Movies like Failan (2001)
The best movies like Failan (2001) are Not Easily Broken (2009), Purple Hearts (2022) and Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between (2022). If Failan hooked you with its drama and romance, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedLife in a Year (2020)8.2/10 from 2,026 votes
- NewestA Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025)Released 2025
- In KoreanChristmas in August (1998)Also in Korean
Not Easily Broken (2009)
A car accident and shifting affections test the bond between a married couple.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPurple Hearts (2022)
An aspiring musician agrees to a marriage of convenience with a soon-to-deploy Marine, but a tragedy soon turns their fake relationship all too real.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisHello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between (2022)
Clare and Aidan make a pact to break up before college — no regrets, no broken hearts. But will one epic goodbye date offer them a last chance at love?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Lost Husband (2020)
Trying to put her life back together after the death of her husband, Libby and her children move to her estranged Aunt's goat farm in central Texas.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Man from Elysian Fields (2001)
A failed novelist's inability to pay the bills strains relations with his wife and leads him to work at an escort service, where he becomes entwined with a wealthy woman whose husband is a successful writer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisLife in a Year (2020)
A 17 year old finds out that his girlfriend is dying, so he sets out to give her an entire life, in the last year she has left.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLove Everlasting (2016)
Bridger is a young outsider who's always wanted more. He and his mother flee an abusive home, eventually finding a small town in the middle of nowhere. Once there, Bridger finds true acceptance with another misfit.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSalome (1953)
In the reign of emperor Tiberius, Gallilean prophet John the Baptist preaches against King Herod and Queen Herodias. The latter wants John dead, but Herod fears to harm him due to a prophecy. Enter beautiful Princess Salome, Herod's long-absent stepdaughter. Herodias sees the king's dawning lust for Salome as her means of bending him to her will. But Salome and her lover Claudius are–contrary to Scripture–nearing conversion to the new religion.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisForever First Love (2020)
Paul travels the world to capture the perfect photographic moment. Amid the colour and chaos of a crowded Filipino market, destiny intervenes when Paul’s first love, Anna appears in his lens. The travellers spend the day exploring the beauty of a 16th century town and whilst passions reignite, their principles on relationships, religion and morality clash. The night they spend together will change everything.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Sun Is Also a Star (2019)
Two young New Yorkers begin to fall in love over the course of a single day, as a series of potentially life-altering meetings loom over their heads - hers concerning her family’s deportation to Jamaica, and his concerning an education at Dartmouth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNine Lives (2005)
Captives of the very relationships that define and sustain them, nine women resiliently meet the travails and disappointments of life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI'm in Love with a Church Girl (2013)
Miles Montego has it all - cars, boats, good looks, mansion, money, women, but more importantly, he has a past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisA Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025)
Sarah and David are single strangers who meet at a mutual friend’s wedding and soon, through a surprising twist of fate, find themselves on a funny, fantastical, sweeping adventure together where they get to re-live important moments from their respective pasts, illuminating how they got to where they are in the present... and possibly getting a chance to alter their futures.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSave the Last Dance (2001)
After the death of her mother, Sara moves to the South Side of Chicago to live with her father and gets transferred to a majority-black school. Her life takes a turn for the better when befriends Chenille and her brother Derek, who helps her with her dancing skills.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChristmas in August (1998)
It's a sweltering summer, but Jung-won, a terminally ill, thirty-something photographer, is already in the winter of his life when he begins a tentative romance with a young traffic cop who doesn't know about his condition. Is their relationship doomed before it even begins?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDitto (2022)
A college student in 1999 discovers a mysterious ham radio that connects him to a woman from 2022, sparking an impossible love story across time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOur Sunhi (2013)
