Movies about Surreal
Vote for your personal favorite Surrealism films, regardless of how popular or successful they were at the box office.
Journey through the realm of the extraordinary, where the conventional is deconstructed and reality transformed, with our illustrious collection of surrealistic films. The genre of surrealism is celebrated for its beguiling ability to probe the subconscious, using abstract visuals and narrative non-linearity, to present a version of reality that is truly mind-bending.
Our interactive list showcases the depth and diversity of surreal cinema, featuring movies that masterfully blur the line between dream and reality, pushing the boundaries of storytelling and visual representation. Each film serves as a testament to the power of the surrealistic genre, demonstrating how cinema can fracture conventional narrative structures to unravel deeper, often hidden dimensions of human consciousness.
From timeless classics to contemporary masterpieces, our selection covers the changing faces of the surrealist genre. Each movie’s individual summary includes not just a plot overview but also a discussion of its groundbreaking surrealistic elements and the lasting impact they’ve had on the world of cinema. Navigating from mere exploration to an immersive viewing experience has never been easier. Conveniently placed beneath each film’s entry are streaming platform icons for Disney+, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, and Max. This smooth transition feature allows for an uninterrupted surreal cinema journey.
Users can dive into our spellbinding array to unearth a surreal movie that suits their taste, or broaden their cinematic horizons by venturing into unexplored titles. Combining popular preference via the voting feature with an in-depth understanding of each film’s surrealistic elements, our list offers an enriching and interactive resource for cinema enthusiasts across the spectrum. Explore the enchanting realm of surreal cinema where dreams collide with reality, giving birth to an unforgettable, thought-provoking filmic experience.
30 Great Surreal Movies That Are Worth Your Time
The Surrealist Movement was born in the 1920s with the aim to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality”. Eventually, it would seep into cinema as well, with Luis Buñuel acknowledged as the first filmmaker to embrace the cultural movement that was taking place. His collaboration with Salvador Dali in 1929, titled Un Chien Andalou, is regarded as the first surrealist film, although many classify The Seashell and the Clergyman – released one-year prior – as the progenitor.
However, over the years, ‘surreal’ has become an umbrella term commonly attributed to films that are bizarre, non-linear or unconventional. Prior to The Seashell and the Clergyman, films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – released in 1920 and still widely regarded as a surreal masterwork by scholars – were paving the way for surreal films as we know them today.
Nowadays, it’s a tag applied to a wide array of films which defy the typical norm, and this list takes all different types into account.
1. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)
More people know Patton Oswalt’s joke about this movie more than the actual film itself, after the comedian said he wanted to make a similar film about a rapist stove. If he ever did go through with that, it’d be a good movie no doubt, although it would take a lot for it to live up to this forgotten oddity.
The story is about a demonically possessed bed that eats people, while a ghost stuck behind a painting narrates. It sounds ridiculous – and it is – but it’s not the kind of cheesy schlock you’d expect it to be either; instead it sits awkwardly in-between a state of existential folk tale and campy ridiculous fluff.
It has a strange, dreamlike atmosphere and surprisingly good effects for its micro budget. When the bed eats its victims, the residue left over is reminiscent of eggs crackling away in a frying pan. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is weird for the sake of being weird, but it’s an entertaining cult gem, now enjoying life as a stage play having found a decent fan base throughout the years.
2. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Luis Buñuel was the first surrealist filmmaker to be welcomed into the 1920s burgeoning Surrealist Movement by its leader, Andre Breton. He would even collaborate with renowned surrealist painter Salvador Dali. Though he tackled many genres, Buñuel retained a core fundamental style – that Ingmar Bergman would cite as being incomparable – during his lengthy career.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is one of the directors most accomplished works. A virtually plotless films, it encompasses a series of dreams centred around six middle-class people and their interrupted attempts to have a meal together.
The film itself is a metaphor for Buñuel’s opinion that the bourgeoisie were pointless, and it mocks social conventions in hilarious fashion through its dreamlike imagery and logic.
3. Begotten (1990)
Begotten is one of the least enjoyable experiences one can force upon themselves. It’s an ugly, grainy film with no dialogue whatsoever, instead opting for an unsettling score to complement its vulgar imagery. However, as a visceral experience it is worthy of your time, even if it is challenging viewing.
Begotten retells the story of Genesis, after God kills himself with a razor, thus giving birth to Mother Earth. She then gives birth to the Son of Earth, who is then feasted on by ravenous, faceless cannibals.
