Movies like The Complexity of Love and Sadness (2025)
The best movies like The Complexity of Love and Sadness (2025) are The Human Voice (2020), Synecdoche, New York (2008) and The Fabelmans (2022). If The Complexity of Love and Sadness hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedIf Anything Happens I Love You (2020)7.7/10 from 1,030 votes
- NewestThe Beloved (2026)Released 2026
- In SpanishThe Beloved (2026)Also in Spanish
The Human Voice (2020)
A woman watches time pass beside the suitcases of her ex-lover (who is supposed to come pick them up but never arrives) and a restless dog who doesn't understand that his master has abandoned him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSynecdoche, New York (2008)
A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Fabelmans (2022)
Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHelen (2009)
On the outside, Helen has it all – a loving family and a successful career – but when her suppressed mental illness resurfaces, the world crumbles around her. Crippled by depression, Helen finds solace through her friendship with Mathilda, a kindred spirit struggling with bipolar disorder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Beloved (2026)
Acclaimed film director Esteban Martínez is a legend both for his films and for his past marked by violence and excess. For his latest project, he offers his daughter Emilia a role under the pretext of helping her with her stalled acting career. Living together on set will foster a closeness they haven’t shared for years, but it will also reopen old wounds that never healed.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisUpstream Color (2013)
A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSpringsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025)
Bruce Springsteen, a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom, struggles to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAnother Woman (1988)
Marion is a woman who has learned to shield herself from her emotions. She rents an apartment to work undisturbed on her new book, but by some acoustic anomaly she can hear all that is said in the next apartment in which a psychiatrist holds his office. When she hears a young woman tell that she finds it harder and harder to bear her life, Marion starts to reflect on her own life. After a series of events she comes to understand how her unemotional attitude towards the people around her affected them and herself.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Other Woman (2010)
Emilia, a law-school graduate, falls in love with her married boss, Jack. After Emilia marries Jack, her happiness turns unexpectedly to grief following the death of her infant daughter. Devastated, Emilia nonetheless carries on, attempting to forge a connection with her stepson William and to resist the interference of Jack's jealous ex-wife.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFather Mother Sister Brother (2025)
Estranged siblings reunite after years apart, forced to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Taste of Honey (1961)
While out to avoid spending time with her narcissistic and promiscuous mother, sixteen-year-old Jo has a brief affair that leaves her pregnant and abandoned. When her mother remarries, Jo's only support becomes her friend Geoffrey, a homosexual.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBefore I Fall (2017)
Samantha Kingston has everything. Then, everything changes. After one fateful night, she wakes up with no future at all. Trapped into reliving the same day over and over, she begins to question just how perfect her life really was.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlue Heron (2026)
A family of six's fresh start on 1990s Vancouver Island unravels as their youngest child, Sasha, witnesses the increasingly dangerous behavior of her older brother, Jeremy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIf Anything Happens I Love You (2020)
Grieving parents journey through an emotional void as they mourn the loss of a child after a tragic school shooting.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAftersun (2022)
Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories fill the gaps between camcorder footages as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the troubled man she didn't.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMr. Church (2016)
A unique friendship develops when a little girl and her dying mother inherit a cook - Mr. Church. What begins as an arrangement that should only last six months, instead spans fifteen years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · 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: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Starling (2021)
A woman adjusting to life after a loss contends with a feisty bird that's taken over her garden — and a husband who's struggling to find a way forward.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Believe in Unicorns (2015)
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHere (2024)
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNow That You’re Back (TBA)
After the suicide of a childhood friend, Connor and Liam are reunited by the difficult task of choosing their friends burial clothes.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Summertime (2015)
In 1971, a young woman moves from the French countryside to Paris and begins a passionate love affair with a feminist leader.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEyes Cry Differently (1990)
Near a large mining site, the frescoes of a small church are being restored. Vasil is a young heavy truck driver. He takes care of his orphaned nephew Vanyo. He accidentally meets the restorer Vera. The relationship between the two is complicated - between the desire for closeness and the cool assessment of the situation. Generally speaking, it is about the "difficult youth" of the 80s.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Will Wants To Be A Giant Octopus (2026)
An isolated young black man leaves reality behind to become a giant Octopus.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Alfie (2004)
A tale of a philosophical womanizer who is forced to question his seemingly carefree existence.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisLoving forever (2026)
Edoardo Iaschi (known as Eddie Brock) is an Italian indie singer born and raised in Rome. When his song “Non è mica te” unexpectedly goes viral on TikTok, Edo is thrust into the spotlight and forced to confront the realities of adulthood, fame, and a world far bigger than he ever imagined…
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Coast to Coast (2004)
Barnaby and Maxine Pierce, an embattled married couple in Connecticut, are on the verge of divorce. Their son is getting married in California and they decide to drive across the country to attend. Along the way, as they visit family and friends, they reflect on their tattered relationship and the events that transpired to create the estrangement.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Reservation Road (2007)
Two fathers' lives intersect when one of them is involved in a terrible and sudden hit-and-run car accident that leaves the other's son dead. In response, the two men react in unexpected ways as a reckoning looms in the near future.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCloud 9 (2008)
A romantic drama about a woman who enters into an affair after 30 years of marriage.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Last Night (2019)
A young couple's last hours together before a trip that will separate them.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Complexity of Love and Sadness?
The closest matches to The Complexity of Love and Sadness are The Human Voice (2020), Synecdoche, New York (2008) and The Fabelmans (2022). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Complexity of Love and Sadness?
Start with The Human Voice (2020), the closest match to The Complexity of Love and Sadness.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Complexity of Love and Sadness?
If Anything Happens I Love You (2020), rated 7.7/10 by 1,030 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Complexity of Love and Sadness?
The Beloved (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Spanish movies like The Complexity of Love and Sadness?
Yes: The Beloved (2026).
How are movies similar to The Complexity of Love and Sadness chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Complexity of Love and Sadness, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.