The RiverMovies like The River
- Key Features:
- Environmental destruction, Medical mystery, Social commentary, Desperation
- Tone:
- serious, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Art house cinema enthusiasts, Socially conscious viewers, Drama lovers
- Emotional Arc:
- Discomfort → Frustration
The River

A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river for a movie shoot, but nobody can provide him any relief.
The River
A young man abandons his family for a solitary life of fly-fishing. His goal was to find his own way in the fishing world and thereby find himself and love.

Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.

When a mysterious corpse is found in a river, a distressed police officer delves into a string of grisly murders as danger quickly approaches.

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.

Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature—shot entirely on location in India—is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the Bengal river around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir’s subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its people, The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.

Hsiao-Kang, now working as an adult movie actor, meets Shiang-chyi once again. Meanwhile, the city of Taipei faces a water shortage that makes the sales of watermelons skyrocket.

After getting out of prison, small-time crook Mardar stumbles upon a woman who looks exactly like his long-lost lover, who he attempted to kidnap 3 years ago.

In the south of Laos, an American volunteer doctor becomes a fugitive after he intervenes in the sexual assault of a young woman. When the assailant's body is pulled from the Mekong River, things quickly spiral out of control.

An aging poet summons his estranged sons to the hotel he is staying at because he feels his death is near; meanwhile, he encounters two women staying at the hotel.

A man spends a summer day swimming home via all the pools in his quiet suburban neighborhood.

A poor young man is wrongly charged with drug trafficking after being deceived. An ex-prosecutor investigates the case, uncovers a corrupt lawyer team's scheme, and restores justice despite obstruction from evil forces.

A group of performing art troupe members each face their own trials and tribulations in Chengdu; from escaping a family scandal to dealing with unrequited love, each experiences rejection that shapes their lives.

A teenage girl is captured by a giant mutated squid-like creature that appears from Seoul's Han River after toxic waste was dumped in it, prompting her family into a frantic search for her.

In the final days of the year 1999, almost everyone in Taiwan has died from a strange plague that ravished the island. As rain pours down relentlessly, a single man is stuck with an unfinished plumbing job and a hole in his floor. This results in a very odd relationship with the woman who lives below him.

Under the Han River lives Crocodile, a rugged member of the lumpenproletariat who exists from schemes and stealing. His position as a scavenger of society undermines South Korea’s boasts of its newfound economic position as an Asian Tiger. One day, Crocodile finds a girl floating in his river.

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.

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

After falling pregnant to her boyfriend's best friend, a young woman commits suicide. She returns to haunt her unborn child's father while her friend seeks revenge on the person who drove her to her fate.

A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.

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

A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.

1990s, Banpo Town, rural China. A woman's body is found by the river. Ma Zhe, Chief of the Criminal Police, heads up the murder investigation that leads to an obvious arrest. His superiors hurry to congratulate him, but several clues push Ma Zhe to delve deeper into the hidden behaviour of his fellow citizens.

A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.

A private detective is drawn into a complex murder mystery when he is hired to track down a missing young woman.

A psychiatrist faces his past, present and future when he finds himself involved in the treatment of a young man recently released from prison for a murder committed when the boy was just 11 years old.

A family of four fractures under the weight of unmet expectations, unexpected tragedy, and uncompromising pride.

A young man recalls his childhood growing up in a poor alley in Beijing during the 1950s and 1960s.

Follows a young cyclo driver on his poverty-driven descent into criminality in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. The boy's struggles to scratch out a living for his two sisters and grandfather in the mean streets of the city lead to petty crime on behalf of a mysterious Madame from whom he rents his cyclo.

Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother-in-law is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank and his business partners make bad decisions.

A young couple is pushed to the limits of sanity as they attempt to be reunited amid the chaos of a pandemic outbreak. The streets erupt into violence and depravity, as those infected are driven to enact the most cruel and ghastly things imaginable.

Billy, a single mother of two, is led into a macabre underworld while her teenage son, Bones, discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town. Both Billy and Bones must dive deep into the mystery if their family is to survive.

Returning home and finding his town drastically changed, a former soldier falls in with gangsters.

A cataclysmic event causes a man, who dreams of winning the lottery, to become stranded on an island with his co-workers.

Laos. In a land ravaged by war and exploitation, a boy whose family believe he is cursed must redeem himself by taking part in a dangerous rocket competition.

A rescue unit within the Chinese Coast Guard are forced to overcome their personal differences to resolve a crisis.

When a woman visits a Chinese doctor, she discovers her pain is due to pent-up rage, and the only cure is to fully express herself, whatever may come.

Left alone to clean up a 6-meter-deep deserted pool, Day falls asleep on an inflatable raft. When he wakes, the water level has sunk so low that he can't climb out on his own. Stuck in the pool, Day screams for help, but the only thing that hears him is a creature from a nearby crocodile farm.

