The Fourth StateMovies like The Fourth State
- Key Features:
- Terrorist plot, Journalist, Secret Service, Political intrigue, Conspiracy, Investigation, Espionage, Moscow, Secrecy, Betrayal, Survival, International relations
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Political thriller enthusiasts, Fans of espionage stories, Viewers interested in international intrigue, Those who enjoy suspenseful narratives
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Anxiety → Suspense
The Fourth State

A journalist gets caught up in a terrorist plot in Moscow while investigating the Russian secret service.
The Fourth State
In France, terrorist groups and intelligence agencies battle in a merciless war everyday, in the name of radically opposed ideologies. Yet, terrorist and secret agents lead almost the same lives. Condemned to secrecy, these masters of manipulation follow the same methods. Alex and Al Barad are two of them. The former is the head of the D.G.S.E.'s (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the French equivalent of the CIA or the MI6) counter-terrorism unit while the latter reigns over a terrorist network, and both fight using the most ruthless of weapons: human beings.

Workaholic reporter, Jack Elgin takes his family on a working trip to India, but their aircraft is hijacked in Cyprus by a previously-unknown terrorist movement, and his wife and daughter are among the slaughtered. With western governments suppressing key facts and unwilling to go after the terrorists, Jack uses his contacts and snooping skill to seek the truth himself.

Led by Kim Philby, Plan Aurora is a plan that breaches the top-secret Fourth Protocol and turns the fears that shaped it into a living nightmare. A crack Soviet agent, placed under cover in a quiet English country town, begins to assemble a nuclear bomb, whilst an MI5 agent attempts to prevent its detonation.

When her son vanishes inside a US consulate, ex-special forces soldier Sara does everything in her power to find him — and uncovers a dark conspiracy.

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.

Ivan sets off on a dangerous mission into Syria to save his ex-commander Grey after his capture by ISIS. With the help of U.S. military patrols, he succeeds in freeing Grey and attempts to escape the country while being hunted by terrorists.

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

Using the interrogation of a US counterinsurgency agent as a backdrop, the film explores the consequences of the struggle between Uruguay's government and the leftist Tupamaro guerrillas.

Sam, a freelance journalist, decides to investigate the growing phenomenon of disaffected youth joining extremist groups. He infiltrates a group of four young people who have been tasked with the creation of a jihadist cell and whose mission is to destabilise the city centre of Paris.

Clara and Hans are left-wing terrorists who have been sought by police for almost fifteen years. Their increasingly rebellious daughter Jeanne begins to pose a threat to their security when she falls in love with a boy she meets on the beach.

A French diplomat is surveilled by a secret service to find a weakness for political control, his private life becoming 'File No. 51'.

When an illicit arms deal goes bad, North Korean spy Pyo Jong-seong finds himself targeted not just by the South Koreans but also his own bosses.

When Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappears after entering Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, his fiancée and dissidents around the world are left to piece together the clues to a brutal murder and expose a global cover up perpetrated by the very country he loved.

When German police viciously quell a protest against the shah of Iran, popular journalist Ulrike Meinhof rebels against her dishonest marriage, walks away from her children and joins radical anarchist Andreas Baader. Together with Baader's girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, they form the violent Red Faction Army, and together perpetrate a slew of terrorist attacks as a way of disrupting the fabric of what they see as an increasingly fascist state.

After a treacherous attack, Secret Service agent Mike Banning is charged with attempting to assassinate President Trumbull. Chased by his own colleagues and the FBI, Banning begins a race against the clock to clear his name.

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.

A government agent leads his team's effort to stop Russian rebels from smuggling a stolen missile through Sweden.

When a train carrying atomic warheads mysteriously crashes in the former Soviet Union, a nuclear specialist discovers the accident is really part of a plot to cover up the theft of the weapons. Assigned to help her recover the missing bombs is a crack Special Forces Colonel.

