Movies like Happiness Costs Nothing (2003)
The best movies like Happiness Costs Nothing (2003) are On My Skin (2018), Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Perfect Strangers (2016). If Happiness Costs Nothing hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedBicycle Thieves (1948)8.2/10 from 2,800 votes
- NewestOmaha (2025)Released 2025
- In ItalianOn My Skin (2018)Also in Italian
On My Skin (2018)
The incredible true story behind the most controversial Italian court cases in recent years. Stefano Cucchi was arrested for a minor crime and mysteriously found dead during his detention. In one week's time, a family is changed forever.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBicycle Thieves (1948)
Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisPerfect Strangers (2016)
During a dinner, a group of friends decide to share whatever message or phone call they will receive during the evening, with unforeseen consequences.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGigi & Nate (2022)
A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOmaha (2025)
A young girl and her brother are awoken by their father and loaded into the car on an early morning in 2008. As they road trip across the American West, she discovers the truth about their seemingly spontaneous journey.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEverybody's Fine (1990)
Matteo Scuro is a retired Sicilian bureaucrat, a widower with five children, all of whom live on the mainland and hold responsible jobs. He decides to surprise each with a visit and finds none as he imagined.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFinally Dawn (2024)
A young Roman woman during the 1950s is on the verge of becoming engaged to a man. She goes to Cinecittà to do an audition as an extra and is thrust into this almost infinite night during which she discovers herself.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCall Me Crazy: A Five Film (2013)
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHuman Capital (2013)
The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Last Bus (2021)
Widower Tom, on the recent passing of his wife Mary, uses his free bus pass to travel the length of Britain from John O'Groats in Caithness to Land's End in Cornwall, their shared birthplace, using only local buses. It's an incident-fuelled nostalgia trip and his encounters with local people make him a media phenomenon. Tom is totally unaware and to his surprise on arrival at Land’s End he’s greeted as a celebrity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThere Is a Light (2017)
Paolo is a sceptical 30-year-old who works unwillingly as a sales clerk in a Turin department store. Mia is a back-up singer in a band and lives her life haphazardly, which leads her to being practically homeless. One night, they bump into each other by chance, in a gay club in Turin. It will be the beginning of an emotional adventure and a journey across the country looking for the father of Mia’s baby.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Sound of Silence (2019)
A successful "house tuner" in New York City, who calibrates the sound in people's homes in order to adjust their moods, meets a client with a problem he can't solve.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisFive Seconds (2025)
Adriano is a middle-aged man living in a dilapidated villa in Tuscany, when a group of young idealistic students arrives to restore the villa's vineyards.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Sense of an Ending (2017)
A man becomes haunted by his past and is presented with a mysterious legacy that causes him to re-think his current situation in life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Raffle (1991)
Struggling with a financial crisis, a good-looking widow decides to put herself up for grabs. However, going through with it becomes almost impossible with a new love and the legal system thrown into the mix.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPaternal Leave (2025)
Torn between longing and anger, 15-year-old Leo travels to the coast of northern Italy to meet her biological father. The two are complete strangers to each other. They struggle to find truth, affinity, love and the courage to face themselves.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Proud Rebel (1958)
Searching for a doctor who can help him get his son to speak again--the boy hadn't uttered a word since he saw his mother die in the fire that burned down the family home--a Confederate veteran finds himself facing a 30-day jail sentence when he's unfairly accused of starting a brawl in a small town. A local woman pays his fine, providing that he works it off on her ranch. He soon finds himself involved in the woman's struggle to keep her ranch from a local landowner who wants it--and whose sons were responsible for the man being framed for the fight.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTigertail (2020)
A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTenderness (2017)
Back from the hospital where he has been treated after a heart attack, Lorenzo is on his way upstairs to his top-floor apartment in Naples when he meets Michela. The charming young woman, who has just moved to the facing apartment, has forgotten her keys and finds herself locked out. Cynical and grumpy, the retired lawyer who has been living estranged from the rest of the world, should normally leave her to her fate but he mellows under her spontaneous charm. He helps her, becomes friends not only with her but with her husband Fabio and their two children. For once, the self-declared misanthropist seems to be experiencing the long forgotten feeling of empathy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisObsession (1976)
A wealthy New Orleans businessman becomes obsessed with a young woman who resembles his late wife.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this21 Grams (2003)
Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré; Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife and mother of two girls; and Jack Jordan, a born-again ex-con, are brought together by a terrible accident that changes their lives.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisInherit the Wind (1960)
Schoolteacher Bertram Cates is arrested for teaching his students Darwin's theory of evolution. The case receives national attention and one of the newspaper reporters, E.K. Hornbeck, arranges to bring in renowned defense attorney and atheist Henry Drummond to defend Cates. The prosecutor, Matthew Brady is a former presidential candidate, famous evangelist, and old adversary of Drummond.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisReclaim Your Brain (2007)
Frustrated, because he is forced to produce bad TV-shows, a manager of a TV-station, enters the station and manipulates the ratings, to initiate a TV-revolution.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Sea Inside (2004)
Ramón Sampedro is a ship mechanic and part-time poet left a quadriplegic following a diving accident. Ramón fought for 30 years for the legal right to end his own life. He develops close relationships with his long-term lawyer Julia and his friend Rosa, who tries to convince him that his life is worth living. Despite his situation, Ramón manages to inspire those around him to live life to the fullest.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGolden Door (2006)
The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPrimal Fear (1996)
Defense attorney Martin Vail takes on jobs for money and prestige rather than any sense of the greater good. His latest case involves an altar boy, accused of brutally murdering the archbishop of Chicago. Vail finds himself up against his ex-pupil and ex-lover, but as the case progresses and the Church's dark secrets are revealed, Vail finds that what appeared a simple case takes on a darker, more dangerous aspect.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCape Fear (1991)
Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCrash (2005)
In post-Sept. 11 Los Angeles, tensions erupt when the lives of a Brentwood housewife, her district attorney husband, a Persian shopkeeper, two cops, a pair of carjackers and a Korean couple converge during a 36-hour period.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Time to Kill (1996)
A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the KKK.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAsk the Dust (2006)
Mexican beauty Camilla hopes to rise above her station by marrying a wealthy American. That is complicated by meeting Arturo Bandini, a first-generation Italian hoping to land a writing career and a blue-eyed blonde on his arm.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Happiness Costs Nothing?
The closest matches to Happiness Costs Nothing are On My Skin (2018), Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Perfect Strangers (2016). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Happiness Costs Nothing?
Start with On My Skin (2018), the closest match to Happiness Costs Nothing.
What is the highest-rated movie like Happiness Costs Nothing?
Bicycle Thieves (1948), rated 8.2/10 by 2,800 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Happiness Costs Nothing?
Omaha (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Italian movies like Happiness Costs Nothing?
Yes: On My Skin (2018), Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Perfect Strangers (2016).
How are movies similar to Happiness Costs Nothing chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Happiness Costs Nothing, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.