Movies like La Ballade des sans-papiers (1997)
The best movies like La Ballade des sans-papiers (1997) are Fuck (2006), Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower (2017) and The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006). If La Ballade des sans-papiers hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest rated13th (2016)7.8/10 from 821 votes
- Newest44 Horas (2026)Released 2026
- In FrenchThe Monopoly of Violence (2020)Also in French
Fuck (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 thisJoshua: Teenager vs. Superpower (2017)
When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006)
A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Monopoly of Violence (2020)
As anger and resentment grow in the face of social inequalities, many citizens-led protests are being repressed with an ever-increasing violence. In this documentary, David Dufresne gathers a panel of citizens to question, exchange and confront their views on the social order and the legitimacy of the use of force by the State.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFeminists: What Were They Thinking? (2018)
In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGod Grew Tired of Us (2006)
Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like this13th (2016)
An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMcQueen (2018)
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Irishman: In Conversation (2019)
Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino in conversation about The Irishman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAquaman: Heroines of Atlantis (2019)
Amber Heard and Nicole Kidman discuss their characters Mera and Atlanna.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Curse of the Dragon (1993)
A 1993 documentary film about Bruce Lee. The film includes interviews from some of his fellow students and opponents who worked alongside him in his movies.
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 thisThe Curious Birth of Benjamin Button (2009)
A documentary about the making of David Fincher's 2008 film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. Virtually every element in the evolution of the Fincher's film is documented here, from the project's attachment to numerous other directors during the 1990s, to its shoot in 2006 and 2007 in New Orleans, to its complex, CGI-intensive postproduction process.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Red Pill (2016)
When a feminist filmmaker sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men’s Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. Chronicling Cassie Jaye’s journey exploring an alternate perspective on gender equality, power and privilege.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Yes Men Fix the World (2009)
THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world's most outrageous pranks.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTerror's Advocate (2007)
A documentary on Jacques Vergès, the controversial lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla, exploring how Vergès assisted, from the 1960s onwards, anti-imperialist terrorist cells operating in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Participants interviewed include Algerian nationalists Yacef Saadi, Zohra Drif, Djamila Bouhired and Abderrahmane Benhamida, Khmer Rouge members Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, once far-left activists Hans-Joachim Klein and Magdalena Kopp, terrorist Carlos the Jackal, lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, neo-Nazi Ahmed Huber, Palestinian politician Bassam Abu Sharif, Lebanese politician Karim Pakradouni, political cartoonist Siné, former spy Claude Moniquet, novelist and ghostwriter Lionel Duroy, and investigative journalist Oliver Schröm.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEx Libris: The New York Public Library (2017)
A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBurma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country (2008)
Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker, Anders Østergaard, brings us close to the video journalists who deliver the footage. Though risking torture and life in jail, courageous young citizens of Burma live the essence of journalism as they insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTo Kill a Tiger (2023)
Ranjit, a farmer in India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the victim of a brutal gang rape. His decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Summers of It - Chapter Two: It Ends (2019)
This documentary focuses on the actors and their journey over two summers to create the remake to the original IT, by Stephen King. The documentary originally released as bonus material, bundled with IT: Chapter Two.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisuntitled minneapolis project (2025)
A homeless man living in a encampment in Minneapolis tells his perspective on the ongoing crisis of homelessness.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks (2008)
The murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist in 2004, followed by the publishing of twelve satirical cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed that was commissioned for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, provides the incendiary framework for Daniel Leconte's provocative documentary, It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
The Society of the Spectacle (1974)
Guy Debord's analysis of a consumer society.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Dresden Story (1954)
People are interviewed in Dresden, Ontario, to sample local attitudes towards racial discrimination against black people that brought this town into the news. After a round-up of the opinions of individual citizens, white and black, commentator Gordon Burwash joins two discussion panels, presenting opposite points of view. The rights and wrongs of the quarrel are left for the audience to decide.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
La historia es nuestra: Pascual, lucha obrera y cooperativismo (2019)
History is Ours narrates the struggle of the workers of the Refrescos Pascual soft-drink company against its owner, Rafael Jiménez, the official trade unionism of the CTM and the labor authorities of the governments of José López Portillo and Miguel de la Madrid, between 1982 and 1985. It documents the workers' difficult struggle to take over the company, when justice, which had been elusive, finally proved them right, and opened the possibility that these brave, tenacious workers would become collective owners of the company. Today, these soft-drink fighters resist a system that hits Mexican companies in favor of the monopolistic transnationals. The film is an account of one of the most brilliant episodes of the contemporary Mexican labor movement, an example of unity and class consciousness, embodied by men and women who make their struggle a tribute to comrades Concepción Jacobo García and Alvaro Hernández García, tragically fallen at the beginning of this historic event.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
The Tulsa Lynching of 1921: A Hidden Story (2000)
Documents the race riot of 1921 and the destruction of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With testimony by eyewitnesses and background accounts by historians.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Disobbedienti (2002)
The Disobbedienti emerged from the Tute Bianche during the demonstrations against the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001. The “Tute Bianche” were the white-clad Italian activists who used their bodies – protected by foam rubber, tires, helmets, gas masks, and homemade shields – in direct acts and demonstrations as weapons of civil disobedience. The Tute Bianche first appeared in Italy in 1994 in the midst of a social setting in which the “mass laborer,” who had played a central role in the 1970s in production and in labor struggles, was gradually replaced in the transition to precarious post-Fordist means of production. “Disobbedienti” thematizes the Disobbedienti’s origins, political bases, and forms of direct action on the basis of conversations with seven members of the movement.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Total Disaster (2022)
Armed with realistic bird puppets, trickster environmental activists pretend to be oil company Total—staging a satirical press conference to introduce “RéHabitat,” a program to rescue animals from the East African Oil Pipeline by relocating them to “more sustainable” habitats. Using humor and mischief, they expose a deadly ecological disaster in a zany effort to help #StopEACOP.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Die Dichter und die Räterepublik (1990)
Documentary film with play scenes about the rise and fall of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 from the perspective of various well-known poets and writers who experienced the events as contemporary witnesses.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like La Ballade des sans-papiers?
The closest matches to La Ballade des sans-papiers are Fuck (2006), Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower (2017) and The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after La Ballade des sans-papiers?
Start with Fuck (2006), the closest match to La Ballade des sans-papiers.
What is the highest-rated movie like La Ballade des sans-papiers?
13th (2016), rated 7.8/10 by 821 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like La Ballade des sans-papiers?
44 Horas (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like La Ballade des sans-papiers?
Yes: The Monopoly of Violence (2020), Terror's Advocate (2007) and It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks (2008).
How are movies similar to La Ballade des sans-papiers chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside La Ballade des sans-papiers, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.