Movies like Adoption (1988)
The best movies like Adoption (1988) are Mother and Child (2009), Brand Upon the Brain! (2007) and The Ties That Bind Us (2025). If Adoption hooked you, these 20 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Adoption
Quick picks
- Highest ratedA Dog's Journey (2019)8.1/10 from 1,668 votes
- NewestDoing Life (2026)Released 2026
- In FrenchThe Ties That Bind Us (2025)Also in French
Mother and Child (2009)
The lives of three women have a commonality: adoption. Karen is a physical therapist who regrets that, as a teenager, she gave up her daughter for adoption. Elizabeth was an adopted child and is now a successful lawyer, but her personal life lacks warmth. Lucy and her husband have failed to conceive and now hope to adopt a baby to make their family complete.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBrand Upon the Brain! (2007)
After returning home to his long-estranged mother upon a request from her deathbed, a man raised by his parents in an orphanage has to confront the childhood memories that have long haunted him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Ties That Bind Us (2025)
A young single father trying to find the strength to love. A feminist librarian, single by conviction, who’s decided that she won’t be a mother. A six-year-old child trying to find a place in a new family structure. By revealing their aspirations, their fears, their choices, Carine Tardieu depicts different ways in which humans create families.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThree Identical Strangers (2018)
New York, 1980. Three complete strangers accidentally discover that they're identical triplets, separated at birth. The 19-year-olds' joyous reunion catapults them to international fame, but also unlocks an extraordinary and disturbing secret that goes beyond their own lives – and could transform our understanding of human nature forever.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJoy Ride (2023)
When Audrey's business trip to Asia goes sideways, she enlists the aid of Lolo, her irreverent, childhood best friend who also happens to be a hot mess; Kat, her college friend turned Chinese soap star; and Deadeye, Lolo's eccentric cousin. Their no-holds-barred, epic experience becomes a journey of bonding, friendship, belonging, and wild debauchery that reveals the universal truth of what it means to know and love who you are.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Orphans (2025)
Gab and Driss, childhood friends on bad terms since they left the orphanage, now have opposite lives - one is a cop with the IGPN, the other a fixer for thugs. When their first love dies in a suspicious accident, her 17-year-old daughter, Leïla, takes Gab's gun and sets off on the trail of a powerful organization willing to do anything to cover the case up. Forced to team up, the orphans must stop her before she crosses a line she can't return from...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDoing Life (2026)
A single mother and an incarcerated man forge an unlikely bond through heartfelt letters, unlocking a door to redemption, hope and love against all odds.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisInvader Zim: Enter the Florpus (2019)
ZIM discovers his almighty leaders never had any intention of coming to Earth and he loses confidence in himself for the first time in his life, which is the big break his human nemesis, Dib has been waiting for.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014)
Hollywood veteran Bing Russell creates the only independent baseball team in the country—alarming the baseball establishment and sparking the meteoric rise of the 1970s Portland Mavericks.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisS4: The Bob Lazar Story (2026)
Over 35 years after Bob Lazar's revelations, this documentary exposes secrets of a facility the government still denies. Featuring Lazar's testimony, recreations, and new evidence, it reopens a case that continues to spark global curiosity
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisSecond Best (1994)
The difficult relationship between a british postal officer and his adoptive son.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhite Oleander (2002)
A teenager journeys through a series of foster homes after her mother goes to prison for committing a crime of passion.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAkeelah and the Bee (2006)
11-year-old Akeelah Anderson has a way with words. After winning her schoolwide spelling bee, she decides to enter the competition, despite her classmates' derision and the antipathy of her mother Tanya. Thanks to the efforts of her teacher Dr. Larabee, she reaches the finals. As she gets to know her fellow competitors, Akeelah realizes that coming first isn't everything in life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisChestnut: Hero of Central Park (2004)
Ray and Sal, two orphaned sisters, adopt and hide a Great Dane puppy from their two adopted parents living in a luxury downtown New York apartment that expressely forbids dogs.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Little Princess (2011)
Young Violetta and her mother Hannah are a peculiar couple. Ten-year-old Violetta lives a quiet life with her grandmother, while her mother Hannah is an unpredictable photographer who lives off of the generosity of others. When Hannah forces her daughter to pose as a model, Violetta finds her life with her loving grandmother turned upside down.The resulting pictures quickly become a sensation for the trendy 70's Paris art scene, and Violetta finds herself caught in between her new stature as an art muse and her dull childhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMikey (1992)
Mikey just needs a good stable home. He's bounced from foster home to foster home his whole life. He finally lands himself with a new loving family, but their perfect little child is not what he appears to be. His previous caretakers all died of mysterious "accidents" that weren't really accidents at all. Mikey is a cold blooded killer, and it doesn't take long for him to aim his sights on his new adoptive family and anyone else who stands in his way.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies 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
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlue Bayou (2021)
As a Korean-American man raised in the Louisiana bayou works hard to make a life for his family, he must confront the ghosts of his past as he discovers that he could be deported from the only country he has ever called home.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Dog's Journey (2019)
A dog finds the meaning of his own existence through the lives of the humans he meets.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTwinsters (2015)
Adopted from South Korea, raised on different continents & connected through social media, Samantha & Anaïs believe that they are twin sisters separated at birth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like this
Like Adoption and something else?
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Adoption?
The closest matches to Adoption are Mother and Child (2009), Brand Upon the Brain! (2007) and The Ties That Bind Us (2025). Below are 17 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Adoption?
Start with Mother and Child (2009), the closest match to Adoption.
What is the highest-rated movie like Adoption?
A Dog's Journey (2019), rated 8.1/10 by 1,668 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Adoption?
Doing Life (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like Adoption?
Yes: The Ties That Bind Us (2025), The Orphans (2025) and My Little Princess (2011).
How are movies similar to Adoption chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Adoption, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.