Alex Thomas was the man in charge of protecting the president but, when the time came to fulfill his duties, everything just went wrong. His conscience haunted by a bullet, and his devotion to his country stronger than ever, Alex teams with a seasoned reporter to navigate a treacherous web of lies, unlocking a dangerous conspiracy, and enter a deadly world in which skilled assassins and highly-trained ex-special ops lurk in every shadow.

Barley Scott Blair, a Lisbon-based editor of Russian literature who unexpectedly begins working for British intelligence, is commissioned to investigate the purposes of Dante, a dissident scientist trapped in the decaying Soviet Union that is crumbling under the new open-minded policies.

A young operative is sent on a mission to follow an older agent who's behavior has come into question.

A CIA agent gets caught up in political intrigue after he gets brought in to solve the murder of a Cuban ambassador.

When Luna’s family is killed in cold blood on a mountain vacation, she barely escapes, and has to discover she’s been living a lie: her dad was a Russian secret agent, and her family was just a front. Luna has the opportunity to flee the country. But first she wants revenge.

As Israel is rocked by a series of terrorist bombings, a US senator's daughter is killed in one bloody explosion. Now, ex-Mossad agent Etan must lead an elite, covert team of agents and mercenaries to find the man responsible—the elusive “Engineer.” Can they find and destroy the madman before more innocent lives are lost?

A passionate holiday romance leads to an obsessive relationship when an Australian photojournalist wakes one morning in an abandoned Berlin apartment and is unable to leave.

When a congressional aide is killed, a Washington, D.C. journalist starts investigating the case involving the Representative, his old college friend.

Tough Chinese detectives go on a mission to Moscow to hunt down ruthless robbers who have been plaguing the trans-Siberian railway with violence and chaos.

Veteran Secret Service agent Pete Garrison investigates a colleague's murder and is subsequently framed as a mole in an assassination attempt on the President due to the machinations of a blackmailer who knows the secret he is hiding. Disgraced, dismissed, and now a fugitive with two relentless federal investigators hot on his heels, Garrison must both clear his name and save the president from assassination.

An American tourist in Greece finds himself on the run after a tragic accident plunges him into a political conspiracy that makes him a target for assassination.

After being imprisoned by the Assad regime in Syria, Hamid now works undercover as part of a secret group pursuing their leaders, including the guard he suspects was responsible for his torture.

An explosion sends fear and terror through Berlin. Young Maxi's home is reduced to rubble and ashes, burying her mother and little brothers. Only she and her father survive the terrorist bomb attack. When she happens to meet the charismatic Karl, who tells her about a conference for young people in Prague, she seizes the opportunity to flee Berlin and her grieving father. The political movement behind the meeting claims to be working for a better Europe. Maxi has no idea how close the murderers really are to her family.

An undercover agent is assigned by his corrupt chief to infiltrate a rival department and sabotage their investigation of counterfeit currency. What he discovers is the counterfeiter's real plan. To overthrow the capital. Not by flooding it with funny money, but with an army of undead.

For years, Andrei Evilenko eluded the obsessive Detective Lesiev and the psychiatric profiler Aron Richter. Spurred on by his rabid fury at the gradual crumbling of his precious Soviet Union, Evilenko is a man who will live, die and kill as a communist.

Carl Hamilton manages to infiltrate an international gang that has stolen advanced Swedish GPS-guided missiles. But the league is subjected to a sudden deadly attack by a well drilled group of mercenaries of unknown clients. Hamilton escapes the massacre, but the rockets have disappeared without a trace.

In 1977 Recife, Marcelo, a technology expert in his early forties, returns in the midst of Carnaval to reunite with his son and plot a dangerous escape under the ever-watchful eyes of Brazil’s repressive military regime.

In the puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s, four Communist party special agents, after returning to China, embark on a secret mission. Sold out by a traitor, the team find themselves surrounded by threats on all sides.

Police Inspector Renko tries to solve the case of three bodies found in Moscow's Gorky Park but finds his attempts to solve the crime impeded by his superiors. Working on his own, Renko seeks out more information and stumbles across a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the government.

