The FencerMovies like The Fencer
- Key Features:
- Historical drama, Teacher, Secret agents, Finland, Soviet Union, Moral dilemma, Past secrets, Coming of age, Redemption, Friendship, Loyalty, Competition, Cold War, 1950s, Family, Drama
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Drama enthusiasts, History buffs, International cinema fans, Character-driven stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Tension → Resolution
The Fencer

Fleeing from the Russian secret police, a young Estonian fencer is forced to return to his homeland, where he becomes a physical education teacher at a local school. The past however catches up and puts him in front of a difficult choice.
The Fencer
The events of the war in 1944, from the Blue Hills to Sõrve Peninsula. Shown through the eyes of Estonian soldiers who had to pick sides and fight against fellow brothers. Choices have to be made, not only by the soldiers, but also by their loved ones.

The principal of an elementary school calls a special parents meeting after it’s alleged that the seemingly empathetic and kindly-looking teacher Mrs. Drazděchová uses her students to manipulate their parents.

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

When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.

Sonja Wigert, Scandinavia's most acclaimed female movie star, enlists as a spy for Swedish intelligence but ends up becoming entangled with the German Reichskommissar Terboven.

The Interrogator Erik Backstrom is forced to return to his former home village to solve a murder mystery, in which the local polices and some hunters and even Erik's family seems to be involved. Soon, the conflicts are in full action, especially between Erik and the local police Torsten. Torsten does not support Erik very much in his job and has, for some personal reasons, already arrested a suspected perpetrator. Eric takes great risks when he starts digging in the criminal material of the horrible murder case.

Inspired by true events, Olympic swimmer Harry Melchior defects from East Germany in the 1960s and hatches a daring plot to help his sister and others flee East Berlin through a 145-yard underground tunnel.

A poor North Korean fisherman finds himself an accidental defector, and is groomed to be a spy by an ambitious South Korean military officer.

When a border guard with a sixth sense for identifying smugglers encounters the first person she cannot prove is guilty, she is forced to confront terrifying revelations about herself and humankind.

A newly appointed teacher finds herself being followed, and soon discovers that one of her own students is obsessed with her.

Aliide experienced The Great Terror under Stalin’s regime, and decades after her hometown people were deported to Siberia, she lives alone in an isolated house. One night, she finds a young woman in her yard – Zara has just escaped from the claws of the Russian mafia that held her as a sex slave. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in unearthing each other’s motives and gradually their stories merge into one, revealing the tragedy of a family during the cruelest years in Estonian history.

In a small North German village a drama played out during and shortly after the Second World War about duty versus individual conscience and morality.

The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In school, their class is so wild and indisciplined that their teacher quits and is replaced by the militant Igor Hnidzo. He is very strict – but also very fair. His weakness though, is his interest in young women.

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

The mysterious disappearance of a kindergarten teacher during a picnic in the north of Iran is followed by a series of misadventures for her fellow travelers.

Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.

After having lost his job for having saved a child accused of shop lifting, Frédéric Barbier decides to become a school teacher with some funny results.The great comedy actor Coluche is excellent as a simple school teacher.

A school teacher discusses types of government with his class. His students find it too boring to repeatedly go over national socialism and believe that dictatorship cannot be established in modern Germany. He starts an experiment to show how easily the masses can become manipulated.

In 1980s East Germany, Barbara is a Berlin doctor banished to a country medical clinic for applying for an exit visa. Deeply unhappy with her reassignment and fearful of her co-workers as possible Stasi informants, Barbara stays aloof, especially from the good natured clinic head, Andre.

A young Dutch soldier deployed to suppress post-WWII independence efforts in the Netherlands’ colony of Indonesia finds himself torn between duty and conscience when he joins an increasingly ruthless commander’s elite squad.

The idyllic and secluded Finnish archipelago. The pandemic soars across the world. Elli’s world trembles as her husband’s old friend arrives at the island.

Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing boundaries against his best friend at elementary school. While no one knows what actually happened between the two boys, the incident triggers a series of events, forcing parents and school staff into a captivating battle of redemption where madness, desire and obsession arise.

Estonia, 1872. The uncompromising new owner of Robber's Rise must battle with hard work, his spiteful neighbor and with his own family and beliefs to transform the poor land into a flourishing farm of his dreams.