Despite being a nauseating film you could argue outstays its welcome through an unnecessary running time, it still packs more of a punch than most films you’re ever likely to see. It’s sickening, unrelenting and disturbing: a great achievement considering that’s what it set out to do.
4. Svatá Hora (1973)
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s DNA flows through the lifeblood of avant-garde films. His influence on leftfield cinema is almost unparalleled, although his output has been sparse throughout his career, as funding for films like the ones he makes is hard to come by. The majority of the movies on this list are provocative, grotesque, and hallucinogenic – but Jodorowsky’s tend to be more so than the others.
The Holy Mountain follows a thief who looks like Christ, an alchemist and a host of other characters – each representing different planets – as they ascend a mountain in search of immortality. As they embark on their journey, they all partake in a series of transformation rituals and experiencing visions symbolic of their deepest fears.
The Holy Mountain is a confusing film, rooted in mysticism, astronomy and religion. There’s no shame in not having a clue about what’s going on, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll enjoy it less should that be the case.
5. Big Man Japan (2007)
Japan’s big monster movies – also known as ‘kaiju’ films – are a prominent part of the country’s pop culture and a cornerstone of its cinematic history. Big Man Japan, however, is a fresh take on the typical monster battles, as it applies them to a mockumentary format. It’s a strange concoction that makes a rare brew, to say the least.
The story follows Masuru Daisato (Hitoshi Matsumoto) – an eccentric man living alone in a decrepit house in Tokyo periodically transforms into a 100-foot tall giant when the country gets attacked by similar sized monsters.
Such is the nature of a hero, the society that shuns him is the one he must protect from invaders. However, Big Man Japan does a great job of infusing the miserable mundane routine of lonely, everyday life with baffling – and often crude – absurdity. A film that’ll never be forgotten once seen; whether that’s a good thing depends on your sense of humor.
6. Sweet Movie (1974)
Sweet Movie tells the intertwining story of two women who don’t exactly adhere to societal norms. One is a mute beauty queen descending into insanity, and the other lures men onto her ship so she can engage in sexual debauchery and murder.
The film was banned in many countries after its release, causing a storm of controversy due to simulated and unsimulated scenes of emetophilia, coprophilia, sexual fondling – along with images of real death footage.
Absurdity and repulsion aside, Sweet Movie is a film that challenges ideologies and viewpoints about where society’s morals tend to lie. It’s a provocative piece of filmmaking that just so happens to be quite funny in places as well.
Having spent more than 20 years as a director of short films, Alice would mark Czech director Jan Švankmajer’s first foray into feature-length filmmaking. The director – disappointed by other adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s classic novel Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland – sought strip away the child-friendly sugar coating of other screen versions, and present it as a morally ambiguous tale.
The film would be met with much critical acclaim, even winning the Feature Film Award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 1989. This is a dark, nightmarish and disturbing recount of the classic fairy tale, and by far the best.
8. Fantastická planeta (1973)
Fantastic Planet is one of only three full feature length films directed by French animator René Laloux, having primarily focused on shorts throughout his career.
Set on a distant planet called Ygam, slaves known as Om are dominated by alien overlords known as Draags. It tells the story of Ter, a minute human shaped Om who escapes into the wilderness with a device that gives him the knowledge to start a revolt against the slave owners.
Fantastic Planet is a parable about seeking equality, envisioning a world where oppression can be overcome and a mankind can co-exist without prejudice and tyranny. It encourages people to seek as much knowledge as they can; to break free of intellectual imprisonment or else risk being ruled by despots. A truly brilliant film, with a timeless message.
9. Fehérlófia (1981)
Marcell Jankovics is an award-winning animator whose widespread claim to fame occurred at the 2008 Super Bowl, when his 1974 short film Sisyphus featured in one of the ads. However, his surreal fairy tale Fehérlófia is his landmark achievement.
Fehérlófia – translated to Son of the White Mare – is a Hungarian animated film which tells the story of a man – who is also the son of a horse – bestowed with superpowers, which he uses battle the formidable dragons that imprisoned his mother.
The film takes the viewer on an adventure through a brightly colored fantasy world chock full of symbolism, Hungarian folktales and psychedelic sensory overload. Unfortunately, it’s a film that’s hardly ever mentioned outside of its homeland and animation circles.
10. Eraserhead (1977)
If there was a Mount Rushmore for surrealist filmmakers, the face of David Lynch and his almighty quiff would be carved into stone. Lynch’s influence on experimental cinema is so unprecedented that the term ‘Lynchian’ repeatedly crops up in film critique. Often applied in a somewhat lazy way, this blanket-term is used to cover a large chunk of avant-garde cinema.
