Under the Hawthorn TreeMovies like Under the Hawthorn Tree
- Key Features:
- Forbidden love, Cultural revolution, Political backdrop, Class conflict, Historical drama, Romance, Innocence, Tragedy, Nudity-none, Violence-none
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Romance enthusiasts, Historical drama fans, Those interested in Chinese history, Art house cinema viewers
- Emotional Arc:
- Hope → Longing → Loss
Under the Hawthorn Tree

The daughter of a right-winger, schoolgirl Jing Qiu is sent to the countryside for reeducation, and tasked to help write a textbook. There she meets Lao San, a young soldier with a bright future ahead. Despite the class divide and parental disapproval, romance blooms against turbulent times.
Under the Hawthorn Tree
During the Cultural Revolution, two young men are sent to a remote mining village where they fall in love with the local tailor's beautiful granddaughter and discover a suitcase full of forbidden Western novels.

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.

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.

A movie fan escapes from a labour camp during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and strikes up a relationship with a homeless female vagabond.

Based on a novel by the same name written by Gu Hua, a melodrama about the life and travails of a young woman who lives through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

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.

Lu and Feng are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. He finally returns home only to find that his beloved wife no longer remembers him.

Yu Hong leaves her home village and starts university in Beijing, where she develops a consuming and compulsive relationship with another student. The student riots from 1989 then ensue and take a toll on their lives.

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.

China’s rapid changes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

In 9th century China, a corrupt government wages war against a rebel army called the Flying Daggers. A romantic warrior breaks a beautiful rebel out of prison to help her rejoin her fellows, but things are not what they seem.

Humble, unassuming Ma and timid Cao have been cast off by their families and forced into an arranged marriage. They have to combine their strength and build a home to survive. In the face of much adversity, an unexpected bond begins to blossom, as both Ma and Cao, uniting with Earth's cycles, create a haven for themselves in which they can thrive.

A historical drama set in the Koryo dynasty and focused on the relationship between a king and his bodyguard.

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.

In eighth century China, the Emperor is grieving over the death of his wife. The Yang family wants to provide the Emperor with a consort so that they may consolidate their influence over the court. General An Lushan finds a distant relative working in their kitchen whom they groom to present to the Emperor. The Emperor falls in love with her and she becomes the Princess Yang Kwei-fei. The Yangs are then appointed important ministers, though An Lushan is not given the court position he covets. The ministers misuse their power so much that there is a popular revolt against the Yangs, fueled by An Lushan.

A communist soldier is sent to a remote region of China in order to collect folk songs. Staying with a peasant family (a widower with two small children), he discovers a community whose way of life is completely alien to him, but he gradually wins their trust…

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

A young Vietnamese peasant girl named Mùi becomes the servant of a house in pre-unification Saigon.

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.

Teenage lovers Tony and Tyan-Hwa tip the balance of power in New York's Little Italy and Chinatown.

A girl named O loves a rich, and much older man. She is subjected to a variety of humiliating experiences to prove her unconditional obedience to him in a Chinese brothel. A poor boy sees her and falls in love with her. To get the money needed to sleep with her, he takes part in rebellious acts.

After being involved in a traumatic incident, 17-year-old Gong-ju is forced to change schools. Uncared for by her parents, her previous teacher arranges for her to hide away at his mother's place. It takes time for her past to catch up with her, but when it does the revelation is devastating.

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

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.

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.

Falsely accused for cheating in a martial arts competition, two boyhood friends are banished from their Shaolin Temple and go their separate ways. As adults, they join opposing sides in a civil war. When one betrays the other, they settle their differences mano-a-mano.

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

Fifteen-year-old country girl Suzume Yosano has to move to Tokyo to live with her uncle due to her father's transfer. She bumps into a mysterious man who ends up taking her to her uncle's place after she gets lost. Turns out, Suzume will be seeing him a lot more often once she starts school because... he's her homeroom teacher?!

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.

A Chinese-American lesbian and her traditionalist mother are reluctant to go public with secret loves that clash against cultural expectations.

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.

In the suburbs of Rome two very different souls intersect. One is the son of a restaurant owner who disappeared with his lover. The other is a young mysterious woman who has arrived from China in search of her missing sister.

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

Lis is a teenager whose dream is to become a circus artist and leave her hometown, even if she knows that to do it she’ll have to fight her side against her parents. It’s summer and she spends her days playing with her friends and flirting with her boyfriend, a few years older than herself. The lack of privacy and the neighbours’ gossip force Lis to keep their relationship secret so that her parents won’t find out. A relationship which change her live forever.

In a loose retelling of the Revolutionary Girl Utena TV series, Utena Tenjou arrives at Ohtori Academy, only to be immediately swept up in a series of duels for the hand of her classmate Anthy Himemiya and the power she supposedly holds. At the same time, Utena reunites with Touga Kiryuu, a friend from her childhood who seems to know the secrets behind the duels. Utena must discover those secrets for herself, before the power that rules Ohtori claims her and her friends, new and old.