A son to a high-ranked official in North Korea commits a series of murders going across the countries around the world. The movie depicts the following events as South Korea, North Korea and Interpol start chasing down after him.

Fernando, a journalist, and his friend César join terrorist group MR8 in order to fight Brazilian dictatorial regime during the late sixties. César, however, is wounded and captured during a bank hold up. Fernando then decides to kidnap the American ambassador in Brazil and ask for the release of fifteen political prisoners in exchange for his life.

A Chechen Muslim illegally immigrates to Hamburg and becomes a person of interest for a covert government team tracking the movements of potential terrorists.

Captain Glass of the USS Arkansas discovers that a coup d'état is taking place in Russia, so he and his crew join an elite group working on the ground to prevent a war.

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

After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate.

In London, an airport baggage handler is forced by French and British intelligence agents to seduce the wife of a businessman with ties to Syrian terrorists.

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.

While working undercover as a bodyguard to arms dealer Harry, former-soldier-turned-secret-service-agent Ewan survives a bloody shootout with a member of an Islamic terrorist cell who steals Harry's briefcase full of Semtex explosives and escapes. Ewan's spymasters task Ewan with hunting down the cell members and retrieving the briefcase.

In 2029, an elite police squad combats an anti-reunification terrorist group while another enemy lurks nearby.

A spy navigates the precarious terrain of love and survival during an undercover mission in Syria.

When Chechen rebels take over a Russian nuclear reactor, it’s up to a special ops marksman to rescue the hostages and prevent nuclear catastrophe.

Following the suicide of an elderly Jewish man, investigative journalist Peter Miller sets out to hunt down an SS Captain and former concentration camp commander. In doing so he discovers that, despite allegations of war crimes, the former commander has become a man of importance in industry in post-war Germany, protected from prosecution by a powerful organisation of former SS members called Odessa.

Convinced that his subtenant is a spy and an enemy of the state, Ilija Čvorović falls into deep paranoia which leads to an absurd and destructive chain of events.

Follows the man who survived an assassination attempt by poisoning with a lethal nerve agent in August 2020. During his months-long recovery, he makes shocking discoveries about the attempt on his life and decides to return home.

Someone is killing Parisians of Arab ethnicity. When an Algerian diplomat is murdered by the same assailant, two Algerian detectives are sent to help the French with the investigation and they have their own ways of doing things.

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.

A stripper at the club Studio Six is murdered. A political scandal takes off when the Minister of Commerce appears to have been at the club. He resigns - but only to hide an even bigger secret.

During the Cold War, an organization called "Patriot" created a superhero squad, which includes members of multiple Soviet republics. For years, the heroes had to hide their identities, but, in hard times, they must show themselves again.

A Secret Service Agent is held captive in the trunk of a car and endures high-speed mental and physical torture as terrorists attempt to extract needed information for their sinister plot.

Harris, a CIA interrogator at an Agency black site, finds himself the target of a rendition operation after being scapegoated for an interrogation gone horribly wrong. As the team tasked to bring Harris in begins to question their orders -- and each other --Olsen, a senior intelligence officer, and his subordinate, Visser, raise the stakes. Now, it's up to Harris and some newfound allies to uncover the truth and turn the tables.

Someone is blackmailing the CIA by assassinating foreign journalists and making it look like the agency is responsible. As the world begins to unite against the U.S., the CIA must lure its most brilliant – and rebellious – operative out of retirement, forcing him to confront his checkered past while unraveling an international conspiracy.

Set in Stalin-era Soviet Union, a disgraced MGB agent is dispatched to investigate a series of child murders -- a case that begins to connect with the very top of party leadership.

South Korea, 1993. An agent of the National Intelligence Service is sent to Beijing to infiltrate a group of North Korean officials with the ultimate goal of obtaining information about their nuclear program.

