Movies like Sweet Sixteen (2023)
The best movies like Sweet Sixteen (2023) are And Their Children After Them (2024), Hounddog (2008) and Gracie (2007). If Sweet Sixteen hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedBreathe (2014)7.1/10 from 492 votes
- NewestPerumahan Laddaland (2026)Released 2026
- In FrenchAnd Their Children After Them (2024)Also in French
And Their Children After Them (2024)
In eastern France, two teenage cousins have the summer of their lives when they paddle a purloined canoe to the far shore of a lake.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 thisGracie (2007)
A teenager faces an uphill battle when she fights to give women the opportunity to play competitive soccer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977)
A disturbed and institutionalized 16-year-old girl struggles between fantasy and reality.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisTeen Spirit (2019)
A shy teenager living on the Isle of Wight dreams of pop stardom. With the help of an unlikely mentor, she enters a singing competition that will test her integrity, talent, and ambition.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHala (2019)
Seventeen-year-old Pakistani American teenager Hala struggles to balance desire with her family, cultural, and religious obligations. As she comes into her own, she grapples with a secret that threatens to unravel her family.
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 thisYoung Mothers (2025)
Housed in a shelter for young mothers, Jessica, Perla, Julia, Ariane, and Naïma, all of whom have grown up in difficult circumstances, struggle to obtain a better life for themselves and their children.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHow to Have Sex (2023)
Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday—drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMom at Sixteen (2005)
Pregnant sixteen year old Jacey's well-meaning mother forces her to keep the birth a secret and decides to raise the baby as her own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPariah (2011)
A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll These Small Moments (2019)
A teenage boy's infatuation with a woman he sees on the bus further complicates his already tumultuous adolescence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Pregnancy Project (2012)
The Pregnancy project tells the real story of Gaby Rodriguez, a seventeen-year-old who attended a Washington state high-school and made her senior school project the treatment of pregnant teenagers by pretending to be pregnant.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHomeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story (2003)
Based on a true story. Liz Murray is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted parents. Liz becomes homeless at 15 and after a tragedy comes upon her, she begins her work to finish high school.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIron Jawed Angels (2004)
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBreathe (2014)
Charlie, a 17-year-old girl tortured by doubt, is thrilled when she becomes friends with Sarah, but when Sarah tires of Charlie and looks for a new friend, their relationship takes an ominous turn.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThirteen (2003)
When 13-year-old Tracy befriends Evie, the most popular girl in school, her life is turned upside down as Evie introduces her to a world of sex, drugs, and money. But it isn’t long before Tracy’s new lifestyle begins to take a heavy toll on her and her family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHeaven Will Wait (2016)
Mélanie, 16 years old, lives with her mother. She likes going to school, her friends, playing the cello, and she wants to change the world. But when she meets a boy on the Internet and falls in love with him, her world changes as she is gradually recruited by Daesh. Sonia is 17 years old, and she almost did something irrevocable to “guarantee” her family a place in paradise. These teenage girls might be called Anaïs, Manon or Leila, and one day they all might go some way down the recruitment process. But can they ever come back from it?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Girl in the Book (2015)
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies 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 thisAi wa Tanken (Love is a Dagger) (2025)
Amelia and Wes have had a falling out in Japan, a foreign land neither of them are accustomed to. While doing some soul-searching on her own, Amelia begins to notice that she's being stalked by a strange man. Wes pleads with her to come back for her own safety - but Amelia's about to find that sometimes the most familiar faces are the most misgiving.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
What's Up with Cinta? (2002)
A popular high school girl strains her relationship with her close-knit clique when she begins falling for a reclusive, lower-class schoolmate.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPurple Stain (2026)
The film follows an architecture graduate as she reflects on the meaning of home and the labor of making home. Architecture is framed beyond the physical built object: as a second skin that stretches and reconfigures itself as she, too, stretches to be in a new place. The film moves through themes of migration, womanhood, and what it means to be an architect without building, still making architecture constantly, just through different forms.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Alie's Home (2025)
Alie, the youngest and only daughter among five siblings, suffers relentless abuse from her father and siblings—blamed for their mother's death—when all she longs for is a bit of compassion and acceptance from her family.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
A group of Southern-California high school students ignore their studies in favor of indulging in their teenage distractions.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPerumahan Laddaland (2026)
A devoted father’s dream of providing a better life for his family turns into a living nightmare when their newly purchased suburban home becomes the target of escalating supernatural terror and dark neighborhood secrets.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Miguelito (1985)
A young boy discovers his politician father's corruption and cruelty as he discovers his real mother is a victim of his own father's immorality and violence.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
It Was You (TBA)
Lauren and her friends gather for a carefree night of drinking and playing with a spirit board, but when the game takes a dark turn and buried secrets surface - friendships unravel and the line between truth and belief begins to blur.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Lady Parts (2026)
Based on a true story, a young woman undergoes a vulvar vestibulectomy with the help of her loving but overbearing parents, learning through recovery to embrace open conversations about sexual health and advocate for herself in every aspect of her life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Touch Grass (2025)
Chronically online teenage boys, nerdy Sam and his cocky best friend Aaron, lock away their phones and embark on an epic quest to touch grass in an attempt to impress the intimidatingly beautiful and seemingly perfect influencer, Lila.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Sweet Sixteen?
The closest matches to Sweet Sixteen are And Their Children After Them (2024), Hounddog (2008) and Gracie (2007). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Sweet Sixteen?
Start with And Their Children After Them (2024), the closest match to Sweet Sixteen.
What is the highest-rated movie like Sweet Sixteen?
Breathe (2014), rated 7.1/10 by 492 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Sweet Sixteen?
Perumahan Laddaland (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like Sweet Sixteen?
Yes: And Their Children After Them (2024), Young Mothers (2025) and Breathe (2014).
How are movies similar to Sweet Sixteen chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Sweet Sixteen, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.