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Movies like The World Unseen

Key Features:
Forbidden love, Apartheid, Social injustice, Oppression, Cultural conflict, Discrimination, Female bonding, Historical drama, Romance, Strong female lead, Character study, Personal sacrifice
Tone:
serious, restrained
Target Audience:
Drama enthusiasts, LGBTQ+ audience, Social justice advocates, Historical drama fans
Emotional Arc:
Intrigue → Yearning → Defiance

The World Unseen

2007-09-09
The World Unseen Poster - Find Similar Movies

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

Genres
Romance, Drama
Cast
Lisa Ray, Sheetal Sheth, Parvin Dabas, Nandana Sen, David Dennis, Grethe Fox, Colin Moss, Natalie Becker, Rajesh Gopie, Bernard White
Crew
Shamim Sarif, Shamim Sarif
Rating
7.077(98 votes)
The World UnseenThe World Unseen
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Rafiki
Rafiki(2018)
7

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.



The Invisible Woman
5.918

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.



Entre Nous
6.6

In 1942 in occupied France, a Jewish refugee marries a soldier to escape deportation to Germany. Meanwhile a wealthy art student loses her first husband to a stray Resistance bullet; at the Liberation she meets an actor, gets pregnant, and marries him. Lena and Madeleine meet at their children's school in Lyon in 1952 and the intensity of their relationship strains both their marriages to the breaking point.



Moffie
Moffie(2020)
6.6

A young man in 1981 South Africa must complete his brutal and racist two years of compulsory military service while desperately maintaining the secrecy of his homosexuality.



Endless Love
7.335

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



Atlantics
Atlantics(2019)
6.8

Arranged to marry a rich man, young Ada is crushed when her true love goes missing at sea during a migration attempt — until a miracle reunites them.



Elisa & Marcela
7.3

The film tells the true story of Elisa Sánchez Loriga and Marcela Gracia Ibeas, two women in 1901 Spain who fell deeply in love. To overcome societal and legal barriers to their relationship, Elisa assumes a male identity, enabling the pair to marry in secret. Their daring act makes them the first recorded same-sex couple to marry in Spain, but their love is tested as they face relentless persecution and sacrifice.



Cold War
Cold War(2018)
7.4

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.



Out in the Dark
6.767

Two young men — a Palestinian grad student and an Israeli lawyer — meet and fall in love amidst personal and political intrigue.



Fire
Fire(1997)
6.652

In a barren, arranged marriage to an amateur swami who seeks enlightenment through celibacy, Radha's life takes an irresistible turn when her beautiful young sister-in-law seeks to free herself from the confines of her own loveless marriage.



Black
Black(2005)
7.653

Unable to see, hear, or speak after a childhood illness, a young woman grows up prone to violent outbursts until an eccentric tutor changes her life.



Where Hands Touch
7.9

Germany, 1944. Leyna, the 15-year old daughter of a white German mother and a black African father, meets Lutz, a compassionate member of the Hitler Youth whose father is a prominent Nazi soldier, and they form an unlikely connection in this quickly changing world.



Sita Ramam
7.8

Afreen, a rebellious Pakistani student sets ablaze the car of an Indian in London. Angered Afreen returns to Pakistan to ask for money from her grandfather that she has to pay in a month's time as damages. However, she gets to know that he is no more and the only thing he has left for her is a letter-delivering task, written by Ram to Sita. As Afreen sets out to find Ram, there begins her journey of discovering the secret behind the 20-year-old letter.



Sairat
Sairat(2016)
7.564

Archi, a local politician’s daughter, and Parshya, a fisherman’s son, fall in love resulting in violence between the families due to the stringent casteism in the village.



A Room in Town
6.4

Set against the backdrop of an increasingly violent strike, a worker falls in love with the middle-class daughter of his landlady.