Years after his squad was ambushed during the Gulf War, Major Ben Marco finds himself having terrible nightmares. He begins to doubt that his fellow squad-mate Sergeant Raymond Shaw, now a vice-presidential candidate, is the hero he remembers him being. As Marco's doubts deepen, Shaw's political power grows, and, when Marco finds a mysterious implant embedded in his back, the memory of what really happened begins to return.

Bobby Bishop is a special assistant to the President of the United States. Accidentally, he meets his friend professor Pochenko on the street. Pochenko has time to tell Bishop about some conspiracy in the White House but then immediately gets killed by an assassin. Now bad guys are after Bobby as the only man who knows about a plot. Bishop must now not only survive, but to stop the conspirators from achieving their goal. And he doesn't know whom to trust.

Cold War spy Greville Wynne and his Russian source try to put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

October 2015. French customs seize seven tonnes of cannabis in the heart of the capital. The same day, Hubert Antoine, a former mole with a shady past, contacts Stéphane Vilner, a journalist at Libération. He claims to be able to demonstrate the existence of State drug trafficking led by Jacques Billard, prominent media figure and high-ranking French police officer. Suspicious at first, the young journalist finally dives into an investigation that will lead him to the darkest corners of the Republic.

The Belgian PM is abducted and he finds his wife and children taken hostage. If he wants to see them again – alive – he has to kill the person he is meeting later that day. And that person is no less than... the president of the United States.

After avenging the murder of his family, a former soldier is sprung from prison and recruited by a shadowy government agency.

Tensions flare in the near future aboard the International Space Station as a conflict breaks out on Earth. U.S. and Russian astronauts receive orders from the ground: take control of the station by any means necessary.

When an Egyptian terrorism suspect "disappears" on a flight from Africa to Washington DC, his American wife and a CIA analyst find themselves caught up in a struggle to secure his release from a secret detention facility somewhere outside the US.

A young Oxford academic and his attorney girlfriend holiday in Morocco. They bump into a Russian millionaire who owns a peninsula and a diamond watch. He wants a game of tennis. What else he wants propels the lovers on a tortuous journey to the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britain's intelligence establishment, to Paris and the Alps.

An undercover MI6 agent is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.

When CIA Analyst Jack Ryan interferes with an IRA assassination, a renegade faction targets Jack and his family as revenge.

International assassin Walker is compromised during a mission and sent to a reassignment center for a new identity. During his stay at the facility, a ruthless assault team storms the compound searching for someone their boss has lost. Walker begrudgingly falls in with skilled hitwoman Elda and her mysterious ward Juliet in order to survive the night.

The reception for Finland's Independence Day is rudely interrupted when the presidential palace is attacked and the state leadership is taken hostage. Max Tanner of the Security Police is appointed as a negotiator in the hostage crisis, that unfolds as part of a bigger plan to undermine European security.

A young lawyer stumbles upon a vast conspiracy while investigating a brutal murder case.

A reporter, fired after refusing to give names to a 1951 House Un-American Activities Committee, takes a part-time job as companion to an old lady. While working she overhears a noisy argument in the neighboring house, being conducted largely in German and involving her HUAC prosecutor. She begins to investigate, enlisting the help of the FBI Agent initially detailed to surveil her.

Travis Block is a shadowy Government agent who specializes in removing operatives whose covers have been exposed. He then has to uncover a deadly conspiracy within his own ranks that reaches the highest echelons of power.

A couple in love spends time away from civilization. The sudden arrival of the younger sister first, and then the girl's ex-boyfriend, violate the country idyll. Each of the heroes has his own plan for this weekend, and together they become hostages of the situation and participants in cruel psychological games. Falling in love gives way to passion, and innocent flirting causes jealousy and can lead to mortal danger.

The events in Sarajevo in June 1914 are the backdrop for a thriller directed by Andreas Prochaska and written by Martin Ambrosch, focusing on the examining magistrate Dr. Leo Pfeffer (Florian Teichtmeister) investigating the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Trying to do his job in a time of lawlessness and violence, intrigues and betrayal, Leo struggles to maintain his integrity and save his love, Marija, and her father, prominent Serbian merchant. But the events of Sarajevo have set into motion an inescapable course of events that will escalate to become … the Great War.

