The Sleeping DictionaryMovies like The Sleeping Dictionary
- Key Features:
- Colonialism, Cultural clash, Forbidden love, British Empire, Tradition, Interracial romance, Moral dilemma, Political intrigue, Romance, Cultural exploration
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Fans of historical dramas, Viewers interested in cultural exploration, Fans of romantic stories, Those interested in colonial history
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Conflict
The Sleeping Dictionary

A young Englishman is dispatched to Sarawak to become part of the British colonial government. He encounters some unorthodox local traditions, and finds himself faced with tough decisions of the heart involving the beautiful Selima, the unwitting object of his affections.
The Sleeping Dictionary
A haunting erotic fairytale about Lucy, a young University student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of beauty and desire.

A recently engaged woman's life is thrown into turmoil after confessing to her fiancé that she once experimented with bestiality.

An indigenous language is in peril, as its last two speakers had a quarrel in the past and haven't spoken to each other in over 50 years. Martín, a young linguist, will undertake the challenge of bringing the old friends back together and convincing them to speak once again so he can obtain a recorded registration of the language and study it.

In a traditional tribal society in the South Pacific, a young girl, Wawa, falls in love with her chief’s grandson, Dain. When an inter-tribal war escalates, Wawa is unknowingly betrothed as part of a peace deal. The young lovers run away, refusing her arranged fate. They must choose between their hearts and the future of the tribe, while the villagers must wrestle with preserving their traditional culture and adapting it to the increasing outside demands for individual freedom.

In 1990, Neurologist Lam Sik Ka and his former flame suffer from the generational sleep curse that rooted in their both families war engagement during World War Two. Lam tries to save her flame from the grudge.

A lesbian in the 1800s who keeps a detailed account of her life written in coded diaries attempts to live independently while juggling an affair with a married woman.

A drama centered on two women who engage in a dangerous relationship during South Africa's apartheid era.

A young Australian reporter tries to navigate the political turmoil of Indonesia during the rule of President Sukarno with the help of a diminutive photographer.

A widowed doctor of both Chinese and European descent falls in love with a married American correspondent in Hong Kong during China's Communist revolution.

Seventeen-year-old Pakistani American teenager Hala struggles to balance desire with her family, cultural, and religious obligations. As she comes into her own, she grapples with a secret that threatens to unravel her family.

After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.

A man suffering from insomnia is tricked into buying a drug, Lucia, that makes his desires come true in his dreams, blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

Set in a small politically unstable Latin American country, the story follows the half English and half Latino Dr. Eduardo Plarr, who left his home to find a better life. Along the way he meets an array of people, including British Consul Charley Fortnum, a representative in Latin America who is trying to keep Revolution from occurring. He is also a remorseful alcoholic. Another person the doctor meets is Clara, whom he immediately falls in love with, but there is a problem: Clara is Charley's wife.

After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.

After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.

Stuck in a passionless marriage, a journalist must choose between her distant but loving husband and a younger ex-boyfriend who has reentered her life

A pretty young girl falls for an enigmatic, shy man who sweeps her off her feet. She becomes pregnant but is not allowed to tell him. His advisers are adamant. Back home, they have set up a wedding with the daughter of an antagonistic family and marriage will put an end to the blood feud between them.

Set in a near-future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences, three strangers risk their lives to connect with each other and break the barriers of technology.

While traveling, Emmanuelle meets Kei, a man who constantly eludes her. Though she indulges in the many alluring distractions, she can’t shake their chance encounter. Will she submit to her basest desires to forge a deeper relationship?

A poor French teenage girl engages in an illicit affair with a wealthy Chinese heir in 1920s Saigon. For the first time in her young life she has control, and she wields it deftly over her besotted lover throughout a series of clandestine meetings and torrid encounters.

Lillie, a determined American woman, ventures overseas to join Dr. Jude at a remote medical mission in the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey). However, Lillie soon finds herself at odds with Jude and the mission’s founder, Woodruff, when she falls for the titular military man, Ismail, just as the war is about to erupt.

Kena and Ziki long for something more. Despite the political rivalry between their families, the girls resist and remain close friends, supporting each other to pursue their dreams in a conservative society. When love blossoms between them, the two girls will be forced to choose between happiness and safety.

A young man upsets his Punjabi family when he falls in love with an Irish schoolteacher.

The story of the romance between the King of Siam (now Thailand) and the widowed British school teacher Anna Leonowens during the 1860s. Anna teaches the children and becomes romanced by the King. She convinces him that a man can be loved by just one woman.

