All the Real Girls contains many scenes of everyday life in a small North Carolina mill town.
Amarcord: The mundane details of a year in the life of villagers in a small town in Fascist Italy.
American Honey: As the group of teens crisscrosses the American Midwest, the film captures vignettes of the heartland, as well as life in a traveling mag sales crew.
An Angel at My Table captures scenes of everyday rural life in New Zealand, as well as village life on the island of Ibiza.
Another Year looks at the year of a Happily Married older couple living and working in North London and the people around them.
While Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood is marketed as the story of a boy who goes to the moon, that’s just a small part of the movie. The bill of the film is more about Stan narrating his life in Late-1960s Houston with his family and the highs and lows of growing up in that period as the world awaited the moon landing.
The Assistant: In spite of the fact that the film takes place at the New York office of a film production company, the setting and plot are intentionally banal. We primarily watch as Jane goes about her workday in an ugly office, delivering coffee, making appointments, emptying the trash, washing dishes, etc. The most dramatic thing that happens is a conversation with HR.
Many of the very earliest Early Films are this: just moments of real life (or staged real life) presented for the camera. "Actuality films" was the genre designation used back then. Examples of actuality films include:
Five Easy Pieces is about a restless Anti-Hero trying to live up to his responsibilities to his family and his pregnant girlfriend, and failing. It simply follows along with the protagonist for a while, before the film ends.
Frances Ha is largely Slice of Life. While there is definitely a story arc (primarily a character arc for the titular protagonist), much of the film consists of individual snippets of her life.
Ghost World follows around a graduating teenage girl in a summer as she tries to decide what she's going to do with her life. The subplot about her trying to act as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl for a 40-something man is only one of the many things she tries.
The Intern spends most of its running time showing the day-to-day lives of Ben and the rest of the workers in Jules's office. There isn't much of a plot, and it's more about Jules and Ben's growing friendship.
Killer of Sheep: There's no unifying plot, simply a series of scenes portraying Stan's life and the lives of the urban poor in the late 1970s in the Watts ghetto. Stan tries to buy a car engine. Stan cashes a check only to have the lady store owner make a pass at him. Stan can't sleep. Stan wants to go to the racetrack. Stuff happens.
Dazed and Confused is a slice of life of one day on the last day of high school in 1976. The movie is about a group of seniors taking a freshman under their wing as they prepare for a Wild Teen Party.
Boyhood chronicles an entire 12 years of this. The movie was filmed over twelve years and contains snippets of scenes from one day in each of those years, though some parts of the protagonist's life receive more attention than others.
Lonesome is a charming little romance about two lonely working-class people who, over the course of a single day, meet, fall in love, are briefly separated, and are finally reunited. That's the whole story.
The Long Voyage Home, about a merchant ship in World War II, has some plot elements, like the ship's dangerous voyage through the U-boat infested Atlantic and Smitty the sailor's dark past, but there's no overarching story, just a portrait of a bunch of sailors trying to survive.
The first Magic Mike film doesn't have much of a plot and just examines Mike's lifestyle as a stripper - and eventually showing how empty it really is.
Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets is a crime film with no obvious narrative. Instead, it simply portrays the lives of a few low-ranking mobsters in 1970s New York over a few days, although the lead character's attempts to stop his best friend from screwing up can be said to form a loose theme.
Mon Oncle Antoine lacks a traditional three-act structure with conflict and climax. It is instead a portrayal of the everyday life of the people of a rural Quebec mining town, shortly before the socialupheavals that would change their life forever.
The plot of My Dinner with Andre revolves around a conversation between two guys who haven't talked in a while. They go to a fancy restaurant, order their meals and talk. That's it. For 2 hours. Not even flashbacks to the things they're talking about. Just talking.
My Girl merges this with That Nostalgia Show to show the life of a suburban preteen girl in the summer of 1971. The story is not driven by plot, and is mostly a look at what Vada does that summer. Oh and she lives in a funeral parlor.
My Life as a Dog: The film shows vignettes of daily life in rural Småland, particularly its eccentric residents.
Our Little Sister has no conventional plot once the older sisters ahve met the younger one. It focuses on the daily life of the sisters and the conflicts that arise in some situations.
One Foot in Heaven is about the life and struggles of a rural Protestant minister raising a family and tending to his flock in early 20th-century Iowa. There is no central plot or story arc, just an episodic portrait of the preacher, his family, and the townspeople as the years pass.
