Movies like The Girl in the Lay-by (2000)
The best movies like The Girl in the Lay-by (2000) are Sunset Song (2015), Avatar: Creating the World of Pandora (2010) and Macbeth (2015). If The Girl in the Lay-by hooked you, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Best of Me (2014)7.5/10 from 2,775 votes
- NewestHimalayan Road: A New Frontier (2025)Released 2025
Sunset Song (2015)
The daughter of a Scottish farmer comes of age in the early 1900s.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAvatar: Creating the World of Pandora (2010)
The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMacbeth (2015)
Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Outrun (2024)
Fresh out of rehab, Rona returns to the Orkney Islands—a place both wild and beautiful, right off the Scottish coast. Now 29 and after more than a decade of living life on the edge in London, where she both found and lost love, Rona attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. As she reconnects with the dramatic landscape where she grew up, memories of her traumatic childhood merge with more recent challenging events that have set her on the path to recovery.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlicka (2006)
Katy McLaughlin desires to work on her family's mountainside horse ranch, although her father insists she finish boarding school. Katy finds a mustang in the hills near her ranch. The headstrong 16 year old then sets her mind to tame a mustang and prove to her father she can run the ranch. But when tragedy happens, it will take all the love and strength the family can muster to restore hope.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRob Roy (1995)
In the highlands of Scotland in the 1700s, Rob Roy tries to lead his small town to a better future, by borrowing money from the local nobility to buy cattle to herd to market. When the money is stolen, Rob is forced into a Robin Hood lifestyle to defend his family and honour.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Crystal Calls - Making The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (2019)
Go behind the scenes with stars, puppeteers and creators as they bring Jim Henson's magical world of Thra back to life in a sweeping fantasy series.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIt (1927)
A flapper shopgirl woos her rich boss with animal magnetism -- the captivating personal quality otherwise known as "it."
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAn Autumn Romance (2021)
When librarian Taylor Harris suddenly loses her job, she decides to visit her brother in a small town in Montana. There, she gets involved in the fight to help save her brother's hotel from tycoon Joel Sheenan, who wants to renovate it.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCall of the Wild (2009)
Self-centered and status-conscious, ten year old Ryann Hale journeys to Montana to visit her down-to-earth grandpa, Bill Hale. Ryann bonds with a wolf-dog, Buck, and schemes to save him from a cruel dogsledder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like this13 Going on 30 (2004)
After total humiliation at her thirteenth birthday party, Jenna Rink wants to just hide until she's thirty. Thanks to some magic wishing dust, Jenna's prayer has been answered. With a knockout body, a fabulous wardrobe, an athlete boyfriend, a dream job, and superstar friends, this can't be a better life. But soon Jenna realizes that adult life isn’t as easy as she hoped for.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThoroughly Modern Millie (1967)
Millie Dillmount, a fearless young lady fresh from Salina, Kansas, determined to experience Life, sets out to see the world in the rip-roaring Twenties. With high spirits and wearing one of those new high hemlines, she arrives in New York to test the "modern" ideas she had been reading about back in Kansas: "I've taken the girl out of Kansas. Now I have to take Kansas out of the girl!"
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Castle for Christmas (2021)
To escape a scandal, a bestselling author journeys to Scotland, where she falls in love with a castle -- and faces off with the grumpy duke who owns it.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
A timid magazine photo manager who lives life vicariously through daydreams embarks on a true-life adventure when a negative goes missing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Best of Me (2014)
A pair of former high school sweethearts reunite after many years when they return to visit their small hometown.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCalibre (2018)
Two lifelong friends head up to an isolated Scottish Highlands village for a weekend hunting trip that descends into a never-ending nightmare as they attempt to cover up a horrific hunting accident.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlicka 2 (2010)
Carrie is a big-city teenager whose life is turned upside down when she moves to a horse ranch in Wyoming to live with her father. But everything changes when Carrie meets Flicka, a wild, jet-black mustang who's just as free-spirited and strong-willed as Carrie. The two form a special bond and Carrie opens her heart to her father and a handsome, local boy, but when a jealous rival puts Flicka's life in jeopardy, Carrie must do whatever it takes to save her best friend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHands of Stone (2016)
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRatcatcher (1999)
James Gillespie is 12 years old. The world he knew is changing. Haunted by a secret, he has become a stranger in his own family. He is drawn to the canal where he creates a world of his own. He finds an awkward tenderness with Margaret Anne, a vulnerable 14 year old expressing a need for love in all the wrong ways, and befriends Kenny, who possesses an unusual innocence in spite of the harsh surroundings.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Lot Like Love (2005)