Crown Prince Wu Luan is in love with Little Wan but left heartbroken when she marries his father, the emperor. The emperor's brother, Li, kills him and Wu Luan tries to avenge his father's death.

A Taiwanese-American man is happily settled in New York with his American boyfriend. He plans a marriage of convenience to a Chinese woman in order to keep his parents off his back and to get the woman a green card. Chaos follows when his parents arrive in New York for the wedding.

A pig farmer, a busboy, a salon owner, an expat architect and a jaded rich girl cross paths as thousands of dead pigs float down the Yangtze River toward Shanghai.

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.

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.

A down-and-out businessman travels to a seaside town, where he meets a woman with unusual sexual powers.

A young man released from prison visits the widow of the man he killed drunk-driving and becomes infatuated with his cerebral palsy-stricken daughter.

Through his work at a morgue, an incarcerated young man trying to build a new life starts to come to terms with the crime he committed.

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.

In the northern Chinese city of Manzhouli, they say there is an elephant that simply sits and ignores the world. Manzhouli becomes an obsession for the protagonists of this film, a longed-for escape from the downward spiral in which they find themselves.

Waverly thought she had her future figured out: she’d start her medical residency in Toronto after a summer visit to her parents in Taipei. When her plans suddenly change, she makes an impulsive detour to a small Canadian town where she meets local lifeguard Blake. After he saves her from nearly drowning at a beach party, Blake offers to teach Waverly to swim, and as the lessons continue, the two unexpectedly find themselves falling in love.

A Japanese photojournalist revisits Vietnam after the liberation to document the nation, and begins following and documenting the young children from a poor Vietnamese family.

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.

A little girl brings back the big egg she finds by a nearby lake to her home. However, the egg belongs to a mysterious and dangerous creature, and it soon starts searching for it.

When five Kurdish prisoners are granted one week's home leave, they find to their dismay that they face continued oppression outside of prison from their families, the culture, and the government.

At his mother's 70th birthday party, Yong-nam runs into Eui-joo, who rejected him in college. When the city is engulfed in toxic gas from a terrorist attack, the two must find a way to escape using all the techniques they learned in their college rock climbing club.

Twenty-something Richard travels to Thailand and finds himself in possession of a strange map. Rumours state that it leads to a solitary beach paradise, a tropical bliss - excited and intrigued, he sets out to find it.

A love story between a country boy in Beijing to study and a wealthy businessman set against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident.

Abel Grey is sent to investigate the death of a boy from an exclusive local school, who is found floating in the river. Fearing scandal, the school insists it was suicide. But after discovering from the boy's girlfriend, Carlin, that he was being badly bullied, Abel suspects that a dangerous schoolboy initiation has gone horribly wrong and he secretly solicits the help of a sympathetic teacher, Betsy. He is warned off the investigation by his boss, as the school is a generous benefactor to the Police benevolent fund. Abel, however, cannot let the case go, not only because his own brother committed suicide years before, but also it seems that the spirit of the dead boy is leaving them clues as to what really happened that night.

The passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.

After having to quarantine together during COVID-19, a mother and daughter are forced to confront their personal obstacles and relationship tensions.

A young drifter working on a river barge disrupts his employers' lives while hiding the fact that he knows more about a dead woman found in the river than he admits.

A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.

Ah-Ching and his friends have just finished school in their island fishing village, and now spend most of their time drinking and fighting. Three of them decide to go to the port city of Kaohsiung to look for work. They find an apartment through relatives, and Ah-Ching is attracted to the girlfriend of a neighbor. There they face the harsh realities of the big city.

At Beijing World Park, a bizarre cross-pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center where visitors can interact with famous international monuments without ever leaving the city’s suburbs, a security guard betrays his dancer girlfriend by pursuing another woman.

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

Vincent, a young man who suffers from Tourette's syndrome, has just lost his mother. His father, a successful politician, does not want to take care of him and therefore places him into a mental institution. He is put into a room with Alexander, a guy with a compulsive disorder, and is shown around by Marie, an anorectic girl.

Three men living in the Eastern most island of China go on a road trip to the Western most end of the country, and facing crises of love, friendship, and faith on their journey to the West.

On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.

A young man of Chinese-Cambodian descent dies, leaving behind his isolated mother and his lover of four years. Though the two don't share a language, they grow close through their grief.

People binge eat and suffer from extreme thirst, which leads them to go crazy for water. They cannot control themselves because they are brainwashed by a parasite.

An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.

Taeko and her husband, Jirō, are living a peaceful existence with her young son, Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy's long-lost father, Park, back into her life. To cope with the pain and guilt, Taeko throws herself into helping this deaf and homeless man.

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.

Mousse and Louis are young, beautiful, rich and in love. But drugs have invaded their lives. One day, they overdose and Louis dies. Mousse survives, but soon learns she's pregnant. Feeling lost, Mousse runs away to a house far from Paris. Several months later, Louis' brother joins her in her refuge.

