Movies like Autumn Sonata (1978)
The best movies like Autumn Sonata (1978) are Fanny and Alexander (1982), Scenes from a Marriage (1974) and Cries and Whispers (1972). If Autumn Sonata hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedWild Strawberries (1957)8.1/10 from 1,886 votes
- NewestSentimental Value (2025)Released 2025
Fanny and Alexander (1982)
As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situation gradually grows worse as the bishop becomes more controlling, but dedicated relatives make a valiant attempt to aid Emilie, Fanny and Alexander.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisScenes from a Marriage (1974)
Johan and Marianne are married and seem to have it all. Their happiness, however, is a façade for a troubled relationship, which becomes even rockier when Johan admits that he's having an affair. Before long, the spouses separate and move towards finalizing their divorce, but they make attempts at reconciling. Even as they pursue other relationships, Johan and Marianne realize that they have a significant bond, but also many issues that hinder that connection.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisCries and Whispers (1972)
As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCria! (1976)
Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Silence (1963)
Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWild Strawberries (1957)
Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisKramer vs. Kramer (1979)
Ted Kramer is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna cannot take this anymore, so she decides to leave him. Ted is now faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of himself and their young son Billy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSaraband (2003)
Reuniting the characters of Johan and Marianne three decades after "Scenes from a Marriage," "Saraband" follows Marianne’s visit to her reclusive ex-husband, where she finds him locked in a destructive conflict with his troubled son Henrik and Henrik’s musically gifted daughter Karin. Told as an intimate chamber drama, the film explores love, resentment, forgiveness, and the inescapable pull of family bonds.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Passion of Anna (1969)
A recently divorced man and an emotionally devastated widow begin a love affair.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThree Colors: Blue (1993)
The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPersona (1966)
A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThrough a Glass Darkly (1961)
Karin hopes to recover from her recent stay at a mental hospital by spending the summer at her family's cottage on a tiny island. Her husband, Martin, cares for her but is frustrated by her physical withdrawal. Her younger brother, Minus, is confused by Karin's vulnerability and his own budding sexuality. Their father, David, cannot overcome his haughty remoteness. Beset by visions, Karin descends further into madness.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisInteriors (1978)
When Eve, an interior designer, is deserted by her husband of many years, Arthur, the emotionally glacial relationships of the three grown-up daughters are laid bare. Twisted by jealousy, insecurity and resentment, Renata, a successful writer; Joey, a woman crippled by indecision; and Flyn, a budding actress; struggle to communicate for the sake of their shattered mother. But when their father unexpectedly falls for another woman, his decision to remarry sets in motion a terrible twist of fate…
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Piano (1993)
When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited pre-teen daughter Flora to the wilderness of 19th-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPieces of a Woman (2020)
When a young mother's home birth ends in unfathomable tragedy, she begins a year-long odyssey of mourning that fractures relationships with loved ones in this deeply personal story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSentimental Value (2025)
Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWinter Light (1963)
A Swedish pastor fails a loving woman, a suicidal fisherman and God.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Celebration (1998)
The family of a wealthy businessman gather to celebrate his 60th birthday. During the course of the party, his eldest son presents a speech that reveals a devastating secret that turns the night into a battle of truth and denial.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTorment (1944)
Jan-Erik Widgren meets the lonely Bertha Olsson, a woman struggling with alcoholism. Though Bertha is already linked to Caligula, Jan-Erik's heartless teacher, she begins a relationship with the boy anyway. When Caligula learns that Jan-Erik is having an affair with Bertha, he begins to torture his student psychologically. He reserves his cruelest behavior for Bertha, however, which results in a tragic turn of events.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFaithless (2000)
Scripted by Ingmar Bergman, this very personal film is about a destructive affair which wrecks the marriage of an actress (Marianne) and musician (Markus). Wanting to continue the affair, Marianne moves in with her lover. But she is tormented by Markus' decision not to let her have custody of their daughter. Finally Markus announces he may have a solution to the stalemate, but this leads to deception, lies and ultimately, tragedy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTo Joy (1950)
A young orchestra violinist’s fear of mediocrity and drive for artistic success strain his marriage to a fellow musician. Told largely in flashback and shaped by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the film examines ambition, love, and loss in early Ingmar Bergman.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Woman Under the Influence (1974)
Mabel Longhetti, desperate and lonely, is married to a Los Angeles municipal construction worker, Nick. Increasingly unstable, especially in the company of others, she craves happiness, but her extremely volatile behavior convinces Nick that she poses a danger to their family and decides to commit her to an institution for six months. Alone with a trio of kids to raise on his own, he awaits her return, which holds more than a few surprises.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSunday's Illness (2018)
Annabel is a successful businesswoman with a wealthy husband. At a reception in her villa she meets a woman, a member of the catering staff who has been hired for the evening. This woman is none other than her own daughter Chiara, whom she had left over thirty years ago. Chiara was just eight years old at the time. She now approaches her mother with an unusual request: to spend ten days together with her.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Music Room (1958)
An aging, decadent landlord’s passion for music becomes the undoing of his legacy as he sacrifices his wealth in order to compete with the opulent music room of his younger, richer neighbour.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAfter the Rehearsal (1984)
Rational, exacting, and self-controlled theater director, Henrik Vogler, often stays after rehearsal to think and plan. On this day, Anna comes back, ostensibly looking for a bracelet. She is the lead in his new production of Strindberg's A Dream Play. She talks of her hatred for her mother, now dead, an alcoholic actress, who was Vogler's star and lover.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them (2014)
A New York couple's relationship is tested after the loss of their child. This film is the wide-released combination of the original two :him and :her volumes that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Virgin Spring (1960)
Devout Christians Töre and Märeta send their only daughter, the virginal Karin, and their foster daughter, the unrepentant Ingeri, to deliver candles to a distant church. On their way through the woods, the girls encounter a group of savage goat herders who brutally rape and murder Karin as Ingeri remains hidden. When the killers unwittingly seek refuge in the farmhouse of Töre and Märeta, Töre plots a fitting revenge.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWaiting Women (1952)
The four wives of four brothers share stories of their marriages as they wait for their husbands in a small, secluded cottage.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBergman Island (2021)
An English-German filmmaking couple retreat to Fårö for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place that inspired Ingmar Bergman. As the summer and their screenplays advance, the lines between reality and fiction start to blur against the backdrop of the Island's wild landscape.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Best Intentions (1992)
In this film about Ingmar Bergman's parents, Henrik Bergman is studying for the priesthood and trying to make ends meet when he encounters the lovely, affluent Anna. Despite their social differences, Henrik and Anna fall in love, wed and move to the country. They lead a quiet life as Henrik works as a priest, but it isn't long before the simple people and plain surroundings make Anna long for a more lavish lifestyle, which causes marital stress.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Autumn Sonata?
The closest matches to Autumn Sonata are Fanny and Alexander (1982), Scenes from a Marriage (1974) and Cries and Whispers (1972). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Autumn Sonata?
People who watched Autumn Sonata most often go on to Fanny and Alexander (1982), Scenes from a Marriage (1974) and Cries and Whispers (1972).
What is the highest-rated movie like Autumn Sonata?
Wild Strawberries (1957), rated 8.1/10 by 1,886 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Autumn Sonata?
Sentimental Value (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to Autumn Sonata chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Autumn Sonata, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.