A Love to Hide
7.225

A young Jewish girl, Sara, is looking to escape the clutches of the Third Reich after seeing her parents and sister brutally slain by a smuggler who betrayed them while attempting to escape to England. Terrified, she is sheltered by her childhood friend Jean, a homosexual in a clandestine relationship with his lover Philippe.



Equals
Equals(2015)
6.113

A futuristic love story set in a world where emotions have been eradicated.



Endless Love
6.908

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.



The Chinese Botanist's Daughters

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.



Hala
Hala(2019)
6.214

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.



Worldly Girl
6.269

Giulia’s is a poised world, made of rigour and sacred texts, which fiercely excludes those who do not belong to it. Libero's world is the world of all the others, of those who make mistakes, who fend for themselves looking for another chance and who love unconditionally. When Giulia meets Libero, she realizes she can have another destiny, one she will have to choose and build.



Diana
Diana(2013)
5.6

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.



Lan Yu
Lan Yu(2001)
6.9

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.



In My Country
5.92

An American reporter and an Afrikaans poet meet and fall in love while covering South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.



Lady Chatterley's Lover

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.



Royalteen
Royalteen(2022)
5.827

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.



Ishaqzaade
6.2

While fighting for the political supremacy of their respective families, a Hindu man and a Muslim woman share a forbidden romance.



The Exception
6.9

Nothing is as it seems in this riveting World War 2 thriller as a wary soldier goes to investigate a mysterious German monarch at his secluded mansion, leading him into a web of deceit and a dangerous love affair with a local Jewish woman.



The Forbidden Door
6.5

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.



Hidden Away
7.5

At the age of 14 the world around you changes at a dizzying speed. But what if actually it's you that changing? What if these changes take you away from what up until now, has been your world? Ibrahim and Rafa are going to suffer these changes for themselves, experiencing first love in a way they never could have imagined. And having to keep it Hidden away.



Upside Down
6.279

In an alternate universe where twinned worlds have opposite gravities, a young man battles interplanetary prejudice and the laws of physics in his quest to reunite with the long-lost girl of his dreams in this visually stunning romantic adventure that poses the question: what if love was stronger than gravity?



The Piano
The Piano(1993)
7.38

When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.



Ae Fond Kiss...
6.437

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



Moolaadé
Moolaadé(2004)
7.158

When a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.



Heatwave
Heatwave(2022)
6.3

A woman's life takes an unexpected turn when she falls for her boss's wife. She must soon defend herself as she becomes entangled in a web of malice.



Last Harem
5.5

A story of the impossible love between one of the Sultan's concubines and one of his eunuchs in a harem at the end of the Ottoman Empire.



Maurice
Maurice(1987)
7.604

After his lover rejects him, Maurice attempts to come to terms with his sexuality within the restrictiveness of Edwardian society.



Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela

Ran and Leela are passionately in love with each other. The only problem is that their respective clans have been enemies for 500 years.



Leila
Leila(2011)
6

Gab has a well-ordered life: a fiancée, a wealthy family. Leïla, who struggles to juggle her studies, odd jobs, and a brother to support, does not allow herself to live her own life... When Gab meets Leïla, it is a clash of worlds, the beginning of a great love story that will collide violently with reality.



Desire
Desire(2017)
5.945

Lucía and Ofelia, two sisters, finally meet after 7 years of cold relationships upon Lucia 's wedding. But when Juan, Lucia's husband, and Ofelia meet, they feel like a disruptive fantasy have enchanted their minds and bodies...



Lady Chatterley
6.1

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.



Mogambo
Mogambo(1953)
6.444

On a Kenyan safari, white hunter Victor Marswell has a love triangle with seductive American socialite Eloise Kelly and anthropologist Donald Nordley's cheating wife Linda.



The World to Come

In 1856, two women forge a close connection despite their isolation on the American frontier.



Below Her Mouth
6.791

An unexpected affair quickly escalates into a heart-stopping reality for two women whose passionate connection changes their lives forever.



