Movies like Picnic (2020)
The best movies like Picnic (2020) are Pain and Glory (2019), Mr. Church (2016) and Until the End of the World (2026). If Picnic hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedViolet Perfume: Nobody Hears You (2001)7.9/10 from 240 votes
- NewestRedwood Diaries (2026)Released 2026
- In SpanishPain and Glory (2019)Also in Spanish
Pain and Glory (2019)
Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker in the twilight of his career, remembers his life: his mother, his lovers, the actors he worked with. The sixties in a small village in Valencia, the eighties in Madrid, the present, when he feels an immeasurable emptiness, facing his mortality, the incapability of continuing filming, the impossibility of separating creation from his own life. The need of narrating his past can be his salvation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMr. Church (2016)
A unique friendship develops when a little girl and her dying mother inherit a cook - Mr. Church. What begins as an arrangement that should only last six months, instead spans fifteen years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUntil the End of the World (2026)
Manuel's life is upended when Esmeralda, his lost love from 15 years ago, calls unexpectedly. Despite being set to marry another, he rediscovers Esmeralda, and they realize their love transcends time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisI Believe in Unicorns (2015)
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBad Education (2004)
When an old friend brings filmmaker Enrique Goded a semi-autobiographical script chronicling their adolescence, Enrique is forced to relive his youth spent at a Catholic boarding school. Weaving through past and present, the script follows a transvestite performer who reconnects with a grade school sweetheart. Spurred on by this chance encounter, the character reflects on her childhood sexual victimization and the trauma of closeting her sexual orientation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Keys of the Kingdom (1944)
A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Beloved (2026)
Acclaimed film director Esteban Martínez is a legend both for his films and for his past marked by violence and excess. For his latest project, he offers his daughter Emilia a role under the pretext of helping her with her stalled acting career. Living together on set will foster a closeness they haven’t shared for years, but it will also reopen old wounds that never healed.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIf Anything Happens I Love You (2020)
Grieving parents journey through an emotional void as they mourn the loss of a child after a tragic school shooting.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisChinas (2023)
In Madrid, Spain, Lucía and Xiang, two nine-year-old Chinese girls, meet at the beginning of the school year.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlue Heron (2026)
A family of six's fresh start on 1990s Vancouver Island unravels as their youngest child, Sasha, witnesses the increasingly dangerous behavior of her older brother, Jeremy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStrange Weather (2016)
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisA Taste of Honey (1961)
While out to avoid spending time with her narcissistic and promiscuous mother, sixteen-year-old Jo has a brief affair that leaves her pregnant and abandoned. When her mother remarries, Jo's only support becomes her friend Geoffrey, a homosexual.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Safety of Objects (2002)
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHere (2024)
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Truth About Emanuel (2013)
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisViolet Perfume: Nobody Hears You (2001)
Yessica is a rebellious girl who forms an unlikely friendship with quiet schoolmate Miriam. Yessica's home life is ruled by her brutal stepfather and her amoral stepbrother, Jorge, while Miriam shares a calm, loving household with her mother. The girls' friendship is shattered after Jorge arranges to have one of his friends rape Yessica.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisRomería (2025)
With her mother's diary in hand, Marina's search for official documents for university leads her to her biological family on the Atlantic coast. What starts as an administrative quest reveals long-buried family secrets.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThings We Lost in the Fire (2007)
A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Miracle of Marcelino (1955)
Left on the doorstep of a monastery as an infant, Marcelino was raised by the monks. He was well-cared for but lonely and missed having a mother. One day he found a special friend in the forbidden attic, hanging on a cross. A friend that would repay Marcelino's kindness by granting him one heart-felt wish.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMindwalk (1991)
On the French island of Mont Saint-Michel, Jack, a failed presidential candidate, Tom, a poet and Sonia, a physicist, engage in an intellectual conversation about politics, philosophy and life over the course of a single day.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRedwood Diaries (2026)
When strange entries begin appearing in her diary written in handwriting that isn't hers, new student Evie Quinn is pulled into a chilling mystery as the messages reveal secrets, predict impossible events, and point toward a truth someone has desperately tried to bury.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Wrong Way Driving (2017)
Police received a distress call that the daughter of a real estate tycoon was kidnapped, but it turned out to be a prank call.... or so it seemed! Unexpectedly the daughter came into real danger and now the Police are scrambling to uncover this mystery. With their best agent on the case, he soon discovers there's more to the story and works vigorously to unravel this web of secrets, lies & deceit.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Dead Man Walking (2016)
Two detectives team up to investigate several murders that they think are linked together. When the latest murder and a mission person report happen on the same day they question if they have a copy cat on their hands.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Biter (TBA)
After a fight with his mom, a dysfunctional 16-year-old with a habit of biting is taken to an abusive, remote therapy program in the woods for troubled teens, where he is forced to confront his aggressive instincts to grow and find some semblance of inner peace.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
You Are Here (2020)
Two brothers plan to spend quality time together on a weekend hike, but when things go wrong they are forced to confront a rift in their relationship.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Cade & Eugene's Platonic Love Story (2017)
Hungover and struggling to recall the events of the Christmas party they attended, two best friends are called into the police station for questioning. One worries of what could happen to them whilst the other ignores his friend's anxieties in pursuit of love.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Hey Look Ma, I Made It (2023)
The police found a woman named Ferlina (38) dead in her own home. Rio (18) who is her only child, became a witness to the incident to uncover who is the perpetrator of the murder.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Job (2025)
Job pleads to God for an answer to his suffering and receives one.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
An Impossibly Small Object (2018)
A Dutch photographer (played by David Verbeek himself – also a talented photographer in real life) takes a picture of a girl in a parking lot in nighttime Taipei as she plays with her kite. The photo transports us into her life. She is eight years old and is about to lose her best friend, a boy from a wealthy family who is moving to America. Back in the Netherlands, the photographer is confronted with his own constant loneliness. The photo of the girl evokes memories of his own childhood, when he still felt at home somewhere.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Difference & Repetition, 2020 (2025)
In March 2020, an Argentine woman flees New York with her Peruvian husband for his family’s empty beach house outside of Lima, whereupon an unplanned pregnancy precipitates the destruction of her marriage. In the present, she rips the moments of this narrative from their context, and reconstructs her story to reckon with her profound feeling of loneliness and the experience of time in which it has trapped her.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Picnic?
The closest matches to Picnic are Pain and Glory (2019), Mr. Church (2016) and Until the End of the World (2026). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Picnic?
Start with Pain and Glory (2019), the closest match to Picnic.
What is the highest-rated movie like Picnic?
Violet Perfume: Nobody Hears You (2001), rated 7.9/10 by 240 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Picnic?
Redwood Diaries (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Spanish movies like Picnic?
Yes: Pain and Glory (2019), Until the End of the World (2026) and Bad Education (2004).
How are movies similar to Picnic chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Picnic, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.