Movies like The Color of Paradise (1999)
The best movies like The Color of Paradise (1999) are Retablo (2018), Children of Heaven (1997) and The White Balloon (1995). If The Color of Paradise hooked you with its family and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Way Home (2002)8.0/10 from 242 votes
- NewestSun Children (2021)Released 2021
Retablo (2018)
Segundo sees silence as his only option for dealing with his father Noé’s secret. The 14-year-old lives with his parents in a village high up in the mountains. Noé is a respected artisan and Segundo’s role model. With loving eye for detail, he artfully crafts altarpieces for church and homes, and is preparing his son to follow in his footsteps. But cracks form in their tight bond.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisChildren of Heaven (1997)
Zohre's shoes are gone; her older brother Ali lost them. They are poor, there are no shoes for Zohre until they come up with an idea: they will share one pair of shoes. School awaits.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & family
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe White Balloon (1995)
Several people try to take advantage of a little girl's innocence to hustle money her mom gave to her to buy a goldfish with.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & family
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHere Without Me (2011)
The story is about the world of a small family with familiar dreams and not so remarkable problems. The mother is trying to lead everything to save her family, but small events disarrange all her plans.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & family
Where Is The Friend's House? (1987)
An 8-year-old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBaran (2001)
On a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBab'Aziz (2006)
The story of a blind dervish named Bab'Aziz and his spirited granddaughter, Ishtar. Together they wander the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that takes place just once every thirty years. With faith as their only guide, the two journey for days through the expansive, barren landscape.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
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: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Song of Sparrows (2008)
When an ostrich-rancher focuses on replacing his daughter's hearing aid, which breaks right before crucial exams, everything changes for a struggling rural family in Iran. Karim motorbikes into a world alien to him - incredibly hectic Tehran, where sudden opportunities for independence, thrill and challenge him. But his honor and honesty, plus traditional authority over his inventive clan, are tested, as he stumbles among vast cultural and economic gaps between his village nestled in the desert, and a throbbing international metropolis.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWhen We Leave (2010)
Umay is a young woman of Turkish descent, fighting for an independent and self-determined life in Germany against the resistance of her family. Her struggle initiates a dynamic, which results in a life-threatening situation.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & family
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTurtles Can Fly (2006)
Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iraq border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBuddha Collapsed Out of Shame (2007)
A young girl zealously wants to go to school and learn to read and write. Almost everywhere she is met with hostility or indifference. The only young boy who takes her to his school is thrown out by the teacher, because helping her prevented him from arriving in time. On her way home she and other girls are taken as prisoners by boys playing as Taliban fighters. They tear her school book to pieces and threaten to stone their female captives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBashu, the Little Stranger (1989)
During the Iran-Iraq War, young Bashu loses his home and family. Orphaned, he sneaks into a truck leaving the area, and gets off in the Northern country, where everything from landscape to language is different. He meets Naii, trying to raise her two young children on a farm while her husband is away. Despite cultural differences and a language barrier, Bashu and Naii slowly form a strong bond.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Silence (1998)
Khorshid, a blind child growing up in Tajikistan, is constantly distracted by music and sounds. This frequently causes him to be late to his job as an instrument tuner even though he runs the risk of being fired at a time when his family is in danger of being evicted from their house.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Kite Runner (2007)
After spending years in California, Amir returns to his homeland in Afghanistan to help his old friend Hassan, whose son is in trouble.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWomen Without Men (2009)
Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlackboards (2000)
Itinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Said falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes as his wife Halaleh, the clan's lone woman, a widow with a young son. Reeboir attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border; they're mules, always on the move. Said and Reeboir try to teach as their potential students keep walking. Danger is close; armed soldiers patrol the skies, the roads, and the border. Is there a role for a teacher? Is there hope?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAt Five in the Afternoon (2003)
