Movies like Places in the Heart (1984)
The best movies like Places in the Heart (1984) are Sounder (1972), The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Rosewood (1997). If Places in the Heart hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Lion King (1994)8.3/10 from 20,400 votes
- NewestSound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot (2024)Released 2024
Sounder (1972)
The oldest son of a loving and strong family of black sharecroppers comes of age in the Depression-era South after his father is imprisoned for stealing food.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Birth of a Nation (1915)
Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisRosewood (1997)
Spurred by a white woman's lie, vigilantes destroy a black Florida town and slay inhabitants in 1923.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOld Yeller (1957)
Young Travis Coates is left to take care of the family ranch with his mother and younger brother while his father goes off on a cattle drive in the 1860s. When a yellow mongrel comes for an uninvited stay with the family, Travis reluctantly adopts the dog.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMinari (2020)
A Korean American family moves to an Arkansas farm in search of its own American dream. Amidst the challenges of this new life in the strange and rugged Ozarks, they discover the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Best of Enemies (2019)
Centers on the unlikely relationship between Ann Atwater, an outspoken civil rights activist, and C.P. Ellis, a local Ku Klux Klan leader who reluctantly co-chaired a community summit, battling over the desegregation of schools in Durham, North Carolina during the racially-charged summer of 1971. The incredible events that unfolded would change Durham and the lives of Atwater and Ellis forever.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDrums Along the Mohawk (1939)
Albany, New York, 1776. After marrying, Gil and Lana travel north to settle on a small farm in the Mohawk River Valley, but soon their growing prosperity and happiness are threatened by the sinister sound of drums that announce dark times of revolution and war.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot (2024)
Led by Donna and Reverend W.C. Martin, 22 families from a rural Black church in the small East Texas town of Possum Trot adopt 77 of the most difficult-to-place kids in the foster system and kickstart a movement in the process.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Sugarland Express (1974)
Married small-time crooks Lou-Jean and Clovis Poplin lose their baby to the state of Texas and resolve to do whatever it takes to get him back. Lou-Jean gets Clovis out of jail, and the two steal their son from his foster home, in addition to taking a highway patrolman hostage. As a massive dragnet starts to pursue them across Texas, the couple become unlikely folk heroes and even start to bond with the captive policeman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Deep End of the Ocean (1999)
A three-year-old boy disappears during his mother's high school reunion. Nine years later, by chance, he turns up in the town in which the family has just relocated.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOrdinary Angels (2024)
Inspired by the incredible true story of a hairdresser who single-handedly rallies an entire community to help a widowed father save the life of his critically ill young daughter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm due to foreclosure. He catches up with them on his Uncle’s farm, and joins them the next day as they head for California and a new life... Hopefully.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSince You Went Away (1944)
In 1943, several people enter, re-enter, and exit the difficult life of a Midwestern family whose patriarch has been called up to war, leaving behind his wife and two teen daughters.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNews of the World (2020)
A Texan traveling across the wild West bringing the news of the world to local townspeople, agrees to help rescue a young girl who was kidnapped.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Help (2011)
Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisNorma Rae (1979)
Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKansas City (1996)
A pair of kidnappings expose the complex power dynamics within the corrupt and unpredictable workings of 1930s Kansas City.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe River (1984)
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRed River (1948)
Following the Civil War, headstrong rancher Thomas Dunson decides to lead a perilous cattle drive from Texas to Missouri. During the exhausting journey, his persistence becomes tyrannical in the eyes of Matthew Garth, his adopted son and protégé.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOf Mice and Men (1939)
An intellectually disabled giant and his level headed guardian find work at a sadistic cowboy's ranch in depression era America.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJohn Q (2002)
John Quincy Archibald is a father and husband whose son is diagnosed with an enlarged heart and then finds out he cannot receive a transplant because HMO insurance will not cover it. Therefore, he decides to take a hospital full of patients hostage until the hospital puts his son's name on the donor's list.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDevil in a Blue Dress (1995)
In late 1940s Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins is an unemployed black World War II veteran with few job prospects. At a bar, Easy meets DeWitt Albright, a mysterious white man looking for someone to investigate the disappearance of a missing white woman named Daphne Monet, who he suspects is hiding out in one of the city's black jazz clubs. Strapped for money and facing house payments, Easy takes the job, but soon finds himself in over his head.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Lion King (1994)
Young lion prince Simba, eager to one day become king of the Pride Lands, grows up under the watchful eye of his father Mufasa; all the while his villainous uncle Scar conspires to take the throne for himself. Amid betrayal and tragedy, Simba must confront his past and find his rightful place in the Circle of Life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisSummertime (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 thisHamlet Goes Business (1987)
When Hamlet discovers his father’s deceased body, he finds himself pulled into a power struggle as his scheming uncle attempts to secure a monopoly on the Scandinavian rubber duck industry. Will Hamlet avenge his father? Will he become the king of rubber ducks? Does any of it really matter?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMercury Rising (1998)
Renegade FBI agent Art Jeffries protects a nine-year-old autistic boy who has cracked the government's new "unbreakable" code.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBy Any Means (2017)
A C-list celebrity gets kidnapped and held hostage after a night-club appearance. When the police interrogate the man she accuses, they question whether she's after justice or a front-page story.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Punisher (1989)
The avenging angel of Marvel Comics fame comes brilliantly to life in this searing action-adventure thriller! Dolph Lundgren stars as Frank Castle, a veteran cop who loses his entire family to a mafia car bomb. His ex-partner believes Castle survived the blast and became the Punisher, living in the sewers and exacting vigilante violence against mob bosses throughout the city. When the populace is caught in the midst of a gang war that he caused, Castle must again emerge from the shadows and save the innocent.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisReservation 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 this10 Sekunden (2008)
Air traffic controller Markus Hofer is partly to blame for a collision between two airplanes in which 83 people lost their lives. Although the incident happened a year ago, he still blames himself, which his wife Franziska can only bear by having affairs. Erik Loth, on the other hand, is full of revenge, having lost his wife and daughter in the disaster and is now determined to kill the pilot responsible. Police officer Harald was on duty on the night of the accident and has been unable to get the images out of his head ever since. One evening, the television reports on the murder of Markus Hofer. Harald knows Erik, the man who killed him, and now thinks he sees him everywhere...
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Like Places in the Heart and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Places in the Heart?
The closest matches to Places in the Heart are Sounder (1972), The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Rosewood (1997). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Places in the Heart?
Start with Sounder (1972), the closest match to Places in the Heart.
What is the highest-rated movie like Places in the Heart?
The Lion King (1994), rated 8.3/10 by 20,400 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Places in the Heart?
Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Places in the Heart?
Yes: Sounder (1972), The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Rosewood (1997).
How are movies similar to Places in the Heart chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Places in the Heart, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.