Movies like July Dust (1967)
The best movies like July Dust (1967) are The Stranger (2025), Notre Musique (2004) and Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962). If July Dust hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedInglourious Basterds (2009)8.2/10 from 25,141 votes
- NewestThe Stranger (2025)Released 2025
- In FrenchThe Stranger (2025)Also in French
The Stranger (2025)
Algiers, 1938. Meursault, a quiet and unassuming employee in his early thirties, attends his mother's funeral without shedding a tear. The next day, he begins a casual affair with Marie, a work colleague. He quickly slips back into his usual routine.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNotre Musique (2004)
A three-chapter (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise) meditation on the city of Sarajevo in the wake of the Bosnian war, on Palestine and Israel, and on war itself.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlue (1993)
Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIntimate Enemies (2007)
A drama following a French platoon during Algeria's war of independence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFar from Men (2015)
A French teacher in a small Algerian village during the Algerian War forms an unexpected bond with a dissident who is ordered to be turned in to the authorities.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEscape from Pretoria (2020)
South Africa, 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white political activists from the African National Congress imprisoned by the apartheid regime, put a plan in motion to escape from the infamous Pretoria Prison.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisChocolat (1988)
On her way to visit her childhood home in a colonial outpost in Northern Cameroon, a young French woman recalls her childhood, her memories concentrating on her family's houseboy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPersepolis (2007)
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Bang Bang Club (2011)
In the early to mid '90s, when the South African system of apartheid was in its death throes, four photographers - Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and João Silva - bonded by their friendship and a sense of purpose, worked together to chronicle the violence and upheaval leading up to the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as president. Their work is risky and dangerous, potentially fatally so, as they thrust themselves into the middle of chaotic clashes between forces backed by the government (including Inkatha Zulu warriors) and those in support of Mandela's African National Congress.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Dry White Season (1989)
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDNA (2020)
A woman has a close bond with her beloved Algerian grandfather, who protected her from a toxic home life as a child; his death triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate, revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisPapicha (2019)
An 18-year-old aspiring fashion designer refuses to let the turmoil of the Algerian Civil War dictate her life and defies growing conservative restrictions by organising a fashion show.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSight (2023)
Ming Wang is an impoverished Chinese prodigy who flees Communist China to become a pioneering eye surgeon in America. When tasked with restoring the sight of an orphan in India, who was blinded by her stepmother, Wang must confront the trauma of living through the violent uprising in his youth, the Cultural Revolution.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNouvelle Vague (2025)
After writing for Cahiers du cinéma, young Godard decides making films is the best film criticism. He gets Beauregard to fund a low-budget feature, creating a treatment with Truffaut about a gangster couple.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWhite Material (2010)
In the midst of a volatile regime change in a Francophone African state, Maria Vial is fighting to sustain her family’s coffee plantation. With rebels and the army struggling for control, French peacekeeping forces move out, warning the remaining white residents that they’re on their own. But Maria refuses to be driven off the land, even as tragedy looms.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHowl (2010)
It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInglourious Basterds (2009)
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds, lead by Lt. Aldo Raine soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMan on the Train (2002)
A man, Milan steps off a train, into a small French village. As he waits for the day when he will rob the town bank, he runs into an old retired poetry teacher named M. Manesquier. The two men strike up a strange friendship and explore the road not taken, each wanting to live the other's life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThree Seasons (1999)
The residents of Ho Chi Minh City face modernization amid widespread poverty. A retired American Marine arrives on a search for his daughter, whom he abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War. Elsewhere, a cyclo driver falls for a troubled prostitute and schemes to raise money so he can spend time with her. Additionally, a young women begins harvesting lotuses for a writer suffering from leprosy, and a child trinket seller loses his traveling case.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Sin piedad (2025)
Under the relentless sun, a killer stalks through the mountains, where the innocence of a young couple becomes prey. With no shadows to hide their fate, the hunt is a macabre game in broad daylight, where fear is not hidden in the darkness, but burns with the rawness of the unperturbed noon.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Blessed (2017)
Algiers, a few years after the civil war. Amal and Samir have decided to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary in a restaurant. While on their way, their share their views on Algeria: Amal talks about lost illusions and Samir about the necessity to cope with them. At the same time, their son Fahim and his friends Feriel and Reda are wandering about in a hostile Algiers about to steal their youth.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Last Cinema (2022)
Cinema clerks Silva and Felix work the final night before their beloved cinema is demolished by private investors. An empty final screening allows them to reflect on the meaning of cinema in an age wherein art no longer occupies physical space.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Poetry Angel (2017)
After Tsutomu Tamaki graduated from high school, he has worked at his family farm and raises ume (plum). He becomes interested in a class for “poetry boxing” and decides to take the class. There, he meets a female high school student who has her own problem.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
She Sings (2024)
When Aziza finally shares a recurring dream, it’s what she leaves unsaid that reveals her fractured sense of self. Aziza’s dream – in which she must sing a song – takes her on a journey through the post-industrial hills of the American Rust Belt, the eternal fields of Egypt, and the most repressed parts of her mind.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Kino Kopf (2024)
Born from steel and glass Kino Kopf is created by two inventors. They are assembled by their mother, a nurturing artist, and their Father a greedy entrepreneur. Kino Kopf is the first of its kind a sentient humanoid VHS camera. They are given a life by their mother but presented to the world by their father. Kino Kopf is the next big sensation and spurs a technological revolution. They are soon forgotten and alone as new models surpass them. Kino Kopf is left alone to contemplate if they ever had a soul, as visions of an electric cowboy dance through their dreams.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
I Remember My Mom (2025)
A childhood episode comes back to the memory of a man with no land
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Lion of the Desert (1981)
Resistance leader Omar Mukhtar opposes Italian colonization before World War II. The brutal guerrilla war against Italian General Rodolfo Graziani and the Fascist forces of Benito Mussolini highlights the struggle for Libyan independence and the harsh tactics utilised by the colonisers.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like July Dust?
The closest matches to July Dust are The Stranger (2025), Notre Musique (2004) and Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after July Dust?
Start with The Stranger (2025), the closest match to July Dust.
What is the highest-rated movie like July Dust?
Inglourious Basterds (2009), rated 8.2/10 by 25,141 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like July Dust?
The Stranger (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like July Dust?
Yes: The Stranger (2025), Notre Musique (2004) and Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962).
How are movies similar to July Dust chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside July Dust, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.