Tuur and Lambert are best friends. But the war is closing in and is about to change their lives forever. Tuurs dad joined the resistance and even his big brother seems so be part of it. Lamberts family on the other hand choose to obey the Germans. Then a new girls from the city shows up, befriending the boys but telling her secret to only one of them. A choice that separates the boys and ultimately gets her in trouble.

6th Grade gets a new substitute teacher. She wants to train the class for an international competition in Paris. But something isn't right. How is she able read kids' minds? Why is she so mean? And how does she manage to convince everyone's parents she is so great when the whole class knows she is really an alien?

A new student, Manuela, enters a strict girls' boarding school after her mother’s death, where she finds comfort in a kind teacher, stirring complex emotions within her.

Fifteen years ago Andrey graduated from a Secret Service school under the guidance of his father, that trained teenagers to be agents for the Foreign Intelligence Service. When this experimental school is closed, he settles in Europe and cuts ties with Russia. One day his father who was believed to be dead calls him to warn him that some security forces want Andrey dead so he must run and hide. While on the run Andrey finds Masha, his ex-classmate from the Secret Service school. He faces love and betrayal and learns the real scale of the ruthless spy game that he was dragged into against his will.

An aged tailor recalls his life as the schoolteacher of a small village in Northern Germany that was struck by a series of strange events in the year leading up to WWI.

A divorced teacher suddenly becomes jealous of everyone, including her daughter, friends and neighbors.

The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he's being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement.

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.

A thief named Egor, having served a term in prison, goes to the country to meet his pen-friend Lyuba, a kind genial village woman. Egor comes to love Lyuba sincerely. Now he has friends, work and a beloved woman, he decides to break with his criminal past and start a new life. However, his former criminal associates interfere brutally.

On the brink of the Second World War, a young Norwegian man's drive to resist the Nazis sets a new course for his future – and the future of his country.

When a schoolteacher is sacked, he projects his bad mood at his troubled teenage son. The son, in turn, buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This starts a chain reaction of misery as every victim projects his problems on to another person.

New York, 1961. Alexander Ivanov, a high-ranked Soviet bureaucrat, reluctantly defects to the West while is part of a diplomatic mission, feeling the grief of being unable to know the fate of his wife Katya, whom he has had to leave behind in Moscow. Only many years later, in 1991, he will finally find out the truth when his niece Lauren travels to Moscow to participate in a painting exhibition.

Set in 1899 Paris, a young police sergeant is chosen to infiltrate a group of anarchists, an opportunity he sees to rise through the ranks. However, he soon finds himself becoming attached to the group.

Set in 19th Century Japan a young samurai who finds himself in love with a farm girl leaves his home to begin a new life. He has to take stock of his new life when he is put to the test and ordered to kill a traitor who just happens to be his dearest friend.

Iranian female judokas Leila and her coach Maryam, travel to the Judo World Championship, intent on bringing home Iran’s first gold medal. Midway through the Judo World Championships, they receive an ultimatum from the Islamic Republic ordering Leila to fake an injury and lose, or she will be branded a traitor of the state. With her own and her family’s freedom at stake, Leila is faced with an impossible choice: comply with the Iranian regime as her coach Maryam implores her to do, or fight on, for the gold.

Weary of the bloodshed and violence from the martial arts world, a powerful swordsman banishes himself to the humble life a vagrant, wandering the fringes of society. But his violent past refuses to let him go quietly. The master swordsman must regain the ability to wield his sword and fight those disrupting the peace he so desperately craves.

Danka's and Ksanka's childhood in the village brutally ends when their father is killed by a White Guard officer in front of their eyes. Seeking revenge, they join forces with Valerka, an intellectual from big city, and the gipsy Yashka, but before they can get close to their enemy they have to help their village and the advancing Red Army.

A tough nightclub bouncer struggling to raise his 8-year-old daughter is forced to go undercover after an unfortunate event.

During WW 2, a Basque shepherd is approached by the underground, who wants him to lead a scientist and his family across the Pyrenees. While being pursued by a sadistic German.

Skilled in the art of killing, a young assassin defies her mentor to save a boy from a ruthless crime syndicate — and she'll destroy anyone in her path.

Lena is a talented midwife and gynaecologist, her husband Serezha is an actor at a provincial drama theatre. They are close and gentle with each other, but there is no sex. Lena suspects that Serezha has an affair, but she worries quietly and does not reveal her jealousy. Instead of sorting out her relationship with her husband, Lena starts to betray him with chance acquaintances. Gradually Lena’s parallel life gets out of control and changes her original life.

