Movies like The Elephant Man (1980)
The best movies like The Elephant Man (1980) are Radium Girls (2020), Six Minutes to Midnight (2020) and I Swear (2025). If The Elephant Man hooked you with its drama and history, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedI Swear (2025)8.3/10 from 678 votes
- NewestStrangers in the Park (2026)Released 2026
Radium Girls (2020)
Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on their health.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSix Minutes to Midnight (2020)
Summer 1939. Influential families in Nazi Germany have sent their daughters to a finishing school in an English seaside town to learn the language and be ambassadors for a future looking National Socialist. A teacher there sees what is coming and is trying to raise the alarm. But the authorities believe he is the problem.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Swear (2025)
Diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome at 15, John Davidson navigates his way against the odds through troubled teenage years and into adulthood, finding inspiration in the kindness of others to discover his true purpose in life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisGiant (2026)
Follows Prince Naseem Hamed from his humble beginnings on the tough working-class streets of Sheffield and his discovery by Ingle, himself a steel industry worker turned boxing trainer. Their unlikely partnership, Naz’s unorthodox style, cocky persona, and sheer dominance in the ring propelled them to the top of boxing’s elite and unprecedented levels of global superstardom, all in the face of the rampant Islamophobia and racism of ’80s and 90’s Britain.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll Is True (2018)
London, June 29th, 1613. The Globe Theater, ran by the famous playwright William Shakespeare, accidentally burns to ashes. Seriously affected, he stops writing and returns to his hometown, where his wife Anne and daughters Judith and Susanna get surprised to hear he intends to stay there definitively, after two decades working in the capital, neglecting his sincere affections for them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisVictoria & Abdul (2017)
Queen Victoria strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young Indian clerk named Abdul Karim.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisExperimenter (2015)
Yale University, 1961. Stanley Milgram designs a psychology experiment that still resonates to this day, in which people think they’re delivering painful electric shocks to an affable stranger strapped into a chair in another room. Despite his pleads for mercy, the majority of subjects don’t stop the experiment, administering what they think is a near-fatal electric shock, simply because they’ve been told to do so. With Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram strikes a nerve in popular culture and the scientific community with his exploration into people’s tendency to comply with authority. Celebrated in some circles, he is also accused of being a deceptive, manipulative monster, but his wife Sasha stands by him through it all.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Current War (2018)
Electricity titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse compete to create a sustainable system and market it to the American people.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMask (1985)
A significantly deformed but highly intelligent teenage boy and his biker gang mother attempt to live as normal a life as possible under the circumstances.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSomething the Lord Made (2004)
A dramatization of the relationship between heart surgery pioneers Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Greatest Showman (2017)
The story of American showman P.T. Barnum, founder of the circus that became the famous traveling Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisA Woman's Face (1941)
A female blackmailer with a disfiguring facial scar meets a plastic surgeon who offers her the possibility of looking like a normal woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOliver Twist (2005)
An orphan endures a harsh life in a workhouse before fleeing to London, where he falls in with a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the criminal Fagin, and eventually finds a better life, exposing the cruelties of poverty and child labor in Victorian England.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOliver Twist (1948)
When 9-year-old orphan Oliver Twist dares to ask his cruel taskmaster, Mr. Bumble, for a second serving of gruel, he's hired out as an apprentice. Escaping that dismal fate, young Oliver falls in with the street urchin known as the Artful Dodger and his criminal mentor, Fagin. When kindly Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver in, Fagin's evil henchman Bill Sikes plots to kidnap the boy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLiving (2022)
London, 1953. Mr. Williams, a veteran civil servant, is an important cog within the city's bureaucracy as it struggles to rebuild in the aftermath of World War II. Buried under paperwork at the office and lonely at home, his life has long felt empty and meaningless. Then a devastating medical diagnosis forces him to take stock, and to try and grasp some fulfilment before it passes permanently beyond reach.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAwakenings (1990)
Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a shy research physician, uses an experimental drug to "awaken" the catatonic victims of a rare disease. Leonard is the first patient to receive the controversial treatment. His awakening, filled with awe and enthusiasm, proves a rebirth for Sayer too, as the exuberant patient reveals life's simple but unutterably sweet pleasures to the introverted doctor.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFinding Neverland (2004)
During a writing slump, playwright J.M. Barrie meets a widow and her four children, all young boys—who soon become an important part of Barrie’s life and the inspiration that lead him to create his masterpiece. Peter Pan.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCradle Will Rock (1999)
A true story of politics and art in the 1930s USA, centered around a leftist musical drama and attempts to stop its production.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOliver! (1968)
Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, a classic tale of an orphan who runs away from the workhouse and joins up with a group of boys headed by the Artful Dodger and trained to be pickpockets by master thief Fagin.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGigi & Nate (2022)
A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRan (1985)
Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisInvincible (2006)
Inspired by the true story of Vince Papale, a man with nothing to lose who ignored the staggering odds and made his dream come true. When the coach of Papale's beloved hometown football team hosted an unprecedented open tryout, the public consensus was that it was a waste of time – no one good enough to play professional football was going to be found this way.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPelle the Conqueror (1987)
In the late 19th century, two Swedish emigrants, Lasse Karlsson and his son Pelle, arrive on the Danish island of Bornholm hoping to find work on a farm and save enough money to travel to the United States of America.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKinsey (2004)
Kinsey is a portrait of researcher Alfred Kinsey, driven to uncover the most private secrets of a nation. What begins for Kinsey as a scientific endeavor soon takes on an intensely personal relevance, ultimately becoming an unexpected journey into the mystery of human behavior.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTouching the Void (2003)
The true story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates' disastrous and nearly-fatal mountain climb of 6,344m Siula Grande in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes in 1985.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Ninth Day (2004)
During WWII, head priest Henri Kremer is mysteriously freed from Dachau. He learns that he can return home to Luxembourg, for only nine days, during which he'll have to face a persuasive Gestapo chief who will put his faith to the test.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)
In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHouse of Sand and Fog (2003)
Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisChungking Express (1994)
Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisStrangers in the Park (2026)
A former communist militant and a "live and let live" man form an unlikely friendship on a park bench, sharing their life stories with humor and heart.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Elephant Man?
The closest matches to The Elephant Man are Radium Girls (2020), Six Minutes to Midnight (2020) and I Swear (2025). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Elephant Man?
Start with Radium Girls (2020), the closest match to The Elephant Man.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Elephant Man?
I Swear (2025), rated 8.3/10 by 678 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Elephant Man?
Strangers in the Park (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Elephant Man?
Yes: Radium Girls (2020), Six Minutes to Midnight (2020) and I Swear (2025).
How are movies similar to The Elephant Man chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Elephant Man, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.