Movies like A Flower in Wasteland (1961)
The best movies like A Flower in Wasteland (1961) are The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009), Remember Sunday (2013) and Sight (2023). If A Flower in Wasteland hooked you, these 20 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedClose-Up (1990)8.0/10 from 475 votes
- NewestReading Lolita in Tehran (2024)Released 2024
The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009)
In 1986 Iran, Sahebjam, whose car breaks down in a remote village, enters into a conversation with Zahra, who relays to him the story about her niece, Soraya, whose arranged marriage to an abusive tyrant ended in tragedy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRemember Sunday (2013)
A lonely, down-on-her-luck waitress meets a handsome, quirky jewelry store clerk and thinks that maybe, finally, she's met Mr. Right. The more Molly gets to know Gus, the more she's intrigued by him. But she's also mystified. Gus is absent-minded, preoccupied. Is he hiding something? The short answer is: yes. He's reluctant to share with her that since suffering a brain aneurysm, he's totally lost his short-term memory. Every day is a brand new day, his life starts anew. Every day he sees Molly he struggles to remember who she is and what she represents. Every day, he has to fall in love with her all over again.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSight (2023)
Ming Wang is an impoverished Chinese prodigy who flees Communist China to become a pioneering eye surgeon in America. When tasked with restoring the sight of an orphan in India, who was blinded by her stepmother, Wang must confront the trauma of living through the violent uprising in his youth, the Cultural Revolution.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe English Patient (1996)
In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAnd Life Goes On (1992)
After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisClose-Up (1990)
This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisEsther (1999)
Esther, the beautiful queen of Persia, intervenes to save the Jewish people from a bloody massacre.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPossessed (1947)
After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOnegin (1999)
A virtuous and passionate girl falls in love with a cynical but a dashing aristocrat.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923)
When Marie St. Clair believes she has been jilted by her artist fiance Jean, she decides to leave for Paris on her own. After spending a year in the city as a mistress of the wealthy Pierre Revel, she is reunited with Jean by chance. This leaves her with the choice between a glamorous life in Paris, and the true love she left behind.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Cecilia is a waitress in New Jersey, living a dreary life during the Great Depression. Her only escape from her mundane reality is the movie theatre. After losing her job, Cecilia goes to see 'The Purple Rose of Cairo' in hopes of raising her spirits, where she watches dashing archaeologist Tom Baxter time and again.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlown Away (1993)
After her mother is killed by a car bomb, a 17-year-old girl lives a reckless and decadent lifestyle. She begins having sex with a boy who works at a local ski resort. He falls in love, and she tells him of her suspicions that her strict father was responsible for her mother's death and wants him to help her out of her situation. He must decide whether she's telling the truth or using him to her own ends.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Thief of Bagdad (1940)
When Prince Ahmad is blinded and cast out of Bagdad by the nefarious Jaffar, he joins forces with the scrappy thief Abu to win back his royal place, as well as the heart of a beautiful princess.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Wind Will Carry Us (1999)
Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIf There Be Thorns (2015)
Christopher and Cathy Dollanganger live together as man and wife with Cathy's two sons who are unaware of the incestuous nature of their parents' relationship. But when a mysterious woman moves in next door and befriends the younger boy, Bart, he begins a strange transformation and displays accusatory behavior towards Cathy and Christopher. When Christopher discovers their mysterious neighbor is, in fact, his mother Corrine Dollanganger, all of the family's long-hidden secrets are revealed in a tragic climax.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTaste of Cherry (1997)
A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task because he needs the money, but his new associate soon tries to talk him out of committing suicide.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSeptembers of Shiraz (2015)
In this adaptation of the critically acclaimed debut novel by Iranian American author Dalia Sofer, a secular Jewish family is caught up in the maelstrom of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisEmpire of Light (2022)
The duty manager of a seaside cinema, who is struggling with her mental health, forms a relationship with a new employee on the south coast of England in the 1980s.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Color of Paradise (1999)
Mohammad joyfully returns to his tiny village on summer vacation from the Institute for the Blind, unaware of his widowed father's intentions to disown him in order to win the hand—and dowry—of a local woman. With the wedding swiftly approaching, Mohammad's future hangs precariously in the balance as his father struggles against his destiny, unable to see the wonder of life and love that's so clear to his son.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisReading Lolita in Tehran (2024)
In 1979, amidst censorship and religious extremism, a revolutionary literature professor in Tehran gathers seven of her most dedicated female students to immerse themselves in banned literary classics.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like A Flower in Wasteland?
The closest matches to A Flower in Wasteland are The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009), Remember Sunday (2013) and Sight (2023). Below are 17 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after A Flower in Wasteland?
Start with The Stoning of Soraya M. (2009), the closest match to A Flower in Wasteland.
What is the highest-rated movie like A Flower in Wasteland?
Close-Up (1990), rated 8.0/10 by 475 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like A Flower in Wasteland?
Reading Lolita in Tehran (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to A Flower in Wasteland chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside A Flower in Wasteland, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.