Movies like Malena (2000)
The best movies like Malena (2000) are The Unknown Woman (2006), The Raffle (1991) and Mamma Roma (1962). If Malena hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedInvestigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)8.2/10 from 915 votes
- NewestThings We Don't Say (2026)Released 2026
- In ItalianThe Unknown Woman (2006)Also in Italian
The Unknown Woman (2006)
A Ukrainian woman named Irena calculatedly insinuates herself into the lives of a young, affluent Italian family. Stopping at nothing to become the couple's trusted maid and the beloved nanny to their fragile young daughter, Irena risks everything in her quest to uncover the truth about the family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisMamma Roma (1962)
After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTwo Women (1960)
A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTitus (1999)
Titus Andronicus returns from the wars and sees his sons and daughters taken from him, one by one. Shakespeare's goriest and earliest tragedy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
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 · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Opportunity knocks in the form of a wealthy U.S. shipbuilder who hires Tom to travel to Italy to bring back his playboy son, Dickie. Ripley worms his way into the idyllic lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, plunging into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Stolen Children (1992)
Antonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing Rosetta (11 years old) to work as a prostitute. First the relation between Antonio and the children is tough, but it relaxes so they become temporary friends.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSatyricon (1969)
After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDream Lover (1994)
Not long after they cross paths at an art gallery, architect Ray Reardon and hypnotically sensual Lena are married with children. But as strange incidents occur, Ray begins to realize he may not really know the woman he married.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThings We Don't Say (2026)
Carlo and Elisa are a successful couple. He’s a university professor and writer facing a creative block; she’s a brilliant, sharp-witted journalist, known for her internationally published editorials. They live in Rome, moving between accomplishments and routine, affection and something that might be fading. In search of new energy, they travel to Morocco with their lifelong friends, Anna and Paolo, and their thirteen-year-old daughter Vittoria—bright, curious, a little eccentric. Tensions soon rise.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHouse of Gucci (2021)
When Patrizia Reggiani, an outsider from humble beginnings, marries into the Gucci family, her unbridled ambition begins to unravel the family legacy and triggers a reckless spiral of betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately… murder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe American (2010)
Dispatched to a small Italian town to await further orders, assassin Jack embarks on a double life that may be more relaxing than is good for him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInvestigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)
Rome, Italy. After committing a heinous crime, a senior police officer exposes evidence incriminating him because his moral commitment prevents him from circumventing the law and the social order it protects.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLoro 1 (2018)
"Loro", in two parts, is a period movie that chronicles, as a fiction story, events likely happened in Italy (or even made up) between 2006 and 2010. "Loro" wants to suggest in portraits and glimps, through a composite constellation of characters, a moment in history, now definitively ended, which can be described in a very summary picture of the events as amoral, decadent but extraordinarily alive. Additionally, "Loro" wishes to tell the story of some Italians, fresh and ancient people at the same time: souls from a modern imaginary Purgatory who, moved by heterogeneous intents like ambition, admiration, affection, curiosity, personal interests, establish to try and orbit around the walking Paradise that is the man named Silvio Berlusconi.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThou Shalt Not Hate (2020)
Simone Segre, a renowned surgeon of Jewish origins, lives in a city in the north-east of Italy. A quiet life, an elegant apartment and no connection with his past. One day he finds himself assisting a man victim of a hit and run accident. But when he discovers a nazi tattoo on his chest, Simone abandons him to his destiny. Filled with guilt, he ends up tracing the man’s family: Marica, the eldest daughter; Marcello, a teenager plagued with racial hate; and little Paolo. The night will come when Marica knocks at Simone’s door and unknowingly asks for payback.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Hand of God (2021)
In 1980s Naples, an awkward teen struggling to find his place experiences heartbreak and liberation after he's inadvertently saved from a freak accident by football legend Diego Maradona.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMiracle at St. Anna (2008)
Miracle at St. Anna chronicles the story of four American soldiers who are members of the all-black 92nd "Buffalo Soldier" Division stationed in Tuscany, Italy during World War II.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRogue Agent (2022)
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Butcher (1998)
Alina is a brilliant and enterprising woman who runs a successful art gallery in Palermo. Her husband Daniele, a successful orchestra conductor, cultured and intelligent, is not a regular presence. One day, while accompanying Daniele to the airport, Alina feels a sense of emptiness. She will try to fill it with a butcher who is always joking and full of erotic allusions and who arouses a strong attraction in her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDRAWN OUT (2025)
On the eve of leaving for college, Randy discovers that the childhood drawings she's long forgotten are not quite ready to let her go. When her imaginary friends come to life, they pull her into a surreal final adventure through her own home, one that forces her to confront buried memories, unresolved guilt, and the fear she's been avoiding. As fantasy and reality collide, Randy must decide whether to run from her past or face it head-on, learning that growing up doesn't mean leaving every part of yourself behind.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
About You I Don't Know (2022)
One day, college student Keiko, who is looking for a job, learns that the person she had feelings for has committed suicide. Keiko wonders if she was the cause of this. Classmate Mami, through her boyfriend Takuya, tries to introduce Keiko to Kazuo, a member of Takuya's theater company. However, Keiko, who met Takuya, has a special feeling for him. Miyata, a young man who seems to be hiding in the darkness of everyday life, meets Keiko one day.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Eagle Rock (2019)
In the early 1970s, a young woman in prison for murder reflects on what led her to the crime, the cult she was a part of, and her relationship with its leader.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Black Book (2006)
Israel, 1956: Jewish teacher Rachel Stein rather unexpectedly meets an old friend at the kibbutz. It brings back memories of her experiences in the Netherlands during the war, memories of betrayal. In September 1944, Rachel's hiding place is bombed by Allied troops; she makes contact with a resistance member and joins a group of Jews to be smuggled across the Biesbosch to the freed South Netherlands. Only Rachel escapes a massacre by patrol Germans, and is rescued by a resistance group under the leadership of Gerben Kuipers, whose son is captured trying to smuggle weapons. Kuipers asks Rachel to seduce SS-hauptsturmführer Ludwig Müntze, a mission that she will soon learn that the boat attack wasn't a coincidence.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSee You (2024)
After his suicide, a teen ghost contacts his classmate through sign language, revealing the queer love and pain they were never allowed to voice.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Blue Crush (2002)
Nothing gets between Anne Marie and her board. Living in a beach shack with three roommates, she is up before dawn every morning to conquer the waves and count the days until the Pipe Masters competition. Having transplanted herself to Hawaii with no one's blessing but her own, Anne Marie finds all she needs in the adrenaline-charged surf scene - until pro quarterback Matt Tollman comes along...
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBeautiful Girls (1996)
During a snowy winter in the small fictional town of Knight's Ridge, Massachusetts, a group of lifelong buddies hang out, drink and struggle to connect with the women who affect their decisions, dreams and desires.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMaedeli the Breach (1979)
While his parents are away, a little city boy goes to the countryside. This stay will be one of initiations and forbidden games in the company of Maedeli, a little girl who is not afraid.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Intimacies of a Prostitute (1974)
A woman from the country moves into to the big city of Buenos Aires to start a new life. Things are not going very easy and she soon finds herself working as a prostitute.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Malena?
The closest matches to Malena are The Unknown Woman (2006), The Raffle (1991) and Mamma Roma (1962). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Malena?
Start with The Unknown Woman (2006), the closest match to Malena.
What is the highest-rated movie like Malena?
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), rated 8.2/10 by 915 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Malena?
Things We Don't Say (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Italian movies like Malena?
Yes: The Unknown Woman (2006), The Raffle (1991) and Mamma Roma (1962).
How are movies similar to Malena chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Malena, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.