Movies like Out of the Dust (2025)
The best movies like Out of the Dust (2025) are Mao’s Last Dancer (2009), Black Swan (2010) and The Red Shoes (1948). If Out of the Dust hooked you, these 20 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Out of the Dust
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Red Shoes (1948)8.0/10 from 787 votes
- NewestPitfall (2025)Released 2025
Mao’s Last Dancer (2009)
At the age of 11, Li was plucked from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao's cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange to Texas, he falls in love with an American woman. Two years later, he managed to defect and went on to perform as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlack Swan (2010)
A committed dancer struggles to maintain her sanity after winning the lead role in a production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake."
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Red Shoes (1948)
A fledgling ballerina falls in love with a brilliant composer, but the jealous head of the ballet company plots to drive them apart.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe American (2023)
American ballet dancer Joy Womack is accepted into Moscow's infamously tough Bolshoi Ballet Academy, with the dream of becoming a great ballerina.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLimelight (1952)
A fading music hall comedian tries to help a despondent ballet dancer learn to walk and to again feel confident about life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisWild (2014)
A woman with a tragic past decides to start her new life by hiking for one thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBound for Glory (1976)
A biography of Woody Guthrie, one of America's greatest folk singers. He left his dust-devastated Texas home in the 1930s to find work, discovering the suffering and strength of America's working class.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Man Who Cried (2000)
A young refugee travels from Russia to America in search of her lost father and falls in love with a gypsy horseman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Homesman (2014)
When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs, to join her. The unlikely pair and the three women head east, where a waiting minister and his wife have offered to take the women in. But the group first must traverse the harsh Nebraska Territories marked by stark beauty, psychological peril and constant threat.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986)
Although Jo Jo Dancer has achieved success as a stand-up comedian, he hasn't found happiness. After receiving severe burns in a narcotics-related incident, Jo Jo remains in a coma, and, while in this state, he looks back on his life. Drifting off into memories of his troubled childhood, Jo Jo revisits his youth, recalling his eventual rise to fame and the decadence that followed. As he considers his existence, he must decide if he wants to go on living or not.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStep Up (2006)
Delinquent Tyler Gage receives the opportunity of a lifetime after vandalizing a performing arts school, gaining him the chance to earn a scholarship and dance with up-and-coming dancer Nora.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGold Diggers of 1935 (1935)
Romance strikes when a vacationing millionairess and her daughter and son spend their vacation at a posh New England resort.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Piano (1993)
When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited pre-teen daughter Flora to the wilderness of 19th-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFootloose (1984)
When teenager Ren and his family move from big-city Chicago to a small town in the West, he's in for a real case of culture shock after discovering he's living in a place where music and dancing are illegal.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPitfall (2025)
After a young man is separated from his friends in the woods, he falls into a ten-foot deep pit of spikes, impaling him through his leg and leaving him trapped. He quickly learns that his fall was not an accident.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStreetDance 3D (2010)
In order to win the Street Dance Championships, a dance crew is forced to work with ballet dancers from the Royal Dance School in exchange for rehearsal space.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Meg (2018)
A deep sea submersible pilot revisits his past fears in the Mariana Trench, and accidentally unleashes the seventy foot ancestor of the Great White Shark believed to be extinct.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSuspiria (2018)
A darkness swirls at the center of a world-renowned dance company, one that will engulf the artistic director, an ambitious young dancer, and a grieving psychotherapist. Some will succumb to the nightmare. Others will finally wake up.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDust Devil (1992)
A woman on the run from her abusive husband encounters a mysterious hitch-hiker.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHoney 3: Dare to Dance (2016)
While attending college in Cape Town, Melea Martin feels constrained by the school's strict policies, and decides to set out on her own. Searching for a way to use her talents as a dancer and inspire the community around her, Melea rents a failing theater in order to put on a Hip-Hop Romeo and Juliet performance. But much like the Capulets and Montagues, conflicts between cast members threaten to bring the whole performance to a halt...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Out of the Dust?
The closest matches to Out of the Dust are Mao’s Last Dancer (2009), Black Swan (2010) and The Red Shoes (1948). Below are 17 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Out of the Dust?
Start with Mao’s Last Dancer (2009), the closest match to Out of the Dust.
What is the highest-rated movie like Out of the Dust?
The Red Shoes (1948), rated 8.0/10 by 787 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Out of the Dust?
Pitfall (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Out of the Dust?
Yes: Mao’s Last Dancer (2009), Black Swan (2010) and The Red Shoes (1948).
How are movies similar to Out of the Dust chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Out of the Dust, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.