Movies like Heli (2013)
The best movies like Heli (2013) are Birds of Passage (2018), Battle in Heaven (2005) and Silent Light (2007). If Heli hooked you with its crime and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedScarface (1983)8.2/10 from 13,663 votes
- NewestKiller Heat (2024)Released 2024
- In SpanishBirds of Passage (2018)Also in Spanish
Birds of Passage (2018)
During the marijuana bonanza, a violent decade that saw the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia, Rapayet and his indigenous family get involved in a war to control the business that ends up destroying their lives and their culture.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBattle in Heaven (2005)
Set in Mexico City, Carlos Reygadas's sexually explicit drama centers on a man in turmoil over his past actions. Chauffer Marcos feels compelled to reveal a dark secret to his boss's daughter, Ana, a wealthy woman who works as a prostitute just for the thrill of it. Marcos confesses that he and his wife committed a crime that ended in horrible tragedy. Haunted by his past, Marcos searches for redemption.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisSilent Light (2007)
Johan and his family are Mennonites from the north of Mexico. Against the law of God and Man, Johan falls in love with another woman.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOur Lady of the Assassins (2000)
World-weary author Fernando has returned to his native Colombia to live out his days in peace. But Fernando's once-quiet hometown has become a hotbed of violence, drugs, and corruption. On the brink of despair, Fernando meets Alexis, a beautiful but hardened street kid who lives by the rule of the gun. Together, they forge an unlikely relationship.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIdentifying Features (2020)
Magdalena makes a journey to find her son, who has disappeared on his way to the Mexican border with the United States. Her odyssey takes her to meet Miguel, a man recently deported from the US. They start to travel together, Magdalena looking for her son, and Miguel hoping to see his mother again.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Precocious and Brief Life of Sabina Rivas (2012)
In the Mexican-Guatemalan border, young teenage lovers, Sabina and Jovany, both Hondurans, accidentally meet again after some years without seeing each other. She plans to get to the United States and dreams about being a great singer; he commits all the required atrocities to be accepted by the gang: la Mara Salvatrucha. Sabina and Jovany crashed with the most adverse conditions at the border like white slavery, the Mexican and American migratory agents Burrona and Patrick, the brothel matron Doña Lita, Don Nico the Mexican Consul in Tecún Umán, the drug trafficking networks, the army and la Mara Salvatrucha.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPost Tenebras Lux (2012)
Juan and his urban family live in the Mexican countryside, where they enjoy and suffer a world apart. And nobody knows if these two worlds are complimentary or if they strive to eliminate one another.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRosario Tijeras (2005)
Rosario Tijeras has been abused by men all her life, initially by her stepfather. Years later, she works as a paid assassin, seducing men and killing them when they least expect it. She meets Emilio, a wealthy womanizer, and his best friend, Antonio, at a nightclub, and starts an affair with Emilio despite Antonio's growing feelings for her. But circumstances bring her closer to Antonio, until her past catches up with her in a devastating way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Bastards (2008)
A 24 hour period in the lives of Fausto and Jesus, two undocumented Mexican day-laborers in L.A. Each day another task, each day the same pressure to find money. They go about their daily routine, standing on the corner at the Home Improvement Store waiting for work to come. Today, the job they are given is well paid compared to their poor usual wages.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Our Time (2018)
A family lives in the Mexican countryside raising fighting bulls. Esther is in charge of running the ranch, while her husband Juan, a world-renowned poet, raises and selects the beasts. Although in an open marriage, their relationship begins to crumble when Esther falls in love with an American horsebreaker and Juan is unable to control his jealousy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCrónicas (2004)
A suspense thriller about a reporter from Miami who travels to Ecuador in pursuit of a serial killer known as the "Monster of Babahoyo."
