Movies like Nouvelle Vague (2025)
The best movies like Nouvelle Vague (2025) are Niki (2024), Radium Girls (2020) and The Last Rifleman (2023). If Nouvelle Vague 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 ratedA Beautiful Mind (2001)7.9/10 from 11,568 votes
- NewestThe Wave (2025)Released 2025
- In FrenchNiki (2024)Also in French
Niki (2024)
French-American artist Niki de Saint-Phalle, from the age of 23, is a model and an aspiring actor who is married and has a two year old daughter. Together, they flee the U.S. during the oppressive McCarthy era and come to France, where they experience a short-lived euphoria. Soon, distant and frightening memories begin to emerge in Niki’s mind. Her vocation as an artist will be her salvation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRadium Girls (2020)
Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on their health.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Rifleman (2023)
A WWII veteran escapes his care home in Northern Ireland and embarks on an arduous but inspirational journey to France to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, finding the courage to face the ghosts of his past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCoco Before Chanel (2009)
Several years after leaving the orphanage, to which her father never returned for her, Gabrielle Chanel finds herself working in a provincial bar. She's both a seamstress for the performers and a singer, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sings nightly with her sister. A liaison with Baron Balsan gives her an entree into French society and a chance to develop her gift for designing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Edge of the Blade (2023)
In 1887, at a time when duels are in vogue in Paris, Clément Lacaze and Marie-Rose Astié meet. He's a charismatic master of arms; she's a feminist, far ahead of her time. Clément gets caught in a spiral of violence and decides to initiate Marie-Rose in the art of dueling. The two must work together to save face. How far will they go to defend their honor?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRichard Jewell (2019)
Richard Jewell thinks quick, works fast, and saves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives after a domestic terrorist plants several pipe bombs and they explode during a concert, only to be falsely suspected of the crime by sloppy FBI work and sensational media coverage.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlame It on Fidel! (2006)
A 9-year-old girl weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both history & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOn the Basis of Sex (2018)
Young lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg teams with her husband Marty to bring a groundbreaking case before the U.S. Court of Appeals and overturn a century of sex discrimination.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShattered Glass (2003)
Stephen Glass is a staff writer for the respected current events and policy magazine The New Republic and a freelance feature writer for publications such as Rolling Stone, Harper's and George. By the mid-90s, Glass' articles had turned him into one of the most sought-after young journalists in Washington, but a bizarre chain of events - chronicled in Buzz Bissinger's September 1998 Vanity Fair article - suddenly stopped his career in its tracks.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFanny's Journey (2016)
Fanny is a Jewish girl in a French orphanage in 1943. When she and her friends are no longer safe from the Nazis, they try to flee to Switzerland. After their guide disappears, Fanny has to take the lead and help the other kids make it over the mountains.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFather of My Children (2009)
Grégoire Canvel has everything a man could want. A wife he loves, three delightful children, and a stimulating job. He's a film producer. Discovering talented filmmakers and developing films that fit his conception of the cinema-free and true to life-is precisely his reason for living. Yet his prestigious production company, Moon Films, is on its last legs.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJacquot (1991)
Jacquot Demy, the son of a garage owner and a hairdresser, is fascinated by cinema and decides to pursue his dream of becoming a filmmaker by any means necessary.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisNotre-Dame on Fire (2022)
A film relating from the inside the Notre-Dame de Paris fire of April 2019.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 thisDalida (2017)
Based on the true story of acclaimed music icon "Dalida" born in Cairo, who gained celebrity in the 50s, singing in French, Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, German, Italian, playing in awarded Youssef Chahine's picture "Le Sixième Jour", and who later committed suicide in 1987 in Paris, after selling more than 130 million records worldwide.
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 this150 Milligrams (2016)
In the hospital where she works in Brest, France, a lung specialist discovers a direct link between suspicious deaths and state-approved medicine. She fights single-handedly for the truth to come out.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAn Adventure in Space and Time (2013)
Actor William Hartnell felt trapped by a succession of hard-man roles while wannabe producer Verity Lambert was frustrated by the TV industry's glass ceiling. Both of them were to find unlikely hope and unexpected challenges in the form of a Saturday tea-time drama. Allied with a team of unusual but brilliant people, they went on to create the longest running science fiction series ever made.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Public Woman (1984)
An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky's 'The Possessed'. The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into commiting a political assassination.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French fashion bible Elle magazine, has a devastating stroke at age 43. The damage to his brain stem results in locked-in syndrome, with which he is almost completely paralyzed and only able to communicate by blinking an eye. Bauby painstakingly dictates his memoir via the only means of expression left to him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSukiyaki (2026)
In 1963, as Japan emerged from the shadows of war into an era of extraordinary transformation, an unlikely song made music history. "Ue o Muite Arukou," known internationally as "Sukiyaki," became the first Japanese song to top the U.S. Billboard charts, remaining at No. 1 for three weeks and captivating listeners around the world.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Coming SoonMovies like thisThe Patriot (2000)
After proving himself on the field of battle in the French and Indian War, Benjamin Martin wants nothing more to do with such things, preferring the simple life of a farmer. But when his son Gabriel enlists in the army to defend their new nation, America, against the British, Benjamin reluctantly returns to his old life to protect his son.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both history & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Beautiful Mind (2001)
From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash Jr. experiences it all. As a brilliant but socially awkward mathematician, he made a groundbreaking discovery early in his career and stands on the brink of international acclaim. But as the handsome and arrogant Nash accepts secret work in cryptography, he becomes entangled in a mysterious conspiracy. His life takes a nightmarish turn and he soon finds himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisErin Brockovich (2000)
A twice-divorced mother of three who sees an injustice, takes on the bad guy and wins -- with a little help from her push-up bra. Erin goes to work for an attorney and comes across medical records describing illnesses clustered in one nearby town. She starts investigating and soon exposes a monumental cover-up.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Wave (2025)
A music student’s testimony ignites a feminist uprising on her campus, where protest becomes performance and collective voice becomes an act of resistance.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Inherit the Wind (1960)
Schoolteacher Bertram Cates is arrested for teaching his students Darwin's theory of evolution. The case receives national attention and one of the newspaper reporters, E.K. Hornbeck, arranges to bring in renowned defense attorney and atheist Henry Drummond to defend Cates. The prosecutor, Matthew Brady is a former presidential candidate, famous evangelist, and old adversary of Drummond.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLorenzo's Oil (1992)
Lorenzo Odone, a Virginia 5-year-old, develops a degenerative nerve disease so rare that nobody is working on a cure, so his parents decide to immerse themselves in research and tackle the problem themselves.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Constant Gardener (2005)
Justin Quayle is a low-level British diplomat who has always gone about his work very quietly, not causing any problems. But after his radical wife Tessa is killed he becomes determined to find out why, thrusting himself into the middle of a very dangerous conspiracy.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMission to Mars (2000)
When the first manned mission to Mars meets with a catastrophic and mysterious disaster after reporting an unidentified structure, a rescue mission is launched to investigate the tragedy and bring back any survivors.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Nouvelle Vague?
The closest matches to Nouvelle Vague are Niki (2024), Radium Girls (2020) and The Last Rifleman (2023). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Nouvelle Vague?
Start with Niki (2024), the closest match to Nouvelle Vague.
What is the highest-rated movie like Nouvelle Vague?
A Beautiful Mind (2001), rated 7.9/10 by 11,568 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Nouvelle Vague?
The Wave (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like Nouvelle Vague?
Yes: Niki (2024), Coco Before Chanel (2009) and The Edge of the Blade (2023).
How are movies similar to Nouvelle Vague chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Nouvelle Vague, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.