Mob assassin Jeffrey is no ordinary hired gun; the best in his business, he views his chosen profession as a calling rather than simply a job. So, when beautiful nightclub chanteuse Jennie is blinded in the crossfire of his most recent hit, Jeffrey chooses to retire after one last job to pay for his unintended victim's sight-restoring operation. But when Jeffrey is double-crossed, he reluctantly joins forces with a rogue policeman to make things right.

A South Korean woman in her sixties enrolls in a poetry class as she grapples with her faltering memory and her grandson's appalling wrongdoing.

An Arab surgeon living in Tel Aviv discovers a dark secret about his wife in the aftermath of a suicide bombing.

Shenxiu has felt a deep sadness since her mother left. A storm plunges her into a dreamlike world of swirling colour. Led by the Hyjinx, and joined by inventive underwater chef Nanhe, she embarks on a quest to find solace in the Eye of the Deep Sea.

The O'Neills lived happily in their house in the Australian countryside. That was until one day fate struck blindly, taking the life of Peter, the father, leaving his grief-stricken wife Dawn alone with their four children. Among them, eight-year-old Simone denies this reality. She is persuaded that her father still lives in the giant fig tree growing near their house and speaks to her through its leaves. But the tree becomes more and more invasive and threatens the house. It must be felled. Of course, Simone won't allow it.

A look at modern-day life in China's capital centered on a ménage-a-quatre involving a young woman, her boss, her husband and her boss's wife.

Four kayakers take the wrong river into a jungle inhabited by a tribe of merciless cannibals.

On Manhattan's gilded Upper East Side, a young gay painter is torn between an obsession with his infamous best friend and a promising new romance with an older foreign pianist.

A seventeen-year-old country boy working in Beijing as a courier has his bicycle stolen, and finds it with a schoolboy his age.

The film follows a man with an unwanted gift for healing who meets a teenager with cancer who helps him to find himself.

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.

Once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, and a gifted horse trainer, young cowboy Brady is warned that his riding days are over after a horse crushed his skull at a rodeo. In an attempt to regain control of his own fate, Brady undertakes a search for a new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of the United States.

A group of high-school friends must come to terms with the fact that one of them, Samson, killed another, Jamie. Faced with the brutality of death, each must decide whether to turn their friend in to the police, or to help him escape the consequences of his dreadful deed.

The lives of 4 interconnected South Koreans - a married couple, a novelist the wife is having an affair with, and a second woman the novelist is simultaneously involved with.

Four years after five students mysteriously committed suicide after taking part in a courage test on the ghost bridge in Donghu university, a reporter and a cinematographer are back to that place and try to get everything clear.

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

A woman married to the brutal and infertile owner of a dye mill in rural China conceives a boy with her husband's nephew but is forced to raise her son as her husband's heir without revealing his parentage in this circular tragedy. Filmed in glowing technicolour, this tale of romantic and familial love in the face of unbreakable tradition is more universal than its setting.

The sins of the past are not forgotten in this chilling suspense thriller. When the first body was discovered, it seemed a coincidence. But now homicide detective Jack Verdon has cause to worry: the victims of a series of brutal sex murders are all his former girlfriends. Suspected by the FBI agent who’s taken over the case and suspended by his captain, Jack must work outside the law if he’s to find the killer, save his future and protect what’s left of his past.

Just when Lola, 18 years old and transgender, learns that she can finally have surgery, her mother, who is her only financial support, passes away. Abiding by her mother’s last wishes, Lola and her father, who are permanently in conflict and have not seen each other for two years, undertake a journey all the way to the Belgian coast. They realize the outcome of the journey may not be the one they were both expecting...

Dr. Bock, the chief of medicine at a Manhattan hospital, is suicidal after the collapse of his personal life. When an intern is found dead in a hospital bed, it appears to Bock to be a case of unforgivable malpractice. Hours later, another doctor, who happens to be responsible for another case of malpractice, is found dead. Despondent, Bock finds himself drawn to Barbara, the daughter of a comatose missionary.

Spanning over one thousand years, and three parallel stories, The Fountain is a story of love, death, spirituality, and the fragility of our existence in this world.

Vincent has an extraordinary ability: his strength and reflexes increase tenfold when in contact with water. To make full use of this gift, he settles in a region with many lakes and rivers, which is isolated enough to allow him to live a peaceful life. Then, one day, during an aquatic escapade, he encounters Lucie.

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

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.

A young man adopted by a renowned swordsmith, discovers that his real father was killed by a powerful bandit called Lung. Leaving to seek revenge, he runs foul of a group of vicious desert scum, losing his right arm in the process. After being nursed back to health, he eventually learns to compensate for his loss and returns to confront the man who murdered his father.


