Movies like The Piano Lesson (1995)
The best movies like The Piano Lesson (1995) are Fences (2016), Eve's Bayou (1997) and The Color Purple (1985). If The Piano Lesson hooked you with its drama and tv movie, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Color Purple (1985)7.7/10 from 2,060 votes
- NewestThe Piano Lesson (2024)Released 2024
Fences (2016)
In 1950s Pittsburgh, a frustrated African-American father struggles with the constraints of poverty, racism, and his own inner demons as he tries to raise a family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEve's Bayou (1997)
Summer heats up in rural Louisiana beside Eve’s Bayou, 1962, as the Batiste family tries to survive the secrets they’ve kept and the betrayals they’ve endured.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Color Purple (1985)
An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing 'Mister' Albert Johnson, things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she can. She perseveres, holding on to her dream of one day being reunited with her sister in Africa.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Piano Lesson (2024)
A brother and sister's battle over a prized heirloom piano unleashes haunting truths about how the past is perceived — and who defines a family legacy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisSlam (1998)
Raymond Joshua, a young black performance poet, is arrested and imprisoned for a petty marijuana charge in a Washington, D.C. jail. Although the confining prison walls do little to shield him from danger, it is within those walls that Raymond establishes his identity, strength, and voice and meets a prison gang leader and a prison writing teacher, Lauren Bell. Bell inspires Raymond to use the power of creative expression to free himself from the struggles and demise of the Black male as another victim of the judicial system.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
A drama set in the 1920s, where free-spirited Janie Crawford's search for happiness leads her through several different marriages, challenging the morals of her small town. Based on the novel by Zora Neale Hurston.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Daughters of the Dust (1991)
In 1902, a Gullah family on the Sea Islands off South Carolina decide whether to migrate to the mainland, risking their unique cultural heritage.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRed Hook Summer (2012)
When his mom deposits him at the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn to spend the summer with the grandfather he’s never met, young Flik may as well have landed on Mars. Fresh from his cushy life in Atlanta, he’s bored and friendless, and his strict grandfather, Enoch, a firebrand preacher, is bent on getting him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Only Chazz, the feisty girl from church, provides a diversion from the drudgery. As hot summer simmers and Sunday mornings brim with Enoch’s operatic sermons, things turn anything but dull as people’s conflicting agendas collide.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Killer of Sheep (1978)
An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFeast of All Saints (2001)
Set in 19th-century New Orleans, the story depicts the gens de couleur libre, or the Free People of Colour, a dazzling yet damned class caught between the world of white privilege and black oppression.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Skin (2009)
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhite Man's Burden (1995)
The story takes place in alternative America where the blacks are members of social elite, and whites are inhabitants of inner city ghettos. Louis Pinnock is a white worker in a chocolate factory, loving husband and father of two children. While delivering a package for black CEO Thaddeus Thomas, he is mistaken for a voyeur and, as a result, loses his job, gets beaten by black cops and his family gets evicted from their home. Desperate Pinnock takes a gun and kidnaps Thomas, demanding justice.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisDown in the Delta (1998)
A single mother plagued by alcohol and drug addictions is sent with her children from Chicago to her ancestral home in the Mississippi Delta, to live with her uncle and aunt for the summer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
An enigmatic drifter from the South comes to visit an old acquaintance who now lives in South-Central LA.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBeloved (1998)
After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved". Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things start to happen...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisMister Johnson (1991)
In 1923 British Colonial Nigeria, Mister Johnson is an oddity -- an educated black man who doesn't really fit in with the natives or the British. He works for the local British magistrate, and considers himself English, though he has never been to England. He is always scheming, trying to get ahead, which lands him in a lot of hot water.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (1996)
A dramatization of the life of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (Don Cheadle), with a lot of factual based occurrences. A reformed junkie returns from prison to clean up his act and devote the rest of his life to the young kids of Harlem. 1996 was the 25th anniversary of the first tournament named after him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisGirl in the Box (2016)
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTalhotBlond (2012)
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Am Elizabeth Smart (2017)
The story of Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping and captivity, as told from her perspective.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Dinner with Hervé (2018)
An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRay Donovan: The Movie (2022)
A showdown decades in the making brings the Donovan family legacy full circle. As the events that made Ray who he is today finally come to light, the Donovans find themselves drawn back to Boston to face the past. Each of them struggles to overcome their violent upbringing, but destiny dies hard, and only their fierce love for each other keeps them in the fight.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCheaters (2000)
In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHello Sister, Goodbye Life (2006)
A college student must take care of her 7-year-old half sister after the death of their parents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHeaven (2019)
Heaven Leigh Casteel, gifted and intelligent, is the eldest of five dirt-poor children struggling to survive in a mountain shack. As she endures neglect and abuse, Heaven discovers a dark secret that changes everything she thought she knew about her family. Then tragedy tears her world apart and she must forge her own way in the cruel, unknown world.
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 thisMansfield 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
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTuesdays with Morrie (1999)
A journalist finds himself questioning his own life when his best friend, a dying man, offers him some very powerful wisdom and advice for coping in relationships, careers and society.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAmerican Son (2019)
Time passes and tension mounts in a Florida police station as an estranged interracial couple awaits news of their missing teenage son.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Piano Lesson?
The closest matches to The Piano Lesson are Fences (2016), Eve's Bayou (1997) and The Color Purple (1985). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Piano Lesson?
People who watched The Piano Lesson most often go on to Fences (2016), Eve's Bayou (1997) and The Color Purple (1985).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Piano Lesson?
The Color Purple (1985), rated 7.7/10 by 2,060 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Piano Lesson?
The Piano Lesson (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Piano Lesson?
Yes: Fences (2016), Eve's Bayou (1997) and The Color Purple (1985).
How are movies similar to The Piano Lesson chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Piano Lesson, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.