Joan is a naïve, 16-year-old who falls in love easily. One day he decides to escape to the provinces with Luciana, a beautiful 35-year-old woman and a teacher at his school, in order to give free rein to his love. Soon, Joan discovers with horror that he has fallen into a trap that is a mix between sex, money, politics and violence.

An old leper who owned a remote sorghum winery dies. Jiu'er, the wife bought by the leper, and her lover, identified only as "my Grandpa" by the narrator, take over the winery and set up an idealized quasi-matriarchal community headed by Jiu'er. When the Japanese invaders subject the area to their rule and cut down the sorghum to make way for a road, the community rises up and resists as the sorghum grows anew.

After a young Triad member takes an upper-class girl hostage during his escape from a jewelry heist, the two find themselves falling in love, in spite of the repercussions caused by their forbidden relationship.

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.

Peasant girl Jagna is forced to marry the much older, wealthy farmer Boryna, despite her love for his son Antek. With time, Jagna becomes the object of envy and disdain with the villagers and she must fight to preserve her independence.

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.

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.

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

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.

Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu as a prospective marriage partner, but he falls in love with her widowed sister Oyu. Convention forbids Oyu to marry because she has to raise her son as the head of her husband's family. Oyu convinces Shinnosuke and Shizu to marry so that she can remain close to Shinnosuke.

On a northern Italian farm, Batistì and his wife decide to send their son Minec to school, sacrificing his help in the fields but hoping to break the cycle of poverty in the family. But when Minec’s shoe breaks while walking for miles, Batisti puts the family’s future at risk to replace the clog.

In 1971, a young woman moves from the French countryside to Paris and begins a passionate love affair with a feminist leader.

Even though Gennosuke and Oboro are from rival ninja villages, they are secretly in love. At an annual conference with the Lord, it is dictated that a competition--a fight to the death--will take place between the five best shinobi from each village. Gennosuke and Oboro's love is made even more impossible when they each got picked as the leader of the five to represent their respective villages.

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

Two boys meet at an opera training school in Peking in 1924. Their resulting friendship will span nearly 70 years and endure some of the most troublesome times in China's history.

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.

Set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s, this is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement.

Beijing, 1970s. The Cultural Revolution has driven most adults to the provinces leaving 14-year-old Monkey and his pals have free reign over the city. They hang around, get up to no good, and discover that unsolvable mystery known as "girls."

A love story between a poor man and a rich girl. The rich girl's father tries to prevent their marriage and he declares a war against the poor boy's family.

The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet and rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.

About young British journalist, George Hogg, who with the assistance of a courageous Australian nurse, saves a group of orphaned children during the Japanese occupation of China in 1937.

A tough, street-smart kid serving a sentence in a state youth reformatory meets a beautiful, innocent girl studying at a nearby convent. When forbidden love blossoms between them, they must fight the prison authorities, their parents and the law.

On a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.

After etching their love on a stalk, a boy and girl reunite years later, reigniting their romance amidst the Mexican Revolution.

A few years after the Anshi Rebellion, Tang dynasty military commander Gao Shi suffers a defeat in a battle threatening Chang'an. Trapped in the besieged city, he recalls his lifelong friendship with the acclaimed poet Li Bai.

An intriguing and sinful exploration of seduction, forbidden love, and redemption, Gabriel's Inferno is a captivating and wildly passionate tale of one man's escape from his own personal hell as he tries to earn the impossible--forgiveness and love.

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

Set in Qin Dynasty during the warring states period in ancient China. Shin was a war orphan. He has a dream of becoming a great general Shin has a fateful encounter with young King Eisei. King Eisei aims to unify all of China.

When the Hong Kong government enacts a ban on smoking cigarettes indoors, hard-core smokers are driven outside and a budding romance develops between two co-workers.

A tale of the tender relationship between a twelve-year-old boy and the fourteen-year-old upperclassman who is the object of his desire, all set within the rigid atmosphere of a Jesuit-run school.

Carlino Vigetti is pushed by his family to court the daughters of the Osti, landowners. But the return of their third daughter, the beautiful Francesca, will shatter the plans ...

In pre-unified China, the King of Qin sends his concubine to a rival kingdom to produce an assassin for a political plot, but as the king's cruelty mounts she finds her loyalty faltering.

Jun arrives in Hong Kong from mainland China, hoping to be able to earn enough money to marry his girlfriend back home. He meets the streetwise Qiao and they become friends. As friendship turns into love, problems develop, and although they seem meant for each other they somehow keep missing out.

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.

For generations the Zhao family has wielded power, until their mortal enemy TU’AN GU slaughters the entire clan, determined to wipe out their influence forever. But one Zhao baby survives hidden by CHENG YING the doctor who delivered him. When Tu’an Gu learns of the baby’s escape he seizes every infant in the city, vowing to kill them all unless the Zhao baby is surrendered. As the tyrant’s soldiers arrive at Cheng Ying’s home the frantic doctor hides his wife with their own baby whilst surrendering the Zhao child as his own. But his family is discovered; his baby is presumed to be the Zhao heir and murdered along with his wife for harboring the infant. Now set on revenge Cheng Ying enrolls the Zhao orphan into the service of the Tu’an Gu household, plotting to use him as an instrument of vengeance when he comes of age.