Eraserhead is the progenitor of Lynch’s illustrious career, and arguably one of the strangest and most unsettling films in existence. There have been many interpretations of the film, the most prominent one being that it’s about the fear of fatherhood felt by Lynch himself at the time. Other theories have suggested that the film has a deeper, underlying sexual meaning, warning people of the dangers of unprotected sex.
Regardless of how one perceives Eraserhead, it’s a film that continues to challenge viewers on a visceral and intellectual level. It’s not the easiest experience to endure, but once it is one of the most captivating.
The 15 Best Surrealist Movies of The 21st Century
Surrealism is one of the most influential cultural movements of 20th Century. It is a method of art, by means of which, artists seek access to their unconscious minds and investigate the reality disguised by pragmatic conventions. Surrealism, like Dadaism, exploits the artistic creativity on randomness and imagination to append traditional values, and elevate an absurdist view of world.
In early 1920s, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, along with other auteurs, brought this style to masses through their films. Since then, surrealism has been directly associated with films. Surrealist cinema is characterised by juxtapositions, psychic disturbance, dream symbolisms and a frequent use of shocking imagery. Surrealist films often follow the inexplicable logic of dreams, challenging conventional reasoning and narrative.
With 21st Century, came the demise of surrealist movement. However, there are still numerous films, which are true expressions of this revolutionary movement or containing surrealist fragments. The following list includes some of the best surrealist films of 21st Century (2000 onwards).
15. Blood Tea and Red String (2006)
This silent stop-motion picture by Christiane Cegavske can be hailed as modern day anecdote of Grimm’s fairy tales. It is the story of artist’s obsession with art, which in a way, reflects director’s own journey, as the film is shot over 13 years. The fact, that bizarre world presented in the movie is hand-crafted, is commendable. ‘Blood Tea and Red string’ is one of the most overlooked films of surreal genre.
In a forest, where all natural beings are personified, dispute erupts between a group of white mice and rustic creatures, who reside under the oak. The rustic creatures fabricate a doll on the demand of mice, but astonished by beauty and perfection of their creation, they get attached to it, and refuse to sell it to mice. Defiance of agreement leads mice to steal the doll. What follows then is a quest of oak dwellers, in order to reclaim their doll.
The whole film operates on symbols, for there is complete absence of verbal communication. Even with its simple plot, it challenges viewers to extract its implications in unimaginable way. This film was planned to the first part of trilogy.
14. Cowards Bend the Knee (2003)
Guy Maddin, often hailed as ‘The Canadian David Lynch’, has a knack for imparting his personal traumas in form of over the top surreal dramas. Zbabělci ohýbají koleno is the first movie of his highly autobiographical ‘me’ trilogy, which is followed by ‘Brand Upon the Brain!’ and ‘My Winnipeg’.
Guy is an amnesic suitor, who in joy of meeting someone new, forgets his mother and mother of his own child. Unknowingly, he becomes infatuated with mysterious Meta, while his girlfriend is being aborted. Succumbed to Meta, Guy acquires blue hands of her father, and avenges him by killing his adulterous wife and her foul paramour.
Movie also focuses on Guy Maddin’s journey as a player of ‘Winnipeg maroons’, a Canadian senior Ice-hockey team. Into arena, up in rafters, Guy discovers a forgotten wax museum, harboring life-size wax figures of every Winnipeg maroon.
Zbabělci ohýbají koleno is a silent postmodern expressionist film. Guy’s visual style of generating grainy and grimy vignettes evokes quality of long lost primordial films.
13. You, the Living (2007)
Roy Andersson’s Vy, Živí is like a fabric, in which despairs of ordinary lives are neatly interwoven. It is dark in colour, rich in texture and exudes chilling warmth.
From very beginning, the movie directly communicates with viewers, with its opening quote by German writer Goethe, “Be pleased then, you the living, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe’s ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot”. In this deadpan surreal comedy, a barrage of complaints flow lucidly to the rhythm of vivid dreams.
The premise of film can be summarized in this one famous line from Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, Newyork, “No one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own.” The only difference is, here, all we do is listen to miseries, as random characters emerge and recount their agony, sometimes to one another, sometimes directly to us. Despite all the hardships, life goes on, for Tomorrow is another day.
Roy Andersson, also known as ‘slapstick Bergman’ (with Buñuelian touch) is the master of static long-takes. He effortlessly shifts the camera from one vignette to other; this transition between scenes is intentionally abrupt. This movie has randomness of Fantom svobody and stylishness of Diskrétní kouzlo buržoazie.
