Movies like End of Desire (1958)

Madame Bovary (1991)

In 19th-century France, doctor's wife Emma Bovary seeks to escape her dull provincial life through various extramarital affairs and extravagant spending, leading to tragic consequences.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

The Song of Bernadette (1943)

In 1858 Lourdes, France, adolescent peasant Bernadette has a vision of "a beautiful lady" in the Massabielle grotto - the townspeople assume this lady to be the Virgin Mary. Pompous government officials think the girl is insane, doing their best to suppress her and her followers, while the church wants nothing to do with the matter. But as Bernadette attracts wider and wider attention, the phenomenon overtakes everyone in the town, ultimately transforming their lives.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Fanny (2013)

"Fanny" is the second part of the "Marseille trilogy", made by Marcel Pagnol with the generic name of "Marius, Fanny and César". Fanny falls in love and is abandoned by Marius. Now she discovers she is pregnant. Her mother and Marius's father, César, persuade her to accept the romantic advances of a much older man. To save face, Fanny accepts to marry Honoré Panisse, a rich merchant of the Vieux Port, 30 years her senior who will recognize her son.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

The War Lord (1965)

A knight in the service of a duke goes to a coastal village where an earlier attempt to build a defensive castle has failed. He begins to rebuild the duke's authority in the face of the barbarians at the border and is making progress until he falls in love with one of the local women.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

The Finishers (2013)

Julien, 17, is wheelchair-bound due to cerebral palsy. Despite their love for him, his family is gradually falling apart under the strain of dealing with his disability. In a bid to bond with his father, Julien challenges him to participate with him in the Ironman race in Nice (French Riviera), a triathlon in which his father has previously competed.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Diary of a Country Priest (1951)

An inexperienced, sickly priest shows up in the rural French community of Ambricourt, where he joins the community's clergy. But the locals don't take kindly to the priest, and his ascetic ways and unsociable demeanor make him an outcast. During Bible studies at the nearby girls school, he is continually mocked by his students. Then his attempt to intervene in a family feud backfires into a scandal. His failures, compounded with his declining health, begin to erode his faith.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Army of Shadows (1969)

Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

The Swimming Pool (1969)

Set in a magnificent villa near a sun-drenched St. Tropez, lovers Jean-Paul and Marianne are spending a happy, lazy summer holiday. Their only concern is to gratify their mutual passion - until the day when Marianne invites her former lover and his beautiful teenage daughter to spend a few days with them. From the first moment, a certain uneasiness and tension begin to develop between the four, which soon escalates in a dangerous love-game.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Jean de Florette (1986)

In a rural French village, an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water for growing their flowers, and are dismayed to hear that the man who has inherited it is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield through the hot summer. Though they see his desperate efforts are breaking his health and his wife and daughter's hearts, they think only of getting the water.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Topaz (1969)

Copenhagen, Denmark, 1962. When a high-ranking Soviet official decides to change sides, a French intelligence agent is caught up in a cold, silent and bloody spy war in which his own family will play a decisive role.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Out of Love (2025)

When Jeanne, a meticulous insurance assessor, is suddenly left to care for her estranged sister’s two children after their mother vanishes, her carefully ordered life begins to unravel. Confronted with unexpected responsibilities, she must balance the fragile task of earning the children’s trust while also tending to her own relationship with her girlfriend, who struggles to adjust to Jeanne’s new role. As grief, uncertainty, and shifting loyalties mount, Jeanne finds herself redefining what family and love truly mean.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Dunkirk (1958)

A British Corporal in France finds himself responsible for the lives of his men when their officer is killed. He has to get them back to Britain somehow. Meanwhile, British civilians are being dragged into the war with Operation Dynamo, the scheme to get the French and British forces back from the Dunkirk beaches. Some come forward to help, others were less willing.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

Isolated in the bell tower of Notre Dame, Quasimodo longs to experience the world beyond the cathedral walls, despite the wishes of his stern guardian, the Judge of Paris Claude Frollo. His first venture into the city leads him to Esmeralda, a fearless Romani woman whose defiance of Frollo's tyranny draws her—and Quasimodo—into his dangerous obsession.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Mansfield Park (2007)

Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, the Bertrams, where she is treated poorly by most except her cousin Edmund. Her life is complicated by the arrival of the worldly Mary and Henry Crawford

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

La Belle Équipe (1936)

Five unemployed workers win 100,000 Francs in the national lottery. Instead of sharing the money, they buy a ruin and build an open-air cafe. But difficulties come to split their friendly group apart.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Between Two Worlds (2022)

Marianne Winckler relocates to the port city of Caen in order to pass herself off as a member of a large community of itinerant workers desperate to make ends meet. She gains employment as a cleaner on a ferry travelling between Ouistreham and Portsmouth, recording the drudgery of the work she and her colleagues are required to do.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Adieu Philippine (1962)

Michel is a young technician in the fledgling TV industry and is due for military service in two months at the time of the Algerian War. Juliette and Liliane are inseparable best friends, and aspiring actresses, who hang around outside the TV studio. Michel invites them in to watch, flirts with them both, and dates them separately and together. When Michel goes on a holiday to Corsica, just before he is drafted, the girls follow.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Fatima (2020)

In 1917, outside the parish of Fátima, Portugal, a 10-year-old girl and her two younger cousins witness multiple visitations of the Virgin Mary, who tells them that only prayer and suffering will bring an end to World War I. As secularist government officials and Church leaders try to force the children to recant their story, word of the sighting spreads across the country, inspiring religious pilgrims to flock to the site in hopes of witnessing a miracle..

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

In the Beginning (2009)

France, present day. A professional conman passes himself off as the boss of a construction site building a highway extension. He cons the whole region, hires dozens of workers and cynically enjoys the profits of his scam until he meets the lady mayor of a small village that the road will go through. She intrigues and unsettles him, before revealing to him a world he never knew: feelings. How far will he go now to save his victims and save himself from his own lies?

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

Like a Son (2024)

Jacques Romand is a history teacher who has lost faith in his vocation. One evening, witnessing a shopkeeper attacked by three young robbers, he catches one of the aggressors, Victor, a 14-year-old Roma boy.

Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash Jr. experiences it all. As a brilliant but socially awkward mathematician, he made a groundbreaking discovery early in his career and stands on the brink of international acclaim. But as the handsome and arrogant Nash accepts secret work in cryptography, he becomes entangled in a mysterious conspiracy. His life takes a nightmarish turn and he soon finds himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery.

Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

The Green Mile (1999)

A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.

Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

Ronia: The Robber's Daughter (1984)

Ronia lives happily in her father's castle until she comes across a new playmate, Birk, in the nearby dark forest. The two explore the wilderness, braving dangerous Witchbirds and Rump-Gnomes. But when their families find out Birk and Ronia have been playing together, they forbid them to see each other again. Indeed, their fathers are competing robber chieftains and bitter enemies. Now the two spunky children must try to tear down the barriers that have kept their families apart for so long.

Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.

Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

A young woman from the Midwest gets more than she bargained for when she moves to New York to become a writer and ends up as the assistant to the tyrannical, larger-than-life editor-in-chief of a major fashion magazine.

Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

Das Boot (1981)

A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.

Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

Schindler's List (1993)

The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.

Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

Na startu je delfín (1975)

The teenage hero tries his best to meet the nomination limit for important races, but his coach's insensitive approach causes him to temporarily lose motivation and even give up on sports...

Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

Skalní plemeno (1944)

Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

Desert Hearts (1985)

While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed literature professor finds herself unexpectedly attracted by a carefree, spirited young woman named Cay.

Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama