Movies like Smoke Signals (1998)
The best movies like Smoke Signals (1998) are Powwow Highway (1989), Dance Me Outside (1995) and Dreamkeeper (2003). If Smoke Signals hooked you with its drama and comedy, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedNomadland (2021)7.2/10 from 3,525 votes
- NewestFancy Dance (2024)Released 2024
Powwow Highway (1989)
Two Northern Cheyenne men take a road trip from Montana to New Mexico to bail out the sister of one of them who has been framed and arrested in Santa Fe. On the way, they begin to reconnect to their spiritual heritage.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Dance Me Outside (1995)
Explores the sensitive, and tense, relationship between life on an First Nations reservation and life in the outside world. When Native Canadian Silas Crow is forced to write a personal essay in order to get a much-desired job, he tells the story of the rape and murder of an Indian girl by a drunken thug. When the killer received a lenient two-year sentence for manslaughter, the First Nations community felt shock and anger—and tried desperately to deal with the after-effects of this lack of justice.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Dreamkeeper (2003)
In South Dakota, in an Indian reservation, an old storyteller Indian asks his grandson Shane, who is in trouble owing money to some bad guys, to take his old pony and him to Albuquerque to the great powwow, an Indian meeting. While traveling, Grandpa tells mysterious Indian tales of love, friendship and magic.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)
This complex portrait of modern-day life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation explores the bond between a brother and his younger sister, who find themselves on separate paths to rediscovering the meaning of home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDrunktown's Finest (2014)
On a desolate Navajo reservation in New Mexico, three young people – a college-bound, devout Christian; a rebellious and angry father-to-be; and a promiscuous but gorgeous Nádleehi (trans person) – search for love and acceptance.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Te Ata (2017)
The extraordinary life of Chickasaw Nation citizen Mary Thompson Fisher is given a heartfelt tribute in this moving look at a culture in transition, and the way one woman used her voice to keep Native traditions and stories alive. Raised in Indian Territory, Fisher left home to pursue her dream of becoming an actress, only to find that her true calling was at home all along. From Chautauquas to Broadway and even the White House, Fisher traveled the world performing Native American songs and stories for heads of state, American presidents, and European royalty. Featuring Chickasaw citizens both in front of and be-hind the camera, this touching portrait starring Q’orianka Kilcher (“The New World”) and Graham Greene honors a woman whose own story was the most inspiring one she never told. -TCFF database
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Indian Horse (2018)
Follows the life of Native Canadian Saul Indian Horse as he survives residential school and life amongst the racism of the 1970s. A talented hockey player, Saul must find his own path as he battles stereotypes and alcoholism.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThunderheart (1992)
A young mixed-blood FBI agent is assigned to work with a cynical veteran investigator on a murder on a poverty-stricken Sioux reservation.
Why it matches: Fans watch both
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Dark Wind (1992)
What begins as a Navajo officer's investigation into a prop plane crash on his Southwest reservation gives way to a drug smuggling ring and murder.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Wild Indian (2021)
Decades after covering up his classmate’s murder, Michael has moved on from his reservation and fractured past. When a man who shares his violent secret seeks vengeance, Michael goes to great lengths to protect his new life with his wife and boss from the demons of his past.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisAtanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2002)
Based on a local legend and set in an unknown era, it deals with universal themes of love, possessiveness, family, jealousy and power. Beautifully shot, and acted by Inuit people, it portrays a time when people fought duels by taking turns to punch each other until one was unconscious, made love on the way to the caribou hunt, ate walrus meat and lit their igloos with seal-oil lamps.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRubin & Ed (1992)
Reclusive Rubin Farr teams up with vocal but unsuccessful multi-level salesman Ed Tuttle on a quest to bury Rubin's dead cat in the "perfect spot." Their trip takes them across Utah's desert where they have run-ins with Ed's ex-wife Rula and an elusive Andy Warhol critic.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Frybread Face and Me (2023)
Two adolescent Navajo cousins from different worlds bond during a summer herding sheep on their grandmother's ranch in Arizona while learning more about their family's past and themselves.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Crazy Horse (1996)
The legendary Native American chieftain refuses to go with his people peacefully to the reservation and starts a rebellion.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Silent Tongue (1994)