Sunhi, a film major graduate, visits her school to ask her Professor Choi for a recommendation letter to study in U.S. Knowing the professor favors her, she expects a good recommendation from him. Out from her shell after a long time, Sunhi also ends up meeting two men from her past: Munsu, her ex-boy friend, and Jaehak, a director who graduated from the same film school. Through the encounters between Sunhi and the three men, they give each other an 'advice on life' with good intentions. The three men who all have strong interests in her are led to guess and define her, unable to tell how she really feels inside. Strangely, the mentioned advices and traits of her are similar and seem to pass from one person to the next. The words of 'advice on life' seem doubtable and slip away as the three men's thoughts on Sunhi become more and more irrelevant.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMore Than Blue (2009)
A terminally ill man tries to find a suitable husband for the friend he has loved since childhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTitanic (1953)
Unhappily married, Julia Sturges decides to go to America with her two children on the Titanic. Her husband, Richard also arranges passage on the luxury liner so as to have custody of their two children. All this fades to insignificance once the ship hits an iceberg.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Better Tomorrow (2010)
An idealistic policeman must bring down his estranged older brother, now a powerful gangster in a South Korean port city.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWalking Backwards (2020)
32-year-old Siheon, a delivery worker at Eurwangni Beach, is soon to be a college student. One day, as he is congratulated by the aunties at the restaurant, a Japanese man approaches and informs him his mother is dead. 30-year-old Ryota is the son of Siheon’s mother who left young Siheon and have a new family of her own in Japan. The brothers who met for the first time and Siheon’s friend Yejin head to Siheon’s old house in Chinatown where his mother’s trinkets are buried.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Coin Locker Girl (2015)
Il-young tries to get away from her adoptive mother because she does not want to get involved in her mother's criminal activities.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGreen Night (2023)
Two lone female fighters who have learned to rely on no one but themselves venture into Seoul's underworld. In search of the big hit that could mean liberation from their useless husbands, these disparate women grow closer.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Super Nova (2021)
Kidong is an exploration crew member of ASA (not NASA), aka Asia Space Administration. He leaves ASA to raise his daughter, Kyujin, after his wife and colleague, Sunho, dies during childbirth. One day, he has a mysterious experience meeting Sunho from a different dimension and decides to go back to space to search for her. He boards the secret spacecraft, Super Nova, based on the blueprints left behind by Sunho.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance
Silmido (2003)
On 31 January 1968, 31 North Korean commandos infiltrated South Korea in a failed mission to assassinate President Park Chung-hee. In revenge, the South Korean military assembled a team of 31 criminals on the island of Silmido to kill Kim Il-sung for a suicide mission to redeem their honor, but was cancelled, leaving them frustrated. It is loosely based on a military uprising in the 1970s.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTake Care of My Cat (2001)
When one girl from five close school friends moves to Seoul after school is over, the other four try and deal with the loss of her moving and them drifting apart.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLike a Virgin (2006)
A chubby high school student participatee in a sports competition to win a cash prize for sex change surgery.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Abenko Green Beret (1982)
Abengo Corps is under the direct control of headquarters of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. In order to conceal the Inchon Landing Operation, Abengo is assigned to the Wonsan Landing Operation as a decoy mission. With the operation soon at hand, the members of this operation go on a special vacation to Busan. Among them is Il-gyu. He meets with Bae Su-na, a refugee, and they spend a passionate, touching night of love together. The members perform their duties as ordered. Lieutenant Colonel Koh receives a coded message from the headquarters. Koh realizes that his men are a diversion for the Inchon Landing Operation. Lieutenant Koh is angered and resentful. And Lieutenant Sung is chosen to enter the battle instead of Lieutenant Colonel Koh. During the January 4 Retreat, Lieutenant Sung meets Su-na, who has had Il-gyu's son. Lieutenant Sung helps her out.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Not Out (2021)
Gwang-ho, a prospect on his high school baseball team, is not drafted by a professional baseball team. His desire to continue playing baseball strains his relationship with his team members. Gwang-ho eventually begins selling fake gasoline with his friend Min-cheol.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Like Failan and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Failan?
The closest matches to Failan are Not Easily Broken (2009), Purple Hearts (2022) and Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between (2022). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Failan?
Start with Not Easily Broken (2009), the closest match to Failan.
What is the highest-rated movie like Failan?
Life in a Year (2020), rated 8.2/10 by 2,026 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Failan?
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Korean movies like Failan?
Yes: Christmas in August (1998), Ditto (2022) and Our Sunhi (2013).
How are movies similar to Failan chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Failan, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.