Japan, 1159. Moritō, a brave samurai, performs a heroic act by rescuing the lovely Kesa during a violent uprising. Moritō falls in love with her, but becomes distraught when he finds out that she is married.

In 1931, a young soldier deserts from the army and falls into a country farm, where he is welcomed by the owner due to his political ideas. Manolo has four daughters, Fernando likes all of them and they like him, so he has to decide which one to love.

In 1920s China, 19-year-old Songlian becomes a concubine of a powerful lord and is forced to compete with his three wives for the privileges gained.

The troubled relationship between Gianni and Nino, set in the narrow-minded and prejudicial Sicily of 1982.

Two pairs of siblings are destined for each other, but fate throws countless obstacles in the path. When the young Emperor and his sister contrive to leave the palace, they meet the loves of their lives in the town of Meilong.

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.

An orphaned girl, driven by poverty at such a young age, makes a promise with an enchantress. In return for beauty and the admiration of every man, she will never be with the man she loves. This spell cannot be broken unless the impossible happens: snow falling in spring and the dead coming back to life. Now a grown and beautiful princess, she regrets her promise, for all of the men she's loved has always been met with tragedy.

A smart high school student falls in love with her English teacher after she receives one-on-one tutoring from him.

Two warriors in pursuit of a stolen sword and a notorious fugitive are led to an impetuous, physically-skilled, teenage nobleman's daughter, who is at a crossroads in her life.

A scholar in search of true love. Disguising himself as a houseboy, he indentures himself to a rich family in order to pursue the ravishing servant girl who has stolen his heart.

The films spans two decades as the story unfolds in a series of flashbacks that begin when Qiyue and Ansheng were just thirteen. The two became inseparable until they met a boy who ended up tearing their lives apart.

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

According to demon lore, it takes hundreds of years to attain human form. Even then, lacking a human heart, a demon cannot experience the true pains and passions of existence. However, there is a legend that if a pure human heart is freely offered to a demon, it can become a mortal and experience true life. Sequel of Painted Skin (2008).

In 500 B.C., during Chinas famed 'Spring and Autumn Period', Kong Ze (Confucius), a commoner reverred for his outstanding wisdom, is made Minister of Law in the ancient Kingdom of Lu. Under his inspired leadership, Lu ascends to new heights but becomes a target of conquest for the warlike nation of Qi. Threatened with annihilation by their powerful neighbour, a desperate people turn to their greatest teacher to lead their most powerful army. When Confucius delivers a stunning victory against all odds, a jealous aristocracy sets out to destroy him, but they should never under-estimate a remarkable man whose wisdom is more powerful than the sword.

After aspiring poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe fails his law exams, he's sent to a sleepy provincial court to reform. Instead, he falls for Lotte, a young woman who is promised to another man.

A seasoned actor and a pop star are cast as leads in a gay romantic play. As the actor teaches the pop star method acting, the line between fiction and reality is blurred and they become drawn to each other.

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.

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

Follows the story of underground workers who risked their lives to send intelligence and defend the motherland, set after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor when the Wang Jingwei regime declared war on Britain and the U.S.

When Gabriel, a 7-year-old Chinese kid who loves ballet, becomes friends with Rob, another Chinese kid from school, Rob’s dad gets suspicious about Gabriel's feminine behavior and decides to intervene.

Yuan Xiangqin, a high school student, is deeply in love with Jiang Zhishu, her schoolmate. He rejects her, only for them to live together when the house that she resides in collapses.

Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.

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.

A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.

Mio is a girl in high school who slacks off. She and her childhood friend Arata and best friend Madoka spend their after-school days in Ikebukuro hanging out. One day, Madoka tells Mio that she loves Arata, and Mio realizes that she loves Arata, too. But she’s scared of their relationship falling apart and lies, saying she’ll help them. Mio deliberately acts coldly to Arata, and they get into a fight. She decides to work things out with Arata, but gets into a car accident on her way to meet him. She wakes up in a mysterious world. It's the Ikebukuro she knows, but something’s different...

Ivy League Freshman, Aaron Milton (17) gets a different kind of education when he falls for Linda (34) a vivacious former wild-child who has returned to college to straighten out her life. The curriculum gets more challenging when Aaron meets Linda's sarcastic 14 year-old daughter, Beth - who quickly develops a crush on him. The math doesn't work in either direction but the dysfunctional triangle becomes a learning experience for all involved.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Claude Roc, a young middle-class Frenchman, befriends Ann, an Englishwoman. While spending time in England with Ann’s family, Claude falls in love with her sister Muriel, but both families lay down a year-long separation without contact before they may marry.

Fresh out of university, a Turkish young man with literary aspirations returns to his home village, and to his father, a debt-ridden man with a gambling problem.

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.