Mad with grief after the death of his Kiowa wife, Roe awaits death under a tree with her body beside him. She begins to haunt him because he won't bury her. His father, who bought him the wife, thinks her sister might reason with Roe.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Mekko (2015)
Mekko gets out of prison after 19 years. He has no home or family so he makes his way to Tulsa. He tries to connect with a cousin but she turns him away. With nowhere to go Mekko ends up sleeping on the streets. He is taken in by the homeless native community. At times jovial, there is a dark undercurrent to the community. He begins having issues with a man named Bill. Bill is pure evil. Convinced that this man is a witch, Mekko turns to the old teachings of his grandmother in order to rid the community of this 'witch'. It's a story of redemption, and hope. Mekko is in search of his home and the strength to forgive himself of his past.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Nomadland (2021)
A woman in her sixties embarks on a journey through the western United States after losing everything in the Great Recession, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Lesser Blessed (2012)
Larry, a 16-year-old Tlicho Indian, lives in the small northern town of Fort Simmer. He has a crush on his classmate, Juliet Hope. Larry's past holds a variety of terrors—his father is abusive and he once had an accident that nearly killed him. When Johnny Beck , a young Métis from Hay River, moves to town, things heat up, for better or worse.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Grizzlies (2019)
In a small Arctic town struggling with the highest suicide rate in North America, a group of Inuit students' lives are transformed when they are introduced to the sport of lacrosse.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFancy Dance (2024)
Following her sister's disappearance, Jax and her niece Roki must stick together. Desperate to keep what's left of their family intact, Jax and Roki defy the law and hit the road on a journey to the Grand Nation Powwow in Oklahoma City.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHighway 61 (1991)
A naive Canadian barber who knows US popular culture inside and out meets a flamboyant roadie who needs someone to drive her and her "brother's" corpse from Thunder Bay, Ontario to New Orleans. Chaos ensues after the barber agrees to drive her, the corpse, and the drugs stashed within all the way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Wildhood (2022)
Link and his brother flee their abusive father and embark on a journey where Link discovers his sexuality and rediscovers his Mi’kmaw heritage.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Homesman (2014)
When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs, to join her. The unlikely pair and the three women head east, where a waiting minister and his wife have offered to take the women in. But the group first must traverse the harsh Nebraska Territories marked by stark beauty, psychological peril and constant threat.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRaven Hawk (1996)
A Native-American woman, who was framed for the murders of her parents years before, returns to her reservation to seek revenge.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Brave (1997)
A down-on-his-luck American Indian recently released from jail is offered the chance to "star" as the victim of a snuff film, the resulting pay of which could greatly help his poverty stricken family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisYellowknife (2002)
The film tells the story of three couples on the road between the Atlantic coast and the Northwest Territories in Canada.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013)
In 1976, a Mi'gMaq teenager plots revenge against the sadistic Indian agent who imprisoned her in a residential school where rape and abuse are common.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBeans (2021)
Twelve-year-old Beans is on the edge: torn between innocent childhood and reckless adolescence; forced to grow up fast and become the tough Mohawk warrior she needs to be during the Oka Crisis, the turbulent Indigenous uprising that tore Quebec and Canada apart for 78 tense days in the summer of 1990.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Cowards Bend the Knee (2003)
When he takes his girlfriend to a seedy abortion clinic in the back room of a combination hair salon / bordello, Guy Maddin meets the madam’s daughter and falls in love. But she won’t let any man touch her until her father’s murder has been avenged.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Saddest Music in the World (2003)
In Depression-era Winnipeg, a legless beer baroness hosts a contest for the saddest music in the world, offering a grand prize of $25,000.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Smoke Signals?
The closest matches to Smoke Signals are Powwow Highway (1989), Dance Me Outside (1995) and Dreamkeeper (2003). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Smoke Signals?
People who watched Smoke Signals most often go on to Powwow Highway (1989), Dance Me Outside (1995) and Dreamkeeper (2003).
What is the highest-rated movie like Smoke Signals?
Nomadland (2021), rated 7.2/10 by 3,525 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Smoke Signals?
Fancy Dance (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Smoke Signals?
Yes: Powwow Highway (1989), Dance Me Outside (1995) and Dreamkeeper (2003).
How are movies similar to Smoke Signals chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Smoke Signals, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.