Movies like The Deserter (2025)
The best movies like The Deserter (2025) are Rose (2026), Battle of the Bulge (1965) and The Scarlet and the Black (1983). If The Deserter hooked you with its drama and history, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedMemoirs of a Geisha (2005)7.6/10 from 3,495 votes
- NewestRose (2026)Released 2026
- In GermanRose (2026)Also in German
Rose (2026)
In the early 17th century, a soldier arrives at an isolated Protestant village in Germany claiming to be the heir to an abandoned farmstead. Even though he proves to be a good man, the villagers’ suspicions about his identity grow and they force a reckoning.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBattle of the Bulge (1965)
In the winter of 1944, the Allied Armies stand ready to invade Germany at the coming of a New Year. To prevent it, Hitler orders an all-out offensive to re-take French territory and capture the major port city of Antwerp.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Scarlet and the Black (1983)
Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the Nazis decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOverlord (1975)
During World War II, a young man is called up and, with an increasing sense of foreboding, undertakes his army training ready for D-Day, June 6th, 1944.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHitler: The Last Ten Days (1973)
Hitler: The Last Ten Days takes us into the depths of der Furher’s Berlin bunker during his final days. Based on the book by Gerhard Boldt, it provides a bleak look at the goings-on within, and without.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin (2024)
As the world teeters on the brink of annihilation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer joins a deadly plot to assassinate Hitler, risking his faith and fate to save millions of Jews from genocide.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both history & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Monuments Men (2014)
Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on seven over-the-hill, out-of-shape museum directors, artists, architects, curators, and art historians who went to the front lines of WWII to rescue the world’s artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their rightful owners. With the art hidden behind enemy lines, how could these guys hope to succeed?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPalestine 36 (2025)
Year 1936. As villages across Palestine rise against British colonial rule, Yusuf drifts between his rural home and the restless energy of Jerusalem, longing for a future beyond the growing unrest. But history is relentless. With rising numbers of Jewish immigrants escaping antisemitism in Europe and some arriving with nefarious Zionist-colonial ambitions, and the Palestinian population uniting in the largest and longest uprising against Britain’s 30-year dominion, all sides spiral towards inevitable collision in a decisive moment for the British Empire and the future of the entire region.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Zone of Interest (2023)
The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGod on Trial (2008)
In the Jewish tradition of arguing with God, Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz decide to put God on Trial.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both history & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Boy in the Woods (2023)
The remarkable true-life survival story of a Jewish boy hiding and being hunted in the forests of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, based on Maxwell Smart's memoir.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBattleground (1949)
Members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division are fighting for their country amidst the rugged terrain of Bastogne, Belgium, in December 1944. Holley and his American compatriots have already seen one of their own, Roderigues, perish under enemy fire. The men try to rebuff another series of Nazi attacks, but what they really need is a change in the weather. Without clear skies, they'll never get the air support they need.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Bunker (1981)
Dramatization depicting the events surrounding Adolf Hitler's last weeks in and around his underground bunker in Berlin before and during the battle for the city.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Guns of Navarone (1961)
A team of allied saboteurs are assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEscape to Victory (1981)
A group of POWs in a German prison camp during World War II play the German National Soccer Team in this powerful film depicting the role of prisoners during wartime.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTaking Sides (2002)
One of the most spectacular and renowned conductors of the 1930s, Wilhelm Furtwangler's reputation rivaled that of Toscanini's. After the war, he was investigated as part of the Allies' de-Nazification programme. In the bombed-out Berlin of the immediate post-war period, the Allies slowly bring law and order to bear on an occupied Germany. An American major is given the Furtwangler file, and is told to find everything he can and to prosecute the man ruthlessly. Tough and hard-nosed, Major Steve Arnold sets out to investigate a world of which he knows nothing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAmrum (2025)
On Amrum Island in spring 1945, twelve-year-old Nanning hunts seals, fishes at night, and works the fields to help feed his family. When the war ends, his mother sinks into depression, and he must navigate new conflicts while struggling to find his own path.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUprising (2001)
In the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, Jews rise against the Nazis.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMunich - The Edge of War (2021)
At the tense 1938 Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRosenstrasse (2003)
When Ruth's husband dies in New York, in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house - Ruth's cousin - with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lena who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhat the War Meant (2008)
The drama stars Beat Takeshi as General Hideki Tojo, who served as Prime Minister of Japan during World War II and was later executed as a war criminal. The story's theme is said to be a look at how the Pacific War began, focusing mostly on the three month period between the Imperial Conference (Gozen Kaigi) on September 6, 1941, and the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & war
Days of Glory (2006)
1943. They have never stepped foot on French soil but because France was at war, Said, Abdelkader, Messaoud and Yassir enlist in the French Army, along with 130,000 other “indigenous” soldiers, to liberate the “fatherland” from the Nazi enemy. Heroes that history has forgotten...
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMemoirs of a Geisha (2005)
In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEcho on the Seashore (1966)
World War II. Patriot Jonuz Bruga has troubles with his young son, Selim, who leads an immoral lifestyle and does not support the anti-fascist war, while his brothers fight in the city's guerrilla units.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both war & drama
The Ambush (1968)
A film set during World War II - a small partisan unit must ambush a German convoy.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both war & drama
Transit (2006)
A group of American pilots from Alaska ferry Airacobra fighter planes across the ocean on Lend-lease. The orderly course of life is disrupted when it becomes clear that the American pilots are attractive and charming young women. The feelings of the Russian young men collide into barriers of culture and language resulting in a host of awkward, funny, and sometimes tragic situations.It is the story of Russians, Americans, and natives of the Far North. It is the story of man and woman in war. Love and death are squeezed between the hills as human fates are destroyed and born.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & war
The Dream (1966)
In the whirlpool of WW2, two peaceful towns that have already tasted peace are once again attacked by the Germans. Casualties are high, but the dream of a boy and a girl about their liberated towns cannot be destroyed.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both war & drama
The Girl Who Wore Freedom (2021)
Discover the untold stories of D-Day from the men, women and children who lived through German occupation and Allied liberation of Normandy, France. Powerful and deeply personal, THE GIRL WHO WORE FREEDOM tells the stories of an America that lived its values, instilling pride in a country that's in danger of becoming a relic of the past.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both history & war
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005)
In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Deserter?
The closest matches to The Deserter are Rose (2026), Battle of the Bulge (1965) and The Scarlet and the Black (1983). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Deserter?
Start with Rose (2026), the closest match to The Deserter.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Deserter?
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), rated 7.6/10 by 3,495 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Deserter?
Rose (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there German movies like The Deserter?
Yes: Rose (2026), Amrum (2025) and Rosenstrasse (2003).
How are movies similar to The Deserter chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Deserter, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.