Movies like The Pawnbroker (1965)
The best movies like The Pawnbroker (1965) are Passenger (1963), The Shop on Main Street (1965) and The Devil's Arithmetic (1999). If The Pawnbroker hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Pianist (2002)8.4/10 from 10,623 votes
- NewestMy Neighbor Adolf (2022)Released 2022
Passenger (1963)
A German woman on a ship returning to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she had been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Shop on Main Street (1965)
In a small town in Nazi-occupied Slovakia during World War II, decent but timid carpenter Tono is named "Aryan comptroller" of a button store owned by an old Jewish widow, Rozalie. Since the post comes with a salary and standing in the town's corrupt hierarchy, Tono wrestles with greed and guilt as he and Rozalie gradually befriend each other. When the authorities order all Jews in town to be rounded up, Tono faces a moral dilemma unlike any he's known before.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Devil's Arithmetic (1999)
An American-born Jewish adolescent, Hannah Stern, is uninterested in the culture, faith and customs of her relatives. However, she begins to revaluate her heritage when she has a supernatural experience that transports her back to a Nazi death camp in 1941. There she meets a young girl named Rivkah, a fellow captive in the camp. As Rivkah and Hannah struggle to survive in the face of daily atrocities, they form an unbreakable bond.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFatherland (1994)
Fictional account of what might have happened if Hitler had won the war. It is now the 1960s and Germany's war crimes have so far been kept a secret. Hitler wants to talk peace with the US president. An American journalist and a German homicide cop stumble into a plot to destroy all evidence of the genocide.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDiamonds of the Night (1964)
Two Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. Beyond themes of war and anti-Nazism, the film concerns itself with man's struggle to preserve human dignity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Grey Zone (2001)
The story of Auschwitz's twelfth Sonderkommando — one of the thirteen consecutive "Special Squads" of Jewish prisoners placed by the Nazis in the excruciating moral dilemma of assisting in the extermination of fellow Jews in exchange for a few more months of life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Counterfeiters (2007)
The story of Jewish counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch, who was coerced into assisting the Nazi operation of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this1945 (2017)
An unsettling feeling overwhelms a small Hungarian town when two orthodox Jews arrive with a mysterious trunk. As residents begin to speculate on the purpose of the visit of these two strangers, order starts to crumble in town with some pursuing devious plans and others finding remorse in their hearts.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNone Shall Escape (1944)
Through flashbacks going as far back as the end of WW1, the story of a Nazi war criminal is exposed during his trial.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Au Revoir les Enfants (1987)
Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSophie's Choice (1982)
Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisConfidence (1980)
Janos and Kata are thrown together during the Second World War and forced to pose as husband and wife to hide from the Nazis. The intensity and suffocating intimacy of their new relationship and the circumstances in which they find themselves, forces them to confront past prejudices and assumptions and challenge what they truly believe.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Chosen (1981)
In a 1940s New York, two Jewish teenage boys are determined to remain friends despite the deep differences between their families.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Revolt of Job (1983)
The story of a childless Jewish couple in WWII-era Hungary who adopt a Hungarian boy and raise him with their values and traditions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Train of Life (1998)
In 1941, the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Central Europe organize a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVoyage of the Damned (1976)
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Pianist (2002)
The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMephisto (1981)
A German stage actor finds unexpected success and mixed blessings in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany. As his associates and friends flee or are ground under by the Nazi terror, the popularity of his character supercedes his own existence until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSunshine (1999)
The fate of a Hungarian Jewish family throughout the 20th century.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisYoung Törless (1966)
At an Austrian boys' boarding school in the early 1900s, shy, intelligent Törless observes the sadistic behavior of his fellow students, doing nothing to help a victimized classmate—until the torture goes too far. Adapted from Robert Musil's acclaimed novel, Young Törless launched the New German Cinema movement and garnered the 1966 Cannes Film Festival International Critics' Prize for first-time director Volker Schlöndorff.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFather (1966)
When young Tako's father dies in Hungary in 1945, Tako is left with scant memories of him. Nurtured by his mother, the boy fantasizes about the man his father was, imagining him a hero. Grown into a man himself, Tako falls for a Jewish refugee, Anni. Burdened by her own heritage as a Jew, Anni sparks in Tako a desire to find out what his father was really like, and he delves into the role his father played in World War II.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Jail Bait (1973)
In a small German town, a 14-year-old girl's relationship with an older man draws scrutiny and leads to legal consequences, reflecting the constraints of their social surroundings.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Life Is Beautiful (1997)
A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Man in the Glass Booth (1975)
Arthur Goldman is a rich Jewish industrialist, living in luxury in a Manhattan high-rise. He banters with his assistant Charlie, often shocking him with his outrageousness and irreverent musings on aspects of Jewish life. Nonetheless, Charlie is astonished one day when Israeli secret agents burst in and arrest Goldman for being a Nazi war criminal. Whisked to Israel for trial, Goldman forces his accusers to face, not only his presumed guilt, but their own.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Europa Europa (1990)
A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGentleman's Agreement (1947)
A magazine writer poses as a Jew to expose anti-Semitism.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Merchant of Four Seasons (1971)
Hans is a street fruit peddler and born loser. His choice of career upsets his bourgeois family, causing him to turn to drinking and violence. After recovering from a debilitating heart attack, his business finally begins to take off. However, the more he becomes a credit to his family, the more depressed he becomes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Believer (2001)
A hardcore US racist skinhead who, because of his intelligence, leads a gang dedicated to fighting the enemy: the supposed American-Jewish conspiracy for domination. However, he's hiding a secret: he's Jewish-born, a brilliant scholar whose questioning of the tenets of his faith has left him angry and confused, turning against those who he thinks have a tragic history of their own making.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Neighbor Adolf (2022)
South America, 1960. A lonely and grumpy Holocaust survivor convinces himself that his new neighbor is none other than Adolf Hitler. Not being taken seriously, he starts an independent investigation to prove his claim, but when the evidence still appears to be inconclusive, Polsky is forced to engage in a relationship with the enemy in order to obtain irrefutable proof.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Pawnbroker?
The closest matches to The Pawnbroker are Passenger (1963), The Shop on Main Street (1965) and The Devil's Arithmetic (1999). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Pawnbroker?
People who watched The Pawnbroker most often go on to Passenger (1963), The Shop on Main Street (1965) and The Devil's Arithmetic (1999).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Pawnbroker?
The Pianist (2002), rated 8.4/10 by 10,623 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Pawnbroker?
My Neighbor Adolf (2022) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Pawnbroker?
Yes: The Devil's Arithmetic (1999), Fatherland (1994) and The Grey Zone (2001).
How are movies similar to The Pawnbroker chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Pawnbroker, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.