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBackyard (2009)
Officer Blanca Bravo arrives in Juarez, Mexico — a grim nexus of corporate colonialism and sexual tourism — to investigate a rash of killings targeting female migrant workers. But with no help from the locals, bringing the responsible parties to justice becomes a frustrating exercise. As Bravo rails against indifference and local corruption, she finds herself on a collision course with Mickey Santos, a Mexican mogul with a taste for young prostitutes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Tear This Heart Out (2008)
A young girl recounts her girlhood and eventual marriage to a general of the Mexican revolution. by one of the most outstanding writers of the new feminist Mexican literature, it is at once a haunting novel of one woman's life and a powerful account of post-revolutionary Mexico from a female perspective.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisHighway Patrolman (1991)
A naïve rookie in the Mexican highway patrol must adapt in order to survive as he contends with widespread corruption, dangerous drug runners and the consequences of his often morally gray actions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Heroic (2023)
Luis, an 18-year-old Mexican boy with indigenous roots, enters the Heroico Military College with the hope of securing a better future. There, he encounters a rigid and institutionally violent system designed to make him a perfect soldier.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSin Nombre (2009)
Sayra, an Indigenous Latina American teenage girl from Honduras, Central America, hungers for a better life. Her chance for one comes when she is reunited with her long-estranged father, who intends to emigrate to Mexico and then enter the United States. Sayra's life collides with a pair of Indigenous Latino American gang members from Mexico, North America who have boarded the same USA-bound train.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Tender Matador (2020)
Among gunshots and boleros, a passionate relationship flourishes between a lonely transvestite and a young guerrilla during the Pinochet dictatorship.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Other Family (2011)
Jean Paul and Chema have been together ten years. They have successful careers, a comfortable home and many friends. But that's all turned turned upside down when close friend Ivana rescues Hendrix from his broken home and asks them to care for the boy. Hendrix's mother Nina is a drug addict who suffers at the hands of her abusive partner Patrick. The men begin to consider making Hendrix part of their family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Ixcanul (2015)
María, a 17-year-old Kaqchikel Maya, lives with her parents on a coffee plantation at the foot of an active volcano. She is set to be married to the farm's foreman. But María longs to discover the world on the other side of the mountain, a place she cannot even imagine. And so she seduces a coffee-harvester who wants to escape to the USA. When this man leaves her behind, María discovers her own world and culture anew.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPost Mortem (2010)
In Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende's presidency, an employee at a Morgue's recording office falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMuseo (2018)
Mexico, 1985. Juan and Wilson, two perennial Veterinary students, perpetrate an audacious heist in the National Museum of Anthropology, running away with a loot of more than hundred invaluable pieces of Mayan art, unaware of the consequences of their outrageous act.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSeeds (2018)
The coming of age story of a boy that after a traumatic event is taken to beautiful Cuernavaca, where he has to find his father while trying to adapt to life with his grandmother, who has problems of her own.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
I Promise You Anarchy (2015)
Miguel and Johnny know each other since childhood. They are dedicated to skate and have fun. To earn easy money and continue skating, they sell their own blood to a clandestine contact in a hospital. The activity becomes business until a large transaction is not as they imagined.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
José (2020)
José lives with his mother in Guatemala: a tough life in one of the world's most dangerous, religious, and impoverished countries. José is her youngest and favorite child, and her life is going to church and selling sandwiches. He spends his days on crowded buses and in the streets delivering food. Resigned and aloof, in free moments he plays with his phone and looks for random sex. When he meets Luis, José is thrust into a dimension of passion and pain and self-reflection that was previously unimaginable.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Chicuarotes (2019)
Cagalera and Moloteco are two teenagers from San Gregorio Atlapulco who are desperate to get out and move up and away from oppressive circumstances. When they hear of an opportunity to buy a spot in the electrician’s union, which could transform their lives, they quickly devolve into the criminal, adult underworld of Mexico City in a bid to buy their freedom.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDeep Crimson (1996)
Driven by desire and desperate for self-love, Coral and Nicolás will abandon their past lives in a journey surrounded by murder.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKiller Heat (2024)
An expat PI is hired to investigate a suspicious death in Crete, Greece, where jealousies run deep amongst the victim's powerful family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisLonely Hearts (2006)
In the late 1940s, a murderous couple known as the 'The Lonely Hearts Killers' kills close to a dozen people. Two detectives try to nab the duo who find their targets via the personals in the paper.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisScarface (1983)
After getting a green card in exchange for assassinating a Cuban government official, Tony Montana stakes a claim on the drug trade in Miami. Viciously murdering anyone who stands in his way, Tony eventually becomes the biggest drug lord in the state, controlling nearly all the cocaine that comes through Miami. But increased pressure from the police, wars with Colombian drug cartels and his own drug-fueled paranoia serve to fuel the flames of his eventual downfall.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTraffic (2000)
An exploration of the United States of America's war on drugs from multiple perspectives. For the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the war becomes personal when he discovers his well-educated daughter is abusing cocaine within their comfortable suburban home. In Mexico, a flawed, but noble policeman agrees to testify against a powerful general in league with a cartel, and in San Diego, a drug kingpin's sheltered trophy wife must learn her husband's ruthless business after he is arrested, endangering her luxurious lifestyle.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Heli?
The closest matches to Heli are Birds of Passage (2018), Battle in Heaven (2005) and Silent Light (2007). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Heli?
People who watched Heli most often go on to Birds of Passage (2018), Battle in Heaven (2005) and Silent Light (2007).
What is the highest-rated movie like Heli?
Scarface (1983), rated 8.2/10 by 13,663 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Heli?
Killer Heat (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Spanish movies like Heli?
Yes: Birds of Passage (2018), Battle in Heaven (2005) and Silent Light (2007).
How are movies similar to Heli chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Heli, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.