Besieged
Besieged(1998)
6.602

While in exile in Italy, an African woman finds herself trying to get back home and free her imprisoned husband. But the only man that can help her do so is in love with her.



Forbidden Planet
7.256

Starship C57D travels to planet Altair 4 in search of the crew of spaceship "Bellerophon," a scientific expedition that has been missing for twenty years. They find themselves unwelcome by the expedition's lone survivor and warned of destruction by an invisible force if they don't turn back immediately.



An Impossible Love
6.6

A chronicle of the unconditional love between a mother and her daughter, from 1958 to the present day, which is endangered by an unsteady and manipulative father.



Thelma
Thelma(2017)
6.794

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



All We Imagine as Light

In Mumbai, Nurse Prabha's routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest.



Sappho
Sappho(2008)
4.3

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



Circumstance
6.632

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.



Down by Love
6

A man, a woman. A prison director, his inmate. An impossible love, a true story.



Disobedience
6.882

New York photographer Ronit flies to London after learning about the death of her estranged father. Ronit is returning to the same Orthodox Jewish community that shunned her decades earlier for her childhood attraction to Esti, a female friend. Their fortuitous and happy reunion soon reignites their burning passion as the two women explore the boundaries of faith and sexuality.



Songbird
Songbird(2020)
6.186

During a pandemic lockdown, Nico, a young man with rare immunity, must overcome martial law, murderous vigilantes and a powerful family to reunite with his love, Sara.



Emmanuelle
4.786

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?



The Fish Child
5.656

A desperate love story between two young girls of extremely different social backgrounds who, unable to find a place for their love in the world they live in, are pushed to commit a crime.



Secrets & Lies
7.6

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.



Belle du Seigneur
5.309

English-language adaptation of Albert Cohen's epic Swiss tale of a tortured love affair between a high-ranking Jewish official and the Protestant wife of one of his employees.



The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister

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.



Ride or Die
6.683

Rei helps the woman she's been in love with for years escape her abusive husband. While on the run, their feelings for each other catch fire.



I Can't Think Straight

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.



Skin
Skin(2008)
6.39

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.



Frequencies
6.5

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'.



Lady Chatterley's Lover

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.



Of Love and Shadows
5.232

Irene is a magazine editor living under the shadow of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Francisco is a handsome photographer and he comes to Irene for a job. As a sympathizer with the underground resistance movement, Francisco opens her eyes and her heart to the atrocities being committed by the state.



Benedetta
Benedetta(2021)
6.6

A 17th-century nun becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair with a novice. But it is Benedetta's shocking religious visions that threaten to shake the Church to its core.



Zulu
Zulu(2013)
6.7

As a child, Ali Neuman narrowly escaped being murdered by Inkhata, a militant political party at war with Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. Only he and his mother survived the carnage of those years. But as with many survivors, the psychological scars remain.



Tattoo
Tattoo(2013)
7.5

Paulete, the star of a daring theater group, is visited by his military brother-in-law, the young Fininha. A torrid relationship arises between the two, and now the soldier must deal with the prevailing repression during the Brazilian military dictatorship.



Lady Chatterley's Lover

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.



Everything, Everything

A teenager who's lived a sheltered life because she's allergic to everything, falls for the boy who moves in next door.



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.



Devdas
Devdas(2002)
7.5

In 1900s India, Calcuttan zamindar Devdas Mukherjee — unable to marry his lover — takes up alcohol and the company of a courtesan to alleviate the pain.



Bare
Bare(2015)
4.508

A young woman's friendship with a drug-dealing drifter evolves into a lesbian romance.



The Wound
The Wound(2017)
6.2

Eastern Cape, South Africa. A lonely factory worker, Xolani, takes time off his job to assist during an annual Xhosa circumcision initiation into manhood. In a remote mountain camp that is off limits to women, young men, painted in white ochre, recuperate as they learn the masculine codes of their culture. In this environment of machismo and aggression, Xolani cares for a defiant initiate from Johannesburg, Kwanda, who quickly learns Xolani's best kept secret, that he is in love with another man.