On a flight from Los Angeles to New York, Oliver and Emily make a connection, only to decide that they are poorly suited to be together. Over the next seven years, however, they are reunited time and time again, they go from being acquaintances to close friends to... lovers?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHimalayan Road: A New Frontier (2025)
Once free to farm in the most remote part of the Himalayas, today the people labor on the ambitious road to Zanskar, which will soon connect both sides of their valley. Their days are devoted to breaking rocks with sledgehammers, dynamiting sections of cliffs and smoothing piles of sand and gravel by hand. Along with impoverished laborers from India, they toil endlessly to complete this colossal project designed to modernize the region, and it comes at a huge cost. They’ve already relinquished much of their land and herds to focus on the project, and their lives are filled with uncertainty. They worry about their future when the road is finally finished, and when the world can easily access their region. There will be unexpected freedom and opportunities to live in greater comfort… but the harmonious and delicate balance they’ve achieved over generations - despite the extreme climate - will be lost.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
The Young Jacobites (1960)
The story of Highland children who help Bonnie Prince Charlie to escape to France after the battle of Culloden. Serial in 8 episodes: 1. Journey into the past (15mins; 1367 feet) 2. The traitor (16mins; 1423 feet) 3. The league in action (14mins; 1290 feet) 4. The ambush (15mins; 1385 feet) 5. The prince must be warned (14mins; 1292 feet) 6. The rescue (17mins; 1542 feet) 7. The enemy closes in (15mins; 1322 feet) 8. Over the threshold (20 mins; 1782 feet)
Why it matches: Similar story and style
The Master of Ballantrae (1953)
Scottish highlander Jamie Durie falls into a life of piracy after joining the failed rebellion of Bonnie Prince Charlie against the British crown.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
The Seasons (1975)
The last collaboration of Artavazd Peleshian and cinematographer Mikhail Vartanov is a film-essay about Armenia's shepherds, about the contradiction and the harmony between man and nature, scored to Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLittle Bone Lodge (2023)
During a stormy night in the Scottish Highlands, two criminal brothers on the run seek refuge in a desolate farmhouse. But after taking the resident family captive, they find the house holds even darker secrets of its own.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShell (2013)
Abandoned by her mother when she was a child, Shell has stayed to take care of her dying father but now feels trapped within the beautiful but desolate landscape that surrounds her. With only her routine of running the decaying petrol station, taking care of her father, and spending afternoons in her bedroom with a local mechanic, life is passing Shell by with every passing truck that rattles her walls. One day a salesman stops to re-fuel and offers Shell a taste of the outside world that takes her closer than ever to the edge of the road and her desire to escape.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGet Duked! (2019)
An anarchic, hip-hop inspired comedy that follows four city boys on a wilderness trek as they try to escape a mysterious huntsman.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOzogoche (2023)
Cuviví is the Ecuadorean indigenous name for the upland sandpiper, a wading bird that has special significance for the communities living around the Ozogoche lakes in the middle of the Andes. Each year, these birds migrate south from North America. Around September they pass the Ozogoche lakes, where large numbers then “commit suicide,” plunging from great heights into the ice-cold water. A girl lives near the lake. Her uncle lives in the US, and she might be heading there herself. In the meantime, she awaits the arrival of the cuvivís, few of which have appeared in recent years. The lakes are drying up.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Bonnie Prince Charlie (1923)
In the Jacobite Rising of 1745, the Young Pretender Bonnie Prince Charlie leads an insurrection to overthrow the Protestant House of Hanover and restore his family, the Catholic branch of the House of Stuart, to the British throne.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
A Hand Beneath the Snow (2022)
Fabian, a fisherman from the beaches of northern Mexico, spends his days working on a boat under the sun, but his life takes a turn when terrible news arrive.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Like The Girl in the Lay-by and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Girl in the Lay-by?
The closest matches to The Girl in the Lay-by are Sunset Song (2015), Avatar: Creating the World of Pandora (2010) and Macbeth (2015). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Girl in the Lay-by?
Start with Sunset Song (2015), the closest match to The Girl in the Lay-by.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Girl in the Lay-by?
The Best of Me (2014), rated 7.5/10 by 2,775 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Girl in the Lay-by?
Himalayan Road: A New Frontier (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Girl in the Lay-by?
Yes: Sunset Song (2015), Avatar: Creating the World of Pandora (2010) and Macbeth (2015).
How are movies similar to The Girl in the Lay-by chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Girl in the Lay-by, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.