12. Borgman (2013)
Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam’s home invasion thriller is obscenely alluring, undeniably ambiguous and wickedly amusing. Borgmann is like a painting, emanating in a series of fixations that dart and scatter across the screen.
The movie is about Camiel Borgman and his mysterious hole dwelling cohorts. In one of the most striking opening sequence, the priest and his folks are unearthing covert subterranean bunkers to hunt Borgman. When he hustles into an opulent neighbourhood, looking for a bath, we sense that intrusion is just the beginning of all the mischievous acts yet to occur. In one dreadfully surreal scene, Borgman is squatting naked on sleeping Marina, while she is having nightmare.
Though Warmerdam has dropped enough narrative cues to maintain intrigue, we don’t get any clear resolution. Interpretations of movie’s hidden symbolisms run the gamut, from spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places to sexual struggle.
Borgmann has sly Lynchian touch to it, with subtle interplay of light and shadow instead of stylized lighting, but in the end, it is very much director’s own movie. This film was Netherland’s official Oscar submission for foreign language category.
11. A Field in England (2013)
Ben Wheatley’s ultralow budget Civil War drama, shot in monochrome, is a unique blend of alchemy and folklore, which derives its roots from ‘Fairy ring’ myth. With his masterful camerawork, that includes fast cuts and psychedelic sequences, Ben transport us into another world, in another time.
The story starts with a quartet, fleeing the war scene, headed toward alehouse across the field. On their way, they meet O’Neil, a heinous Irishman with occult skills. He wants to apply Whithead’s divination expertise to locate the treasure that lies in field. This film is outright mix of moods that goes from humorous to hallucinating.
Obrazy Pole v Anglii are often cryptic and abysmal, which results from processing of two images simultaneously. The stroboscopic sequences play with our vision and provide a peek into man’s subconscious. Many vignettes in this film are highly influenced by Seashell and the Clergyman, arguably the first model surrealist film.
Entire film takes place on a single location, a field in England, as the name suggests. The background score by Jim Williams is hauntingly beautiful; especially the Scottish song Baloo My Boy uplifts the charm of movie. This avant-grade monument offers a handful of magic mushrooms, with spice of cultural and religious diversity, for those who can digest it.
10. The Act of Killing (2012)
It may seem absurd to link ‘surrealism’ with ‘documentary’, for surrealism is generally ani-realistic, whereas documentary is essentially associated with realism. In that regard, Zákon o zabíjení by Christine Cynn and Joshua Oppenheimer is a game changer documentary, which employs surrealism as a device to present the real tragedy or we can say that reality itself reproduces a unique surrealism. As quoted by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek “If something gets too traumatic, too violent, it shatters the co-ordinates of our reality, and we are forced to fictionalize it.”
This movie is a petrifying portrait of ‘Pancasila’, an Indonesian paramilitary organization that slaughtered communists. We see perpetrators themselves in starring roles, celebrating the genocide, as they restage their barbarous carnage in front of camera. In one of the key scenes of movie, the leader of death squad says, “Why do people watch film about Nazis? To see power and sadism! We can do that! We can make something more sadistic than what you see in movies about Nazis. You’ve seen that in fiction, but that’s different, I did it in real life.”
Though movie is unnerving, confronting us with the savagery we cannot even imagine; it is also deeply empathetic and ultimately gratifying. Zákon o zabíjení is one the most important quintessential documentaries that fits into surreal genre.
9. The Taste of Tea (2004)
Katsuhito Ishii, a veteran animator, mostly known for composing animated sequences of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill vol. 1, delivers movie of the carrier with Chuť čaje. As a character of movie says, “It’s more cool than weird, and it stays in your head.” Though it is a live action movie, it has soul of an anime.
Taste of Tea is an eccentric portrayal of country side family, a collection of deftly assembled episodes of life. This warm hearted family drama is about a puerile girl, stalked by her own colossal doppelganger; her love struck brother; mother, reinstating her profession as anime artist; hypnotist father; impetuous uncle and compassionate grandfather, lost in his own world.
The long shots of country landscapes and stunning juxtaposition sequences make Chuť čaje one of the most appealing and hypnotic surreal films of all time. With this movie, director wants to convey that in our strife to meet responsibilities of life, we have forgotten the colour of burning sky and smell of warm earth.
We collect Movies about Surreal rating based on ratings and reviews on popular services. To collect Movies about Surreal we analyze rendition, popular services, comments, people reviews, forum comments and make our own rating. If you think there is a movie missing in the selection, you can leave a comment with the name of the movie that should be included in the selection. Let’s make a rating Movies about Surreal together!
