Movies like The Quiet Migration (2023)
The best movies like The Quiet Migration (2023) are Second Best (1994), Minari (2020) and Anne of Green Gables (2016). If The Quiet Migration hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThere Will Be Blood (2007)8.1/10 from 7,880 votes
- NewestAfterglow (2025)Released 2025
Second Best (1994)
The difficult relationship between a british postal officer and his adoptive son.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMinari (2020)
A Korean American family moves to an Arkansas farm in search of its own American dream. Amidst the challenges of this new life in the strange and rugged Ozarks, they discover the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAnne of Green Gables (2016)
Anne Shirley, an orphan, is fostered by farmer Matthew Cuthbert and his sister Marilla, who were expecting a boy to be sent them to help with their farm work. They accept Anne, who quickly endears herself to them and to the local villagers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSkin (2009)
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSecrets & Lies (1996)
After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShort Term 12 (2013)
Grace, a compassionate young supervisor at a foster care facility, helps at-risk teens. But when a new charge dredges up memories of her own troubled past, Grace's tough exterior begins eroding.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEvelyn (2002)
Desmond Doyle is devastated when his wife abandons their family on the day after Christmas. His unemployment, and the fact that there is no woman in the house to care for the children—Evelyn, Dermot and Maurice—make it clear to the authorities this is an untenable situation. The Catholic Church and the Irish courts decide to put the Doyle children into Church-run orphanages.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Better Life (2011)
An Indigenous Latino American gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLadybird Ladybird (1994)
Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by social services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her past still haunts her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLifemark (2022)
David's comfortable world is turned upside down when his birth mother Melissa unexpectedly reaches out, longing to meet the eighteen year old son she's only held once.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Home of Our Own (1993)
In 1960s Los Angeles an energetic widow and her six children try to make a dream of theirs come true: to have a home of their own. They leave L.A. and head for the countryside, all the while facing numerous difficulties and obstacles during their journey.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSleepwalking (2008)
When her boyfriend is arrested for marijuana possession, Joleen Reedy and her 11-year-old daughter, Tara, take refuge with Joleen's aimless brother, James. Joleen soon runs off with a truck driver, and James is unable to meet his responsibilities. After Child Protective Services takes possession of Tara, James abducts her from a foster home, and the two travel from California to Utah, where his abusive father lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhat Maisie Knew (2013)
In New York City, six-year-old Maisie is caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle between her self-absorbed parents—an aging rock singer mother and a distracted art dealer father. As both quickly marry new partners to strengthen their legal standing, Maisie is shuttled back and forth in an endless game of emotional point-scoring. Yet amid the chaos and upheaval, Maisie begins to find true comfort and affection in her new step-parents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot (2024)
Led by Donna and Reverend W.C. Martin, 22 families from a rural Black church in the small East Texas town of Possum Trot adopt 77 of the most difficult-to-place kids in the foster system and kickstart a movement in the process.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLion (2016)
A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Blind Side (2009)
The story of Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All American football player and first round NFL draft pick with the help of a caring woman and her family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Shine of Rainbows (2009)
An orphaned boy named Tomás is adopted by Maire O’Donnell to live on a whimsical Irish isle filled with new friends, secret caves and a lost baby pup seal stranded on the coast. But when Maire's reluctant husband Alec refuses to accept Tomás as his own son, the boy drifts down a fateful path of adventure and self-discovery, illuminating how rainbows can shine around - and within - us all.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Pumpkin Eater (1964)
Jo, the mother of seven children, divorces her second husband in order to marry Jake, a successful but promiscuous screenwriter. Though they are physically and emotionally compatible, they are slowly torn apart.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLast Ride (2009)
A young boy travels across Australia with his father, who's wanted by the law.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Memory Keeper's Daughter (2008)
During a blizzard in 1964, Dr. David Henry delivers his son Paul with the help of nurse Caroline. But when Henry realizes his wife is also carrying a girl with Down syndrome, he hands the second child over to Caroline without his wife's knowledge. Henry's fateful decision yields grave consequences for his family over the next 20 years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBedford Park (2027)
Haunted by an abusive childhood, Audrey, a Korean American woman in her 30s, faces her emotional past. When her mother’s car accident brings her back to her parents’ home, she meets the man responsible for the accident. Their relationship builds, passions ignite, and they form a loving connection.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Coming SoonMovies like thisNobody is Crazy (2019)
Rafa is a lonely teenager with OCD and his overwhelmed mother insists on giving him professional help or he will end up in a military school. Faced with the situation, he agrees to visit a self-help group where he meets a somewhat eccentric masked guy who states to be a time traveler. Rafa begins the search to find out if the young guy is who he says he is and came from the past or is simply a mental patient who escaped from an asylum.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Loggerheads (2005)
A troubled woman seeks out the child she gave up for adoption; a gay motel owner takes in a handsome drifter; and the wife of a preacher frets that a gay couple has moved in across the street. All of their lives will intersect as Loggerheads subtly draws out their secret losses and desires.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
A Fragile Bond (2019)
Mina was adopted from Ethiopia by Judith and Lionel, a married couple who already were the parents of a biological daughter. Though she was abandoned by her mother as a baby, it didn't really seem to have much of an impact on her. But when Mina turns thirteen, an identity crisis takes a hold of the girl. She is caught between two worlds - and feels nowhere at home. Mina snaps and descends into a destructive downwards spiral. Jealous of her non-adopted sister, she starts acting out, pitting her father and mother against each other and thereby dividing the entire family. Judith and Lionel don't know what to do. Will their parental love and kindness be enough to heal Mina's wounds?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Ruthless silver miner, turned oil prospector, Daniel Plainview, moves to oil-rich California. Using his son to project a trustworthy, family-man image, Plainview cons local landowners into selling him their valuable properties for a pittance. However, local preacher Eli Sunday suspects Plainview's motives and intentions, starting a slow-burning feud that threatens both their lives.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisAfterglow (2025)
Josephine, harboring a fear of being forgotten by her grandfather with dementia, summons the courage to visit him at his nursing home.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Kaali (2018)
An Indian doctor in the US, haunted by a recurring nightmare, learns that he is adopted, and comes to India to know his real roots. Where does his search lead him to?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939)
In late 19th-century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that the praise he receives is only due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully joins him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLuce (2019)
A star athlete and top student, Luce's idealized image is challenged by one of his teachers when his unsettling views on political violence come to light, putting a strain on family bonds while igniting intense debates on race and identity.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisQueen of the Morning Calm (2019)
Follows 29-year-old immigrant sex worker Debra, and her self-aware 10-year-old daughter Mona, as they embark on a journey of emancipation. Debra attempts to escape cycles of abuse and poverty while learning to become a more nurturing mother and discovering her own self-worth.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Quiet Migration?
The closest matches to The Quiet Migration are Second Best (1994), Minari (2020) and Anne of Green Gables (2016). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Quiet Migration?
Start with Second Best (1994), the closest match to The Quiet Migration.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Quiet Migration?
There Will Be Blood (2007), rated 8.1/10 by 7,880 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Quiet Migration?
Afterglow (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to The Quiet Migration chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Quiet Migration, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.