brilliant and enterprising woman who runs a successful art gallery in Palermo. Her husband Daniele, a successful orchestra conductor, cultured and intelligent, is not a regular presence. One day, while accompanying Daniele to the airport, Alina feels a sense of emptiness. She will try to fill it with a butcher who is always joking and full of erotic allusions and who arouses a strong attraction in her.

At the height of the Great Depression, the showman of a renowned circus leads his troupe through the devastated American landscape, lifting the spirits of audiences along the way. During their travels, they discover a man without limbs at a carnival sideshow. However, after an intriguing encounter with the showman, he becomes driven to hope against everything he has ever believed.

Luiz Gonzaga decides to change his destiny and leaves his childhood home for the big city to overcome a romance. When he arrives, he meets a woman he falls in love with, the Odaleia (Nanda Costa). After the birth of his son and his wife's health complications, he decides to return to the road to ensure a better future for his son. He has a friend in Rio de Janeiro and with him leaves the little one and heads to Brazil. He didn't imagine that this distance between them would develop into a complicated relationship, enhanced by the strong personalities of both. Based on conversations between father and son, this is the story of Luiz Gonzaga, a singer and accordion player known as Rei do Baião or Gonzagão.

A writer must face the sudden death of his father, but after the burial, the latter reappears to him. He will have to learn to live with this facetious companion, but difficult to explain the situation to his family, because he is the only one who can see him. This disturbing presence will create an earthquake in the family.

When João goes to Brazil in search of a better life, he meets punk music enthusiast Maria and falls in love with her. But his involvement in the local drug trade makes him the target of a vicious drug lord.

10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages and, as he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.

Born a fully grown black man in a village in the Brazilian jungle, Macunaíma later magically transforms into a white man before making an adventure-filled trip to the city of São Paulo. Once there, he becomes something of a dandy, falling in love with Ci, a revolutionary who dies in an accidental bombing. After robbing a ruthless industrialist, Macunaima returns to his village where he finds his newly acquired knowledge and possessions of little use.

The Parade, in a tragicomic way, tells the story about ongoing battle between two worlds in contemporary post-war Serbian society - the traditional, oppressive, homophobic majority and a liberal, modern and open-minded minority... The film, which deals with gay rights issues in Serbia, features footage of the 2010 Belgrade gay pride parade. The film introduces a group of gay activists, trying to organize a pride parade in Belgrade.

After a terrible trauma on her birthday, Emma chooses not to celebrate it again. But when she turns 21, a friend of her breaks the ritual with a surprise party, unaware of awakening horrors, which for years have been waiting in the darkness.

For ten years, engineer Bill Markham has searched tirelessly for his son Tommy who disappeared from the edge of the Brazilian rainforest. Miraculously, he finds the boy living among the reclusive Amazon tribe who adopted him. And that's when Bill's adventure truly begins. For his son is now a grown tribesman who moves skillfully through this beautiful-but-dangerous terrain, fearful only of those who would exploit it. And as Bill attempts to "rescue" him from the savagery of the untamed jungle, Tommy challenges Bill's idea of true civilization and his notions about who needs rescuing.

A young man with magical powers journeys to his uncle to request help in fighting his sorcerer father.

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.

Kika K is a successful star with millions of fans, but behind the scenes, she is in personal and professional crisis: she has to deal with an obsessive fan, a boyfriend with no concept, professional appointments scheduled by the businesswoman and her obsessive-compulsive disorder

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.

Leone is a rich and powerful man whose loneliness drives him to hire a cast of actors to play the family he never had. On Christmas Eve, reality and make-believe start to get blurred.

Shortly after the Korean war, a father and a son are wandering through the country and make a stop in a remote village, where strange and dangerous happenings occur.