Nogreh is a young Afghan woman living with her father and her sister-in-law, Leylomah, whose husband, Akhtar, is missing. Beyond the issue of Akhtar, Leylomah is most concerned with how to feed her baby. She cannot provide milk for her baby as her own hunger is preventing her from lactating. Nogreh, however, aspires toward a life in a western styled democracy. Although the Taliban are no longer in power in Afghanistan, traditional forces are still active in the country. Nogreh often displays signs of rebellion, such as wearing a pair of white pumps instead of the traditional slipper beneath her burqa. But mostly, Nogreh wants to be educated. Without her father's knowledge, Nogreh is attending a secular girls school. Ultimately, she wants to become President of Afghanistan. With the help of a Pakistani refugee who likes her as a woman, Nogreh tries to understand exactly what forces led to current world leaders being elected, those forces which she wants to emulate.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Half Moon (2006)
Mamo, an old and legendary Kurdish musician living in Iran, plans to give one final concert in Iraqi Kurdistan. After seven months of trying to get a permit and rounding up his ten sons, he sets out for the long and troublesome journey in a derelict bus, denying a recurring vision of his own death at half moon. Halfway the party halts at a small village to pick up female singer Hesho, which will only add to the difficulty of the undertaking, as it is forbidden for Iranian women to sing in public, let alone in the company of men. But Mamo is determined to carry through, if not for the gullible antics of the bus driver.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Way Home (2002)
This is the story of a 7-year-old boy, Sang-woo, born and raised in the big city, and his mute grandmother, who has spent her whole life in a small rural village.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisAbout Elly (2009)
The mysterious disappearance of a kindergarten teacher during a picnic in the north of Iran is followed by a series of misadventures for her fellow travelers.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWhale Rider (2003)
A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Māori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & family
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe White Meadows (2009)
Rahmat travels to a host of islands in a vast salt pan in order to collect the inhabitant's tears for an unknown purpose. He is joined on his mysterious journey by a young boy searching for his father. As their travel nears its end, a potent critique of Iran's political leadership emerges.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
A Time for Drunken Horses (2000)
After their father dies, a family of five children are forced to survive on their own in a Kurdish village on the border of Iran and Iraq.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
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: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Little Comrade (2018)
In the midst of Stalinist tyranny, six-year-old Leelo's mother is sent to a prison camp. Haunted by her mother's last words telling her to be a good kid, Leelo vows to be on her best behaviour in the confusing grown-up world in the hope that it will bring her mother back.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & family
The Rocket (2013)
Laos. In a land ravaged by war and exploitation, a boy whose family believe he is cursed must redeem himself by taking part in a dangerous rocket competition.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSun Children (2021)
The story of 12-year-old Ali and his three friends. Together they work hard to survive and support their families, doing small jobs in a garage and committing petty crimes to make fast money. In a turn of events that seems miraculous, Ali is entrusted to find hidden treasure underground. He recruits his gang, but first, to gain access to the tunnel, the children must enroll at the Sun School, a charitable institution that tries to educate street kids and child laborers, close to where the treasure is located.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRedhat and Cousin (1994)
Kolah Ghermezi is a naughty school boy. His playfulness gets him expelled from school and he fails to find a job. He sees a program on TV which attracts his attention and he goes to Tehran. With the help of Pesarkhaleh, he goes to the TV program he had seen and finds the reporter. He likes the reporter so much that he decides to help him overcome the obstacles he faces for getting married, but instead causes troubles.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both family
The Day I Became a Woman (2000)
A girl reaches the age of nine and is supposed to act as a grown woman according to her family. A girl participates in a bike race against the will of her husband. An elderly woman decides she wants to buy all the things she always wanted but could never get.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Like The Color of Paradise and something else?
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Color of Paradise?
The closest matches to The Color of Paradise are Retablo (2018), Children of Heaven (1997) and The White Balloon (1995). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Color of Paradise?
People who watched The Color of Paradise most often go on to Retablo (2018), Children of Heaven (1997) and The White Balloon (1995).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Color of Paradise?
The Way Home (2002), rated 8.0/10 by 242 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Color of Paradise?
Sun Children (2021) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to The Color of Paradise chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Color of Paradise, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.