Anything directed by Yasujiro Ozu can fit into this category quite well, like Good Morning, a gentle satire of life in a sububan neighborhood where things like getting a television and collecting dues for the women's club are Serious Business. Tokyo Story, considered by most critics to be his masterpiece, is a slow, low-key consideration of the distance that grows between elderly parents and their children, as shown when an old couple take the train to Tokyo to visit their grown-up kids. Equinox Flower is about a father's discomfort when his daughter gets engaged without asking him first. Two different Ozu films, Late Spring and Early Summer, deal with a family worrying about getting a daughter in her late twenties married off before she's too old to get a husband.
Otoko wa Tsurai yo film series (literally, It's Tough Being a Man). From 1969 to 1995, it had 48 different installments and held the title of "Longest Running Film Series". All of them are slice of life romantic comedies with nearly identical plots.
Paterson is about a week in the life of a New Jersey bus driver who writes poetry.
Perfect Days is about and old man who cleans public toilets for a living, and lives a simple life. The film slowly reveals things about him throuh is interactions with other people.
The Disney version of Pollyanna is a little closer to this than the original book. An orphan girl goes to live with her aunt in a rather miserable town. Most of the movie is just spent with Pollyanna getting to know the various townspeople. It all acts as build-up for her eventual accident that cripples her, and the townspeople coming to her rescue.
Return of the Secaucus Seven is about a group of friends who get together for a weekend after not seeing each other for a while. There's no special reason they get together (one of the characters is having a birthday, but it's downplayed, as the others think reminding him he's turning 30 would make him too depressed), and while there's a couple that breaks up, it happens off-screen, and there's no real plot to speak of.
Ricki and the Flash is a look into the life of an ageing wannabe rock star who's estranged from her family. Although she reconnects with her children, it's not the bulk of the film - and more emphasis is on Ricki's own lifestyle.
Another director whose whole filmography would count is Éric Rohmer. His films tend to simply follow a character or group of characters over a short period (days or months) and examine their day-to-day challenges and opportunities, with many scenes of them simply discussing their feelings or philosophizing about their values and morals.
The Schoolgirl's Diary is about the life of a teenage girl who wishes her father would pay more attention to her and her family instead of spending his whole life at work. That's the whole story.
The Secret of Roan Inish is essentially ninety minutes of two children in 1950s Ireland deciding to fix up their families' old cottages on the island where they used to live - while also exploring the mythology of Selkies and Wereseals.
Somewhere depicts the daily goings-on in the life of Hollywood actor Johnny Marco, who lives at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles. Though the film shows glamorous events like parties and award shows, more mundane details, like the redundancy of press junkets and sitting in makeup chairs for lengthy periods, are also captured.
Sora e-Sukui No Tsubasa RESCUE WINGS- is about the daily lives of a Japanese Air Self-Defense Forces SAR team based at Komatsu Air Base as they do their work to save people in harsh situations when the call comes. At the same time, it shows the stress/problems the teams face, especially in situations where they can't do anything when the people they transport to safety either die eventually or are forced to leave them behind.
Space Station 76 is more about how a 1970's sci-fi TV show would look if it were made in 2014 than anything. The main conflict of the movie is that everyone secretly hates each other but they're too drugged up to really do anything about it. And the captain's gay, but that's not reallya secret. Heck, the giant asteroid set up early in the movie only scratches the station's paint and crushes a moving van.
The Spectacular Now, appropriately for its title, is this kind of story. The protagonist - a teen called Sutter - goes around trying to teach his friends to live "in the now" and appreciate life. Although there is a romance with a geek girl called Aimee involved, it's not the crux of the story.
Splendor in the Grass is a character story about two teenage lovers in Kansas in The Roaring '20s, how they desperately want to consummate their relationship, how the rules of society won't let them (Sex Is Evil!), and the damage that their inability to have sex causes.
Sunshine Cleaning spends more time getting to know its two protagonists. The titular gimmick - of two sisters running a business cleaning up after crime scenes - is more of a set up to watch Rose and Norah try to improve their lives.
The Tree of Wooden Clogs is about tenant farmers in rural Lombardy at the end of the 19th century, and the mundane details of their lives in poverty: slaughtering pigs, getting married, walking six kilometers to school.
Twelve O'Clock High is about the men of the 918th Bomber Group of the Eighth Air Force in World War II, how they deal with the stress of combat that involves very high casualty rates, and how their new commander has to raise their morale and motivate them to fight on. Unlike most war movies there isn't a specific battle to be fought or objective to be gained. At a certain point, after the commander has won the loyalty of his men but suffered a breakdown in the process, the film ends.
The Week chronicles a man coping with a sudden divorce during the week of his anniversary.
Wings is a quiet little character study about a middle-aged Russian woman who lived an exciting life as a World War II fighter pilot in her youth, but is now suffering a mid-life crisis, being stuck in a dull career as a school principal.
upheavals