Movies like Harvest of Despair (1985)
The best movies like Harvest of Despair (1985) are Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019), The Untold History Of The United States (2012) and Audrey (2020). If Harvest of Despair hooked you with its documentary and history, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedMr. Jones (2019)6.7/10 from 496 votes
- NewestS4: The Bob Lazar Story (2026)Released 2026
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019)
The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Untold History Of The United States (2012)
Oliver Stone charts the history of the United States from the Second World War to the present.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisAudrey (2020)
An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVisions of Light (1992)
Cameramen and women discuss the craft and art of cinematography and of the "DP" (the director of photography), illustrating their points with clips from 100 films, from Birth of a Nation to Do the Right Thing. Themes: the DP tells people where to look; changes in movies (the arrival of sound, color, and wide screens) required creative responses from DPs; and, these artisans constantly invent new equipment and try new things, with wonderful results. The narration takes us through the identifiable studio styles of the 30s, the emergence of noir, the New York look, and the impact of Europeans. Citizen Kane, The Conformist, and Gordon Willis get special attention.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Age of Stupid (2009)
Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated future world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Soviet Story (2008)
“The Soviet Story” is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime has never been told. Until now...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Unknown Known (2013)
Former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld discusses his career in Washington D.C. from his days as a congressman in the early 1960s to planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe War on Democracy (2007)
Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger says that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the film’s message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both history & documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRed Army (2015)
A documentary highlighting the Soviet Union's legendary and enigmatic hockey training culture and world-dominating team through the eyes of the team's Captain Slava Fetisov, following his shift from hockey star and celebrated national hero to political enemy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Worth the HypeMovies like this2000 Meters to Andriivka (2025)
Amid the failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisNo Half Measures: Creating the Final Season of Breaking Bad (2013)
A documentary about the making of season five of the acclaimed AMC series Breaking Bad.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisFuck (2006)
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAs I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000)
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisS4: The Bob Lazar Story (2026)
Over 35 years after Bob Lazar's revelations, this documentary exposes secrets of a facility the government still denies. Featuring Lazar's testimony, recreations, and new evidence, it reopens a case that continues to spark global curiosity
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisFather Soldier Son (2020)
When Sgt. First Class Brian Eisch is critically wounded in Afghanistan, it sets him and his sons on a journey of love, loss, redemption and legacy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNight Will Fall (2014)
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCome See Me in the Good Light (2025)
In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Mom Jayne (2025)
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisHôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988)
Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape—with U.S. help—to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIn the Realms of the Unreal (2004)
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStalin: Man of Steel (2003)
Emmy Awards nominee for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research: Multi-faceted portrait of the man who succeeded Lenin as the head of the Soviet Union. With a captivating blend of period documents, newly-released information, newsreel and archival footage and interviews with experts, the program examines his rise to power, deconstructs the cult of personality that helped him maintain an iron grip over his vast empire, and analyzes the policies he introduced, including the deadly expansion of the notorious gulags where he banished so many of his countrymen to certain death.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary & history
Hunger for Truth (2017)
In an age when disinformation muddles the truth, a newly discovered voice cuts through the historical haze. She is Rhea Clyman, a young Canadian reporter who traversed the starving Soviet heartland when Stalin’s man made famine was just beginning in Ukraine. Clyman’s newly discovered newspaper articles for Toronto and London newspapers in 1932 show her remarkable resourcefulness and courage. After she was banished from the USSR for writing about the Holodomor and the Gulag, this brave woman went on to cover Hitler’s early lethal years in power.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both history & documentary
Grandma, Please Tell Us About the Holodomor (2020)
This is a story about generations and the importance of preserving historical memory. The grandmother of one of the protagonists, Svitlana Zalishchuk, left behind a diary in which she recorded her memories of the terrible times. Veronika, a 12-year-old girl from Uman, and her mother made a film for the Autumn on Pluto 2.0 project about her grandmother Ksenia Logvyniuk, who told us where people found food and how they escaped starvation. Sasha, another 12-year-old protagonist of the film, did not find her great-grandmother alive, but she recreated her relative's experiences based on her father's stories.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Mr. Jones (2019)
In 1933, Welsh journalist Gareth Jones travels to Ukraine, where he experiences the horrors of a famine. Everywhere he goes he meets henchmen of the Soviet secret service who are determined to prevent news about the catastrophe from getting out. Stalin’s forced collectivisation of agriculture has resulted in misery and ruin—the policy is tantamount to mass murder.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBitter Harvest (2017)
Set between the two World Wars and based on true historical events, Bitter Harvest conveys the untold story of the Holodomor, the genocidal famine engineered by the tyrant Joseph Stalin. The film displays a powerful tale of love, honour, rebellion and survival at a time when Ukraine was forced to adjust to the horrifying territorial ambitions of the burgeoning Soviet Union.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both history
SnoozefestMovies like thisKuban Cossacks. And Already Two Hundred Years... (1992)
A documentary about the history of Ukrainian Cossacks in the Kuban.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Famine-33 (1991)
The film about the Holodomor famine in Ukraine, based on the novel 'The Yellow Prince' by Vasyl Barka. The film is told through the lives of the Katrannyk family of six. It relies more on images than on words shot in black-and-white.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both history
The Living (2009)
Tells the story of the tragic events in Ukraine in 1932-33, the genocidal Great Famine or the Holodomor, and one Welshman's attempts to tell the world what was happening.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Oh My God (2009)
"Oh My God" asks people from all walks of life, from celebrities, to the religious, to atheists and the common Man - the question - "What is God?"
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Rinaldi - Instrumental Transcommunication to The Other Side (2022)
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Harvest of Despair?
The closest matches to Harvest of Despair are Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019), The Untold History Of The United States (2012) and Audrey (2020). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Harvest of Despair?
Start with Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019), the closest match to Harvest of Despair.
What is the highest-rated movie like Harvest of Despair?
Mr. Jones (2019), rated 6.7/10 by 496 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Harvest of Despair?
S4: The Bob Lazar Story (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Harvest of Despair?
Yes: Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019), The Untold History Of The United States (2012) and Audrey (2020).
How are movies similar to Harvest of Despair chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Harvest of Despair, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.