Movies like As If It Were Yesterday (1980)
The best movies like As If It Were Yesterday (1980) are Night Will Fall (2014), Shoah (1985) and Night and Fog (1956). If As If It Were Yesterday hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedNight and Fog (1956)8.3/10 from 596 votes
- NewestMy Mom Jayne (2025)Released 2025
- In FrenchShoah (1985)Also in French
Night Will Fall (2014)
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShoah (1985)
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisNight and Fog (1956)
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Last Days (1998)
This Oscar-winning documentary recounts the harrowing stories of five Hungarian Jews who endured the horrors of the Holocaust and Hitler's reign.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988)
Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape—with U.S. help—to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMisha and the Wolves (2021)
A woman’s Holocaust memoir takes the world by storm, but a fallout with her publisher-turned-detective reveals her story as an audacious deception created to hide a darker truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTo Kill a Tiger (2023)
Ranjit, a farmer in India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the victim of a brutal gang rape. His decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSalinger (2013)
An in-depth investigation into the private world of the American writer J. D. Salinger (1919-2010), who lived most of his life behind the impenetrable wall of a self-imposed seclusion: how his dramatic experiences during World War II influenced his life and work, his relationships with very young women, his obsessive writing methods, his many literary secrets.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Battle of San Pietro (1945)
This documentary movie is about the battle of San Pietro, a small village in Italy. Over 1,100 US soldiers were killed while trying to take this location, that blocked the way for the Allied forces from the Germans. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNazi Concentration Camps (1945)
Produced and presented as evidence at the Nuremberg war crimes trial of Hermann Göring and twenty other Nazi leaders, this film consists primarily of dead and surviving prisoners and of facilities used to kill and torture during the World War II.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Mom Jayne (2025)
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisOne Day in September (1999)
The full story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli revenge operation 'Wrath of God.' The 1972 Munich Olympics were interrupted by Palestinian terrorists taking Israeli athletes hostage. Besides footage taken at the time, we see interviews with the surviving terrorist, Jamal Al Gashey, and various officials detailing exactly how the police, lacking an anti-terrorist squad and turning down help from the Israelis, botched the operation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOne of Us (2017)
Penetrating the insular world of New York's Hasidic community, focusing on three individuals driven to break away despite threats of retaliation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012)
Alex Gibney explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAudrey (2020)
An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFive Came Back (2017)
The extraordinary story of how Hollywood changed World War II – and how World War II changed Hollywood, through the interwoven experiences of five legendary filmmakers who went to war to serve their country and bring the truth to the American people: John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens. Based on Mark Harris’ best-selling book, “Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War.”
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe War Room (1993)
A behind-the-scenes documentary about the Clinton for President campaign, focusing on the adventures of spin doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFuck (2006)
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAnna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me (2023)
From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCamp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis (2021)
Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis, is a documentary short featuring animation that focuses on the story of a top secret POW camp that was classified for over 5 decades. In the midst of WWII, a group of young Jewish refugees are assigned to guard a top secret POW camp near Washington D.C. The Jewish soldiers soon discover that their prisoners are no other than Hitler's top scientists - What starts out as an intelligence mission to gather information from the Nazis, soon gets a shocking twist when the Jewish soldiers are tasked with a very different mission altogether. A mission that would question their moral values - exposing a dark secret from America's past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like this6th Marine Division on Okinawa (1945)
A documentary covering the actions of the 6th Marine Division on Okinawa during WWII.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
A Hole In The Head (2017)
A pig farm in Lety, South Bohemia would make an ideal monument to collaboration and indifference, says writer and journalist Markus Pape. Most of those appearing in this documentary filmed in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Germany and Croatia have personal experience of the indifference to the genocide of the Roma. Many of them experienced the Holocaust as children, and their distorted memories have earned them distrust and ridicule. Continuing racism and anti-Roma sentiment is illustrated among other matters by how contemporary society looks after the locations where the murders occurred. However, this documentary film essay focuses mainly on the survivors, who share with viewers their indelible traumas, their "hole in the head".
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Attack! The Battle for New Britain (1944)
Actual footage by the United States Signal Corps of the landing and attack on Arawe Beach, Cape Glouster, New Britain island in 1943 in the South Pacific theatre of World War Two, and the handicaps of the wild jungle in addition to the Japanese snipers and pill-box emplacements.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
The Tuskegee Airmen: Return to Ramitelli (2023)
Narrated by Country Music Superstar Darius Rucker. We return to Ramitelli airfield in Italy to chronicle the legacy of World War II's famed Tuskegee Airmen, African American pilots who helped break stereotypes and helped win World War II with their incredible fighter escorts of American bombers.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
The Auschwitz Trial (2013)
The biggest trial of Nazi war crimes ever: 360 witnesses in 183 days of trial - a stunning and gripping portrayal of the most terrible massacre in history.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Leegstaand monument (2019)
Documentary about the monument Joods Werkdorp.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
What They Found (2025)
The story of two soldier-cameramen, Sgt Mike Lewis and Sgt Bill Lawrie, who witnessed the liberation of Belsen during the closing days of World War II.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
The Smuggler and Her Charges (2016)
A captivating and personal detective story that uncovers the truth behind the childhood of Michaël Prazan's father, who escaped from Nazi-occupied France in 1942 thanks to the efforts of a female smuggler with mysterious motivations.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Francisco Boix: A Photographer in Hell (2000)
In 1939, just finished the Spanish Civil War, Spanish republican photographer Francesc Boix escapes from Spain; but is captured by the Nazis in 1940 and imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp, in Austria, a year later. There, he works as a prisoner in the SS Photographic Service, hiding, between 1943 and 1945, around 20,000 negatives that later will be presented as evidence during several trials conducted against Nazi war criminals after World War II.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Rino Della Negra, Calciatore Partigiano (2025)
Rino Della Negra, the son of Friulian emigrants in France, plays on the wing for Red Star in Saint-Ouen while fighting in the Resistance with the Manouchian group. Wounded and captured after an armed action, he is executed by the Nazis at Mont-Valérien on 21 February 1944, aged twenty. The documentary reconstructs his life through archive material, interviews with historians and relatives, and animated drawings.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like As If It Were Yesterday?
The closest matches to As If It Were Yesterday are Night Will Fall (2014), Shoah (1985) and Night and Fog (1956). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after As If It Were Yesterday?
Start with Night Will Fall (2014), the closest match to As If It Were Yesterday.
What is the highest-rated movie like As If It Were Yesterday?
Night and Fog (1956), rated 8.3/10 by 596 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like As If It Were Yesterday?
My Mom Jayne (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like As If It Were Yesterday?
Yes: Shoah (1985), Night and Fog (1956) and The Smuggler and Her Charges (2016).
How are movies similar to As If It Were Yesterday chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside As If It Were Yesterday, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.