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...

British agent Alec Leamas refuses to come in from the Cold War during the 1960s, choosing to face another mission, which may prove to be his final one.

Elle Marja, 14, is a reindeer-breeding Sami girl. Exposed to the racism of the 1930s and phrenological examinations at her boarding school, she starts dreaming of another life. To achieve this other life she has to become someone else and break all ties with her family and culture.

A noble swordsman, whose arm had been chopped off, returns to his former teacher to defend him from a villainous gang of rival swordsmen.

Two Soviet partisans leave their starving band to get supplies from a nearby farm. The Germans have reached the farm first, so the pair must go on a journey deep into occupied territory, a voyage that will also take them deep into their souls.

Katya and her 6-year-old son Sanya, who, in 1952, meet a veteran Soviet officer named Tolyan. Katya falls in love with Tolyan, who turns out to be a small time criminal, but who also becomes a father figure to Sanya ...

Under the German occupation, in a small French town, the arrival of a new priest arouses the interest of all women... Barny, a young communist and atheist woman, can not however be more indifferent. Driven by curiosity, the young skeptic went to the church in order to challenge this.

A bank robber becomes a teacher after being released from prison and finds himself at the center of a number of crazy adventures.

In a poor district of Edo lives a young samurai named Soza. He has been sent by his clan to avenge the death of his father. He isn't an accomplished swordsman however, and he prefers sharing the life of the residents, teaching the kids how to write etc. When he finally finds the man he is looking for, he will have to decide whether he follows the way of the samurai or chooses peace and reconciliation.

After years on the road establishing his reputation as Japan's greatest fencer, Takezo returns to Kyoto. Otsu waits for him, yet he has come not for her but to challenge the leader of the region's finest school of fencing. To prove his valor and skill, he walks deliberately into ambushes set up by the school's followers. While Otsu waits, Akemi also seeks him, expressing her desires directly. Meanwhile, Takezo is observed by Sasaki Kojiro, a brilliant young fighter, confident he can dethrone Takezo. After leaving Kyoto in triumph, Takezo declares his love for Otsu, but in a way that dishonors her and shames him. Once again, he leaves alone.

In the aftermath of World War II, a British colonel and his wife are assigned to live in Hamburg during the post-war reconstruction, but tensions arise with the German widower who lives with them.

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.

After a nervous breakdown, Walter trades the city for the countryside. But his hopes for a calm life are shattered once he meets his loud new neighbors.

While vacationing in the countryside at his childhood home, a woman suddenly reveals to her husband that she is expecting a child – but not his.

A French teacher in a small Algerian village during the Algerian War forms an unexpected bond with a dissident who is ordered to be turned in to the authorities.

The true story of an 84 year-old Kenyan villager and ex Mau Mau freedom fighter who fights for his right to go to school for the first time to get the education he could never afford.

A pastor's faith turns upside down when a meteorite lands in his small Finnish town, its impact stirring up chaos and criminal intentions.

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.

During the revolution, a high-stakes gambler arrives in Cuba seeking to win big in poker games. Along the way, he meets and falls in love with the wife of a Communist revolutionary.

Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

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.

Soviet Georgia, 1983. Preparations for Nika and Ana's wedding are in full swing and it's a big day for both of their elite families. For the newlyweds and their friends, however, the celebrations are in fact part of a cover-up, as they plot an audacious escape from the Soviet Union.

While staying at a picturesque village, a teen encounters the underground world of art forgery.

June 1946: Stalin invites Russian emigres to return to the motherland. It's a trap: when a ship-load from France arrives in Odessa, only a physician and his family are spared execution or prison. He and his French wife (her passport ripped up) are sent to Kiev. She wants to return to France immediately; he knows that they are captives and must watch every step.

The film is based on the second book from the Adventures of Erast Petrovich Fandorin series of novels written by the Russian author Boris Akunin. The film takes place in 1877 during the Russian-Turkish war. Erast Fandorin has just escaped from Turkish prison and is trying to get on the Russian side as soon as possible to give important information about the upcoming attack of the enemy. On his way he meets Varvara Suvorova, a young lady who is going to see her fiancée - a soldier of the Russian army. Erast also knows that there is a spy somewhere in the Russian army, everyone is under suspicion.

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

A farmer's wife is seduced into running away from her stolid older husband by a city slicker, who enslaves her in a brothel.

Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation. A man is wrongly accused of collaboration. Desperate to save his dignity, he faces an impossible moral choice.

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.

In pre-WWII Holland, the penniless, illegitimate son of a powerful bailiff sets out to become a lawyer as he spends a lifetime struggling to prove his worth to his relentlessly spiteful father.

New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.

Arn, the son of a high-ranking Swedish nobleman is educated in a monastery and sent to the Holy Land as a knight templar to do penance for a forbidden love.

September of 1944, a few days before Finland went out of the Second World War. A chained to a rock Finnish sniper-kamikadze Veikko managed to set himself free. Ivan, a captain of the Soviet Army, arrested by the Front Secret Police 'Smersh', has a narrow escape. They are soldiers of the two enemy armies. A Lapp woman Anni gives a shelter to both of them at her farm. For Anni they are not enemies, but just men.

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.

Kanichiro Yoshimura is a Samurai and Family man who can no longer support his wife and children on the the low pay he receives from his small town clan, he is forced by the love for his family to leave for the city in search of higher pay to support them.

A philosophy professor has an illicit affair with one of his students, a bright yet troubled girl who lives alone.

When his daughter's criminal boyfriend becomes an increasing threat to the family, a father must take action to protect them.

Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.

Clement, a young philosophy teacher, is sent to Arras for a year. He meets Jennifer, a pretty hair stylist, and the two freely share their hearts and bodies as they try to overcome the cultural and social divide between them.

German artist Kurt Barnert has escaped East Germany and now lives in West Germany, but is tormented by his childhood under the Nazis and the GDR regime.

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.

Ariel, a young French Jew, decides to leave his family to go to Israel and secretly become an agent of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. After years of training, his first mission is in Paris to steal secrets from Remy Prieur, a French atomic scientist.

The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together.

Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a “war child”; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?

After a fictitious marriage with a Russian emigrant, Cellisten Louka, a Czech man, must suddenly take responsibility for her son. However, it’s not long before the communication barrier is broken between the two new family members.

Thomas, a young German baker, is having an affair with Oren, an Israeli married man who has frequent business visits in Berlin. When Oren dies in a car crash in Israel, Thomas travels to Jerusalem seeking for answers regarding his death. Under a fabricated identity, Thomas infiltrates the life of Anat, his lover’s newly widowed wife, who owns a small Café in downtown Jerusalem. Thomas starts to work for her, creating German cakes and cookies that bring her Café to life. Thomas finds himself involved in Anat’s life in a way far beyond his anticipation. To protect the truth he will stretch his lie to a point of no return.

A small band of multicultural convicts stages a daring escape from a WWII-era Siberian gulag, and embarks on a treacherous journey across five countries in a desperate race for freedom and survival.

A young woman struggles to defend her Sámi heritage in a world where xenophobia is on the rise, climate change is threatening reindeer herding, and young people choose suicide in the face of collective desperation.

Erik has is own motorbike workshop in a sleepy little town. He may have the telling word ‘scoundrel’ tattooed onto his lower arm but he nonetheless creates an impression of a well-behaved average Joe. His relationship with his girlfriend Julia is going well and her daughter Linda is very fond of her new Dad. But then all of a sudden the mysterious Henry appears and begins following him about like a sinister shadow. The more Erik tries to shake off his diabolical guest the more Henry intrudes into his life. But then when a violent gangster named Keitel enters the fray and threatens not only Erik but Julia and Linda, Erik’s seemingly ideal world begins to run off the rails.

A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.

Mathieu, a member of the French institute in Irkutsk, is arrested overnight by the Russian authorities. Imprisoned and accused of sexual abuse on his own daughter, he realises he is a victim of a Kompromat. With the help of the FSB, someone has built up a case to frame him. Isolated, he has no one to turn to. Proving his innocence is impossible: the only solution is to escape.

A high school student becomes convinced that the world is lost to evil and begins to challenge the morals and beliefs of the adults surrounding him.

An ex-con struggling to readjust to life in his small town forms an intense bond with his former high-school teacher.

After four years apart, Ahmad returns to his wife Marie in Paris in order to progress their divorce. During his brief stay, he cannot help noticing the strained relationship between Marie and her daughter Lucie. As he attempts to improve matters between mother and daughter Ahmad unwittingly lifts the lid on a long buried secret...

A thriller in which a battle of philosophies between a fundamentalist Christian and an atheist escalates into a lethal battle of wills.