A 22 year-old Bangladeshi-Italian Muslim boy meets a beautiful, exciting Italian girl who makes him re-analyze his beliefs and culture.

During the last two years of her life, Princess Diana campaigns against the use of land mines and has a secret love affair with a Pakistani heart surgeon.

A reclusive elderly poet feels the fire of his youth when gamine schoolgirl Eun-gyo enters his life, to the chagrin of the old man's assistant.

A young woman fakes her own death in an attempt to escape her nightmarish marriage, but discovers it is impossible to elude her controlling husband.

Blackfella Charlie is getting older, and he's out of sorts. The intervention is making life more difficult on his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws that don't generally make much sense, and Charlie's kin and ken seeming more interested in going along with things than doing anything about it. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in doing so sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser.

A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.

On honeymoon on the island of Lesbos, a woman falls for the daughter of a Russian archaeologist.

A couple on holiday on a remote South Pacific island awaken one morning with a hang over and no recollection of what transpired. When playing back a video of the previous night, they see they participated in a local ritual that somehow ends with him murdering her.

In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.

Young man has his dreams come true when the sexy new maid seduces him. But she also has a secret that leads to trouble.

At the house of a famous Chinese botanist teacher his daughter and a female intern fall in love with each other - a forbidden love that must be kept secret.

One year after their royal wedding, King Edvard and Queen Paige of Denmark receive an invitation to attend the wedding of Princess Myra of Sangyoon. Upon their arrival, Paige finds Myra is unhappy with her arranged marriage to the brooding and sinister Kah and is secretly in love with a young elephant handler named Alu.

After an altercation between Alex, the president's son, and Britain's Prince Henry at a royal event becomes tabloid fodder, their long-running feud now threatens to drive a wedge in U.S./British relations. When the rivals are forced into a staged truce, their icy relationship begins to thaw and the friction between them sparks something deeper than they ever expected.

A privileged girl and a charismatic boy's instant desire sparks a love affair made only more reckless by parents trying to keep them apart.

Two women, one American and one British, swap homes at Christmastime following bad breakups. Each woman finds romance with a local man but realizes that the imminent return home may end the relationship.

Sarawak, in the northeast of the island of Borneo, 1839. Almost by chance, the British adventurer James Brooke is appointed rajah by the Sultan of Brunei, and as an independent ruler he embarks on a personal crusade to eradicate piracy, slavery and headhunting, while trying to curb the malevolent expansionist ambitions of the British Empire.

Overwhelmed by her suffocating schedule, touring European princess Ann takes off for a night while in Rome. When a sedative she took from her doctor kicks in, however, she falls asleep on a park bench and is found by an American reporter, Joe Bradley, who takes her back to his apartment for safety. At work the next morning, Joe finds out Ann's regal identity and bets his editor he can get exclusive interview with her, but romance soon gets in the way.

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.

In 1840s England, palaeontologist Mary Anning and a young woman sent by her husband to convalesce by the sea develop an intense relationship. Despite the chasm between their social spheres and personalities, Mary and Charlotte discover they can each offer what the other has been searching for: the realisation that they are not alone. It is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably.

Finished the Spanish Civil War in April 1939, in November 1940, while Spain is being crushed by the ruthless boot of dictator Franco, Pepita travels from rural Córdoba to Madrid to be near her sister Hortensia, who is seven months pregnant and imprisoned, haunted by the shadow of a death sentence.

A shallow, provincial wife finds her relationship with her preoccupied husband strained by romantic notions, leading her further towards Paris and the country wilderness.

The story of the forbidden relationship between a 'low born' boy and a 'high born' girl in an alternate reality where every person's relationships and life worth are determined by their innate 'frequencies'.

While on a last-minute European holiday, a young woman finds herself in the middle of a real-life fairy tale when a chance meeting with a handsome local leads to something more. However, things get complicated when she learns that the "local" is actually a prince who is about to be crowned King, and whose mother is dead-set against her royal son's romance with the tourist.

A teenager struggles to keep her scandal-ridden past and a big secret from getting out when she strikes up an unlikely romance with the crown prince.

In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.

Two young couples using anonymous sex as a catalyst to fix their troubled relationships must rethink what makes a connection work.

Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love against the wishes of their feuding families. Driven by their passion, the young lovers defy their destiny and elope, only to suffer the ultimate tragedy.

Bihter, who is desperate for love, sees Adnan, a wealthy and respected older guy, as a way out of the stereotype that society and her materialistic mother have given her. But she soon discovers that she is not satisfied with his attention and has other needs.

