Movies like Rosewater (1999)
The best movies like Rosewater (1999) are The Human Voice (2020), Helen (2009) and The Safety of Objects (2002). If Rosewater hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Human Voice (2020)6.7/10 from 264 votes
- NewestAt Night (2026)Released 2026
The Human Voice (2020)
A woman watches time pass beside the suitcases of her ex-lover (who is supposed to come pick them up but never arrives) and a restless dog who doesn't understand that his master has abandoned him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHelen (2009)
On the outside, Helen has it all – a loving family and a successful career – but when her suppressed mental illness resurfaces, the world crumbles around her. Crippled by depression, Helen finds solace through her friendship with Mathilda, a kindred spirit struggling with bipolar disorder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 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 thisUpstream Color (2013)
A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWasp (2003)
Zoë is a single mother who lives with her four children in Dartford. She is poor and can't afford to buy food. One day her old flame drives by and asks her to go on a date with him. Scared that he doesn't want to go out with her, she lies and tells him that she is just babysitting the kids. This will be her first date in years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHounddog (2008)
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Thing with Feathers (2025)
Following the death of his wife, a young father's hold on reality crumbles, and a strange presence begins to stalk him from the shadowy recesses of the apartment he shares with his two young sons.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEleanor the Great (2025)
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
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 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 Short History of the Long Road (2019)
Nola grew up living in a van with her father, Clint—two nomads against the world. When tragedy strikes, Nola must confront the reality of life on the road alone, learning to own her grief, her past, and her new destination.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDie My Love (2025)
After inheriting a remote Montana house, Jackson moves there from New York with his partner Grace, and the couple soon welcome a child. As Jackson becomes increasingly absent and rural isolation sets in, Grace struggles with loneliness, creative frustration, and unresolved emotional wounds. What begins as an attempt at renewal gradually turns into an intense psychological descent, placing strain on their relationship and exposing the fragile balance between love, identity, and motherhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Brother the Devil (2012)
Fourteen-year-old Mo is a lonely, sensitive boy whose hunger for the rant and banter of buddies makes him prone to tread dangerous territories. He idolizes his handsome older brother, Rashid, a charismatic, well-respected member of a local gang, whose drug dealing enables “Rash” to provide for his family. Aching to be seen as a tough guy himself, Mo takes a job that unlocks a fateful turn of events and forces the brothers to confront their inner demons. It turns out that hate is easy. It is love and understanding that take real courage.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNothing Personal (2009)
Alone in her empty flat, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThird Star (2010)
James and his three closest lifelong friends go on an ill-advised trip to the stunning coastal area of Barafundle Bay in West Wales. What follows is a touching and comical adventure dealing with friendship, heroism and love.
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 thisBastard Out of Carolina (1996)
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001)
In New York City, the lives of a lawyer, an actuary, a house-cleaner, a professor, and the people around them intersect as they ponder order and happiness in the face of life's cold unpredictability.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJason et les royaumes (2025)
After a suicide attempt, Jason spends the summer with his grandmother, Aimée. Each week, a taxi takes him to his physiotherapy sessions, driven by Agatha. To escape the truth about his accident, Jason invents a new life for himself during the rides, turning the road into an imaginary and romantic escape.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Little Boy (2007)
The second installment of Frank Mosley's Perception Trilogy, inspired by Greek philosopher Plato's quote, "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." It is an examination of responsibility during the creation of the Atomic bomb during 1945. Shot on a soundstage to invoke the sense of theater, it highlights a moment in time where innocence is lost and only uncertainty lies ahead. Michael Morse is an anonymous man working for an anonymous sector of the Manhattan Project when he gets two phone calls in quick succession: that the atomic bomb has been completed and that his wife has just given birth to their son at the local hospital. What happens next is a fusing of past, present, and future, interweaving in the head of a man doomed to be the messenger of destruction.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Leave (2007)
Billy the Marine's last day home before going back to Iraq. Realizing he may never come back, he tries to make amends with various people in his life. For Billy, the real battle may be on the home front rather than the front lines. LEAVE is an entirely improvised drama that was shot over the course of one day in Arlington, Texas, using both actors and non actors, both family and friends of the director, all from a one page outline. The story ultimately describes the different ways people express their love to one another, and how these ways of communicating love are sometimes lost.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Lions' Den (2007)
A group of old friends are hanging at one of their houses exchanging stories of sexual escapades, awaiting another friend to arrive so they can celebrate a birthday at a nude bar. When one of them is suddenly accused of having masturbated in his friend's bathroom, what starts as a McCarthy-era trial of accusations at one individual suddenly escalates into a night of judgment that tests the truth of their words and the strength of all their friendships. LIONS' DEN is an entirely improvised drama using both actors and non actors shot over the course of an evening, based from a loose outline. It ultimately is a probing of the way men behave with one another. It also emphasizes the way people point the finger at others to hide their own sins and actions. A melting pot of lies, truths, egos, and masculinity that is stirred with documentary-style filmmaking.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Topeka (2010)
A young businessman from New York (Layne Edelman) visits a diner in Topeka while on a business trip through the Midwest. Layne quickly notices something 'unusual' about this diner as he eavesdrops on the townsfolk conversations. When he returns to his table to find his belongings stolen, Layne's 'small town experience' spins mercilessly out of control.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Holy the Sabbath (2006)
A chilling portrait of loss and redemption when men create their own gods.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
At Night (2026)
Six women in Paris traverse the anxiety of the city after dark. A filmmaker struggles to understand the film she is making. A Black single mother refuses the categories imposed on her. A former sex worker reflects on her past. A poet gives up trying for a child. Taking place over a single night, the film intertwines dream, fiction, and reality, liquefying one into the other.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Sextant - Pisces (2016)
Twelve full moons. Twelve women. Twelve landscapes.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Medusa's Ankles (2018)
A classics professor finds herself enticed by a Matisse print and becomes enamored with its owner, hairdresser Lucian.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Know Thyself (2014)
A gay man loses his partner. We hear his deepest thoughts as he walks through the woods of Mohonk; this internal voice is punctuated by graphic glimpses of new grief, interruptive and savage. Gradually the man explores his feelings and the landscape together, almost unconsciously allowing nature to infiltrate his being. He finds a hill, a horizon, a viewpoint - no conclusion but perhaps possibility along with perspective.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Like Rosewater and something else?
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Rosewater?
The closest matches to Rosewater are The Human Voice (2020), Helen (2009) and The Safety of Objects (2002). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Rosewater?
Start with The Human Voice (2020), the closest match to Rosewater.
What is the highest-rated movie like Rosewater?
The Human Voice (2020), rated 6.7/10 by 264 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Rosewater?
At Night (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Rosewater?
Yes: The Human Voice (2020), Helen (2009) and The Safety of Objects (2002).
How are movies similar to Rosewater chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Rosewater, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.