Movies like Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound (2024)
The best movies like Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound (2024) are All Together Now (2020), Eleanor the Great (2025) and Adopt a Highway (2019). If Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedWhere Hope Grows (2014)7.9/10 from 232 votes
- NewestLIMINAL (2026)Released 2026
All Together Now (2020)
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEleanor the Great (2025)
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAdopt a Highway (2019)
Russ Millings has just been released from prison after serving 21 years for a 3rd strike conviction for possessing an ounce of marijuana. As he tries to adapt to a world he doesn’t recognize – including trying to learn how to use the internet – he finds an abandoned baby in a dumpster behind the fast food restaurant where he works as a dishwasher. Unsure of what to do, and caught between impulses of kindness and panic, Russ soon realizes this could be his chance at redemption.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSound of Christmas (2016)
Lizzie is a young piano teacher working at a music school while trying to save enough money for a Steinway piano. The school is gearing up for their major Christmas fundraiser and she has committed much of her time to plan the event. One afternoon, she meets Brad who takes an interest in her playing and asks if she will teach his uninterested teenage daughter. She begins to break through to the young girl, and sparks begin to fly with Brad, but she is shocked to find out that his interest is not solely in her playing, but in the property that houses the music school. She sets out to save the school and the event, but can she work things out with Brad?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOmaha (2025)
A young girl and her brother are awoken by their father and loaded into the car on an early morning in 2008. As they road trip across the American West, she discovers the truth about their seemingly spontaneous journey.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLittle Lord Fauntleroy (1980)
Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWaiting for Anya (2020)
During the harrows of WWII, Jo, a young shepherd along with the help of the widow Horcada, helps to smuggle Jewish children across the border from southern France into Spain.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Christmas Shoes (2002)
Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhere the Red Fern Grows (1974)
Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for two years to achieve his dream of buying two red-bone coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in life as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with his dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBelieve (2013)
A young, gifted soccer player who gets into trouble for a petty crime is brought to the attention of former Manchester United coach Matt Busby, who comes out of retirement to help the boy and his teammates.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFast Girls (2012)
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWon't Back Down (2012)
Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlicka (2006)
Katy McLaughlin desires to work on her family's mountainside horse ranch, although her father insists she finish boarding school. Katy finds a mustang in the hills near her ranch. The headstrong 16 year old then sets her mind to tame a mustang and prove to her father she can run the ranch. But when tragedy happens, it will take all the love and strength the family can muster to restore hope.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAnuja (2024)
When a brilliant nine-year-old working in a sweatshop gets a chance to attend school, she must make a difficult choice for her and her sister's future.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHow Sarah Got Her Wings (2015)
Good Samaritan Sarah Fitzpatrick has a fatal accident just before Christmas, and finds herself in the lobby before the gates of Heaven. Certain that she will be let in, she is shocked to find that her name is not on the reservation list. However, she is granted the chance to return to Earth as an "angel in training" with the requirement to help a soul in need. Sarah has the 12 days before Christmas to secure her place on the list leaving her in the race for her after-life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisPoor Cow (1967)
Joy lives a life filled with bad choices. At a young age, she marries and has a child–with an abusive thief who quickly ends up incarcerated. Left alone, she takes up with the guy's mate, another thief, who seems to give her some happiness but who also ends up locked up. She then takes up with a series of seedy types who offer nothing but momentary pleasure–if that.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKid Galahad (1962)
After completing military service, Walter Gulick takes a job as a sparring partner at a gym, the owner of which sees potential in Walter as a professional fighter—and takes him under his wing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJulia (1977)
At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhere Hope Grows (2014)
Calvin Campbell is a former professional baseball player sent to an early retirement due to his panic attacks at the plate. Even though he had all the talent for the big leagues, he struggles with the curveballs life has thrown him. Today, he mindlessly sleepwalks through his days and the challenge of raising his teenager daughter. His life is in a slow downward spiral when it is suddenly awakened and invigorated by the most unlikely person – Produce, a young-man with Down syndrome who works at the local grocery store.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisHouse of Bamboo (1955)
Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWrong Way (2024)
In this short film the director reflects on the feeling of being on the wrong path in your life, that you have no control over your own life. But coming to the conclusion, it's life, we all go through it, and without these moments of fall we don't learn to live.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Land Before Time (1988)
An orphaned brontosaurus named Littlefoot sets off in search of the legendary Great Valley. A land of lush vegetation where the dinosaurs can thrive and live in peace. Along the way he meets four other young dinosaurs, each one a different species, and they encounter several obstacles as they learn to work together in order to survive.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCurrents (2026)
A TV field producer travels to Catalina Island to film an interview with a retired fisherman, but as the shoot unfolds, unresolved pieces of his past begin to surface.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Adrift (2024)
In this Lego stop-motion animated short brickfilm, an astronaut mysteriously trapped in space recounts how things could have been different
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
LIMINAL (2026)
LIMINAL tells the story of Vincent Marcum, a world-renowned quantum physicist who lost his wife and daughter in a tragic accident in 2001. Once a towering figure in the scientific community, Vincent has since withdrawn from the world, isolating himself in relentless pursuit of a singular goal, bending time itself. For decades, he has obsessively dedicated his life to achieving the impossible: time travel. Now, in the year 2053, at 86 years old, he finally succeeds. But in his research, he uncovers a disturbing truth: time does not curve as once theorized; it moves in a straight, unyielding line. This revelation carries terrifying implications... What happens when you travel back to the past and no one was there?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Under My Window (2024)
Anna is thinking of quitting sex work. She hears screaming from out the window.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Fog (2025)
A lone figure drifts between reality and reflection, caught in stillness and searching for something just out of reach.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Still Her Baby (TBA)
Following the sudden death of her conservative father, a transgender woman returns to her small Oklahoma hometown to help her estranged mother arrange the funeral, forcing both women to confront the painful choices that tore their family apart three years ago.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Sleep, Celeste (2024)
Celeste's life is pretty great at the moment; she has a good job, she and her best friend, Alice, are always there for each other, and she's eagerly looking forward to the day when her art will be shown at a trendy Manhattan gallery. From the outside looking in, her life seems perfect, much to the annoyance of one of her coworkers, Ariel. Things only get more tense when a handsome new coworker, Elliot, starts paying a lot of attention to Celeste. Ariel decides she's had enough of Celeste and hatches a plan to get rid of her, leading Celeste down a life changing path she never could have imagined.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound?
The closest matches to Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound are All Together Now (2020), Eleanor the Great (2025) and Adopt a Highway (2019). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound?
Start with All Together Now (2020), the closest match to Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound.
What is the highest-rated movie like Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound?
Where Hope Grows (2014), rated 7.9/10 by 232 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound?
LIMINAL (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Trying to Fly Despite Being Bound, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.