A group of top female agents from American, British, Chinese, Colombian, and German government agencies are drawn together to try and stop an organization from acquiring a deadly weapon to send the world into chaos.

Jack Ryan, as a young covert CIA analyst, uncovers a Russian plot to crash the U.S. economy with a terrorist attack.

U.S. government agent Scott is assigned to rescue the daughter of a high-ranking government official. As willing as he is to bend the rules to get things done, though, Scott is shocked to find that others are willing to go even further to protect a political career.

Secret-service agent Vic Davis is on his way to pick up his estranged son, Sean, from his college campus when he finds himself in the middle of a high-stakes terrorist operation. His son's friend Erin Walton, the daughter of Supreme Court Justice Walton is the target, and this armed faction will stop at nothing to kidnap her and use her as leverage for a pending landmark legal case.

In Chechnya, an American doctor takes a detour in life when he helps a mysterious woman escape from her would-be assailant.

When the moral values of a longtime wetwork black ops agent is tested during his last operation, he receives an unfavorable psych evaluation. Now he is given a break and a seemingly uncomplicated assignment of simply protecting the security of a young female code announcer, code resources and remote station they are assigned to. After an ambush and one phone call later, it becomes a complicated fight for their survival.

Ilya Goryunov has spent seven years in prison on false charges of drug trafficking. When Ilya is free he realizes that the old life that he yearned for is no more. Although he did not intend to take revenge on the man who sent him to prison, now there is no other way out.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union captures U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers after shooting down his U-2 spy plane. Sentenced to 10 years in prison, Powers' only hope is New York lawyer James Donovan, recruited by a CIA operative to negotiate his release. Donovan boards a plane to Berlin, hoping to win the young man's freedom through a prisoner exchange. If all goes well, the Russians would get Rudolf Abel, the convicted spy who Donovan defended in court.

When Alex, an infiltration expert with a secret past, accidentally reveals her identity during what should have been a routine heist, she quickly finds herself mixed up in a government conspiracy and entangled in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a master assassin and his team of killers. Armed with her own set of lethal skills, Alex looks to exact revenge for her murdered friends while uncovering the truth.

North Korea's 8th Special Forces hijack a shipment of CTX, a potent new liquid explosive, and threatens South Korea as part of a plot to re-unify the two countries. Ryu and Lee, special agents of O.P., South Korea's secret intelligence service, attempt to track down the terrorists and find the CTX. Meanwhile Hee, the 8th's ultra-bad female sniper, resurfaces to wreak havoc and haunt Ryu.

Three elite North Korean sleeper agents live under cover for so long that they believe their cover stories are their real identities. They are shocked when they are ordered to kill one another or face death at the hands of an elite hit team.

Darius Stone's criminal record and extreme sports obsession make him the perfect candidate to be the newest XXX agent. He must save the U.S. government from a deadly conspiracy led by five-star general and Secretary of Defense George Deckert.

A journalist finds himself on the trail of a murderer who's been targeting people around him, while the police are considering him a suspect in their investigation.

An interpol agent and an attorney are determined to bring one of the world's most powerful banks to justice. Uncovering money laundering, arms trading, and conspiracy to destabilize world governments, their investigation takes them from Berlin, Milan, New York and Istanbul. Finding themselves in a chase across the globe, their relentless tenacity puts their own lives at risk.

When intelligence agent Kathryn Woodhouse is suspected of betraying the nation, her husband – also a legendary agent – faces the ultimate test of whether to be loyal to his marriage, or his country.

When the police finally catch an elusive serial killer, no one can prove his guilt, resulting in the lead detective making it personal.

A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between journalist and government. Inspired by true events.

An ambitious young journalist uncovers the horrific slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers during World War II, a secret kept hidden for far too many years.

A drama centered on the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name.

A psychotic executive triggers a journalist's dark side, and they begin to form a strange bond through the internet.