Anthropology professor Michal develops two overwhelming obsessions. The first one is a mummified, 3,000 year-old, perfectly preserved body of a shaman he and his colleagues have recently dragged out of a swamp. The second is an enigmatic student he meets by chance at a railway station.

Two freethinking teenagers - a boy and a girl - confront with authoritarian teachers in their boarding schools. The other students treat this differently.

A woman wakes up every day, remembering nothing as a result of a traumatic accident in her past. One day, new terrifying truths emerge that force her to question everyone around her.

Professor James Murray begins work compiling words for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid 19th century, and receives over 10,000 entries from a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Dr. William Minor.

Six different writers wrote a scene each of this romantic comedy featuring the marriage and turbulent relationship of Joseph and Sarah, with Joseph's best friend Frank trying hard to cope with letting the love of his life marry his best friend.

Cultural critic David Kepesh finds his life -- which he indicates is a state of "emancipated manhood" -- thrown into tragic disarray by Consuela Castillo, a well-mannered student who awakens a sense of sexual possessiveness in her teacher.

In the late 1990s, the arrival of elderly invalid Patrick into Marion and Tom’s home triggers the exploration of seismic events from 40 years previous: the passionate relationship between Tom and Patrick at a time when homosexuality was illegal.

Two best friends embark on a life-changing adventure abroad as exchange students.

A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is lovestruck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.

The tale of two brothers with serious financial woes. When a third party proposes they turn to crime, things go bad and the two become enemies.

Socialite Vita Sackville-West and literary icon Virginia Woolf run in different circles in 1920s London. Despite the odds, the two forge an unconventional affair, set against the backdrop of their own strikingly contemporary marriages.

Aydın is a hotel owner and a retired actor in rural Turkey. As winter emerges he begins navigating the conflicts within the relationships with his wife, sister and existence.

Tala, a London-based Palestinian, is preparing for her elaborate Middle Eastern wedding when she meets Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend. Spirited Christian Tala and shy Muslim Leyla could not be more different from each other, but the attraction is immediate and goes deeper than friendship. But Tala is not ready to accept the implications of the choice her heart has made for her and escapes back to Jordan, while Leyla tries to move on with her new-found life, to the shock of her tradition-loving parents. As Tala's wedding day approaches, simmering tensions come to boiling point and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself.

A chronicle of the life of a middle-class French girl's sexual adventures, her then fall into prostitution, and her ultimate redemption.

After starting at an upmarket boarding school, a teenage girl forms close friendships with her two older roommates. However, when she discovers that her new friends are lovers she finds herself caught in a complicated situation.

In 1857, at the height of his fame and fortune, novelist and social critic Charles Dickens meets and falls in love with teenage stage actress Nelly Ternan. As she becomes the focus of his heart and mind, as well as his muse, painful secrecy is the price both must pay.

Years after her Indian family was forced to flee their home in Uganda, twentysomething Mina finds herself helping to run a motel in the faraway land of Mississippi. It's there that a passionate romance with the charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius challenges the prejudices of their conservative families and exposes the rifts between the region's Indian and African American communities.

French silkworm trader Hervé is married to the beautiful Hélène. When an outbreak of disease ravages European silkworms, Hervé must travel to Japan to retrieve healthy eggs. After a long journey, Hervé finally arrives at a village where he can buy them. He becomes infatuated with a young concubine and goes to great lengths to see her again. But, when war breaks out in Japan, the concubine flees, forcing Hervé to return home to his wife.

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.

Successful writer and scholar Jonathan Merrick falls under the spell of the irresistible, bewitchingly beautiful Ligeia. She's fighting a fatal illness and she will stop at nothing to defeat death, her one true enemy.

An American writer living in exile in London, Philip listens to women. His English mistress, who visits him regularly in the studio that serves as their refuge. A student he loved in another life. A former lover confined to a hospital in New York.

Island of Java, 1942, during World War II. British Major Jack Celliers arrives at a Japanese prison camp, run by the strict Captain Yonoi. Colonel John Lawrence, who has a profound knowledge of Japanese culture, and Sergeant Hara, brutal and simpleton, will witness the struggle of wills between two men from very different backgrounds who are tragically destined to clash.

Sparks fly when a humble housekeeper crosses paths with a wealthy surgeon, but a devastating truth puts their relationship to the test.