Eungyo
Eungyo(2012)
6.8

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.



Carmen & Lola
6.969

Carmen is a gypsy teenager, destined to live a life that is repeated every generation: getting married and raising as many children as possible. But one day she meets Lola, an uncommon gypsy who dreams about going to university, does graffiti and is very different. Carmen quickly develops a complicity with Lola and discovers a world that, inevitably, leads them to be rejected by their families.



What the Day Owes the Night

Algeria, the 1930s. Younes is nine years old when he is put in his uncle's care in Oran. Rebaptized Jonas, he grows up among the Rio Salado youths, with whom he becomes friends. Emilie is one of the gang; everyone is in love with her. A great love story develops between Jonas and Emilie, which is soon unsettled by the conflicts troubling the country.



A Secret Love
7.3

Amid shifting times, two women kept their decades-long love a secret. But coming out later in life comes with its own set of challenges.



Secret Things
5.7

Two young women find themselves struggling to survive in Paris, street-wise Nathalie, a stripper, and naïve Sandrine, a barmaid. Together, they discover that sex can be used to their advantage, and pleasure.



Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing

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.



Koyla
Koyla(1997)
6.6

A village girl agrees to a marriage to a king she has never met after he sends her a photograph of himself. But the man in the photograph is not the king but his most loyal slave, the handsome but mute Shankar.



The Last Letter from Your Lover

A young journalist in London becomes obsessed with a series of letters she discovers that recounts an intense star-crossed love affair from the 1960s.



Wild Reeds
7

As the Algerian War draws to a close, a teenager with a girlfriend starts feeling homosexual urges for two of his classmates: a country boy, and a French-Algerian intellectual.



Scarlet Innocence
6.09

A university professor gradually succumbing to blindness is entranced by an obsessive love, in this modern-day adaptation of a classic Korean fairy tale.



Vita & Virginia
6.769

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.



Miss Baek
Miss Baek(2018)
7.5

A woman's past as a convict follows her everywhere and because of this she doesn't open up to others. But then she strikes up a friendship with a broken child who has suffered from domestic violence and decides to save the girl from the cruel world. A man who holds feelings for the woman, tries to protect her in his own way.



In a Better World
7.1

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.



So Young 2: Never Gone

A wealthy young man pursues a young woman of modest means, but circumstances often separate them as the years pass.



Bihter: A Forbidden Passion

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.



Brokeback Mountain
7.785

In 1960s Wyoming, two men develop a strong emotional and sexual relationship that endures as a lifelong connection complicating their lives as they get married and start families of their own.



Delirium
Delirium(2014)
6.2

Set in a world where love is deemed illegal and can be eradicated with a special procedure. With 95 days to go until her scheduled treatment, Lena Holoway does the unthinkable, she falls in love.



M
M(2017)
6.4

Lila and Mo meet at a bus stop. Lila has a paralyzing speech impediment. Mo is chatty and exuberant. Lila is preparing for her exams. Mo illegally races cars for a living. Opposites attract, and they fall in love. But Mo carries a secret burden…



Palm Trees in the Snow

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.



Aimée & Jaguar
6.7

In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women – one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.



Peligrosa tentación II

A murder investigation begins to reveal a hidden world. The participants of a lesbian party become the possible perpetrators of the crime.



The Blue Caftan
7.274

A middle-aged tailor and his wife find their relationship challenged by the arrival of a handsome new apprentice.



The Hidden Face
7.295

A Spanish orchestra conductor deals with the mysterious disappearance of his girlfriend.



Mughal-e-Azam
6.9

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.



Dhadak
Dhadak(2018)
6.9

Madhukar and Parthavi fall head over heels in love with each other, but the fact that they belong to different castes of society, becomes an obstacle in their romance. The lovers dare to go against societal norms and battle all odds for the sake of love.

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