Can a girl from Little Rock find happiness with a mature French planter she got to know one enchanted evening away from the military hospital where she is a nurse? Or should she just wash that man out of her hair? Bloody Mary is the philosopher of the island and it's hard to believe she could be the mother of Liat who has captured the heart of Lt. Joseph Cable USMC. While waiting for action in the war in the South Pacific, sailors and nurses put on a musical comedy show. The war gets closer and the saga of Nellie Forbush and Emile de Becque becomes serious drama.

The Lovers is an epic romance time travel adventure film. Helmed by Roland Joffé from a story by Ajey Jhankar, the film is a sweeping tale of an impossible love set against the backdrop of the first Anglo-Maratha war across two time periods and continents and centred around four characters — a British officer in 18th century colonial India, the Indian woman he falls deeply in love with, an American present-day marine biologist and his wife.

An early-20th-century tale of love across class boundaries which tells the legendary and romantic story of Lady Chatterley’s affair with her gamekeeper. Jed Mercurio’s adaptation of DH Lawrence’s classic.

A successful sculptor's life is turned upside down when he starts to receive mysterious messages from someone asking for his help. As he digs deeper, he discovers a boy is being abused and has to choose between saving the boy or losing everything.

During WWII, the United States set up army bases in Great Britain as part of the war effort. Against their proper sensibilities, many of the Brits don't much like the brash Yanks, especially when it comes to the G.I.s making advances on the lonely British girls. One relationship that develops is between married John, an Army Captain, and the aristocratic Helen, whose naval husband is away at war. Helen loves her husband, but Helen and John are looking for some comfort during the difficult times.

A man and a woman meet in the ruins of post-war Poland. With vastly different backgrounds and temperaments, they are fatally mismatched and yet drawn to each other.

The story of Suki, a lioness cub, who rebels against her mother and her Pride to mate with an unsuitable lion from the other side of the river.

A passionate love story set against a backdrop of sexual freedom, loosely based on the relationship between 19th century authors Pierre Louÿs and Marie de Régnier.

In the 16th century, when Prince Salim falls in love with a beautiful courtesan named Anarkali, Emperor Akbar's disapproval leads to a battle between father and son.

When Liv moves to London, she meets the mysterious Henry and his group of friends, who pull her into the enthralling world of dream-travel. She and her newfound band of dream-wanderers conduct a ritual to make their biggest dream come true, but it demands the gravest sacrifice.

A young teenage werewolf is torn between honoring her family's secret and her love for a man.

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.

Spain, 2003. An accidental discovery leads Clarence to travel from the snowy mountains of Huesca to Equatorial Guinea, to visit the land where her father Jacobo and her uncle Kilian spent most of their youth, the island of Fernando Poo.

Joy, a secretary at a large multinational company, has an online shopping problem, likes to read adventure novels and watch travel and adventure shows. She daydreams about living a life of adventure.

In this story-within-a-story, Anna is an actress starring opposite Mike in a period piece about the forbidden love between their respective characters, Sarah and Charles. Both actors are involved in serious relationships, but the passionate nature of the script leads to an off-camera love affair as well. While attempting to maintain their composure and professionalism, Anna and Mike struggle to come to terms with their infidelity.

A single mother and a married man enter into an affair with the understanding that their relationship is purely sexual. Though they agree the relationship has no future, they find themselves increasingly drawn into each other's company.

Frustrated by the lack of intimacy in her relationship, a young schoolteacher goes through a series of intimidating and often violent sexual partners.

At an isolated frontier outpost, a colonial magistrate suffers a crisis of conscience when an army colonel arrives looking to interrogate the locals about an impending uprising, using cruel tactics that horrify the magistrate.

London, England. Mike, a fifteen-year-old boy, gets a job in a bathhouse, where he meets Susan, an attractive young woman who works there as an attendant.

When aspiring musician and student Deniz falls for a rough-hewn motorbike racer, tragedy and family opposition obstruct their path to love.

Sandy, a geologist, finds herself stuck on a field trip to the Pilbara desert with a Japanese man she finds inscrutable, annoying and decidedly arrogant. Hiromitsu's view of her is not much better. Things go from bad to worse when they become stranded in one of the most remote regions on Earth.

A woman with a body writing fetish seeks to find a combined lover and calligrapher.

A sensitive young man recalls his time in boarding school when the only person who seemed compassionate towards him was his housemaster's wife.

A disillusioned Seoul woman visits a remote island to reconnect with a childhood friend, only to find her trapped in an oppressive cycle of physical, mental, and sexual abuse. As tensions escalate, the situation spirals into a harrowing tale of survival and retribution.
