Movies like Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
The best movies like Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) are Cocoon (2020), Head-On (2004) and Malcolm & Marie (2021). If Ali: Fear Eats the Soul hooked you with its romance and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedBefore Sunrise (1995)8.0/10 from 4,968 votes
- NewestSomeday We'll Tell Each Other Everything (2023)Released 2023
- In GermanCocoon (2020)Also in German
Cocoon (2020)
In the heat of a shimmering Berlin summer, Nora spends her days as a third wheel to her older sister Jule and her best friend Aylin. When Romy comes onto the scene, a friendship blossoms. Nora instantly falls for her, opening up a whole new world and unexpected summer of love.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHead-On (2004)
With the intention to break free from the strict familial restrictions, a suicidal young woman sets up a marriage of convenience with a forty-year-old addict, an act that will lead to an outburst of envious love.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMalcolm & Marie (2021)
As a filmmaker and his girlfriend return home from his movie premiere, smoldering tensions and painful revelations push them toward a romantic reckoning.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Mother (2003)
A grandmother has a passionate affair with a man half her age, who is also sleeping with her daughter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLaurel Canyon (2003)
When an uptight young man and his fiancée move into his libertine mother's house, the resulting clash of life attitudes shakes everyone up.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMiddle of the Night (1959)
Jerry Kingsley is a wealthy garment manufacturer left lonely in his 50s when his wife dies. Despite the difference in their ages, he strikes up a romance with divorced 24-year-old receptionist Betty. The relationship is dismissed by his daughter, Lillian, discouraged by his sister, Evelyn, and denounced by Betty's mother. But when Jerry begins to mention marriage, even Betty is forced to confront her ambivalence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Fugitive Kind (1960)
Val Xavier, a drifter of obscure origins, arrives at a small town and gets a job in a store run by Lady Torrence. Her husband, Jabe M. Torrance, is dying of cancer. Val is pursued by Carol Cutere, the enigmatic local tramp-of-good-family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGloomy Sunday (1999)
Budapest in the 1930s. Restaurant owner Laszlo hires pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody sets off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans falls in love with Ilona as well.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Souvenir (2019)
A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChina Girl (1987)
Teenage lovers Tony and Tyan-Hwa tip the balance of power in New York's Little Italy and Chinatown.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlue Valentine (2010)
Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNewness (2017)
In contemporary Los Angeles, two millennials navigating a social media–driven hookup culture begin a relationship that pushes both emotional and physical boundaries.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisArch of Triumph (1948)
In the winter of 1938, Paris is crowded with refugees from the Nazis, who live in the black shadows of night, trying to evade deportation. One such is Dr. Ravic, who practices medicine illegally and stalks his old Nazi enemy Haake with murder in mind. One rainy night, Ravic meets Joan Madou, a kept woman cast adrift by her lover's sudden death. Against Ravic's better judgment, they become involved in a doomed affair.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Reader (2008)
The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLore (2012)
After being abandoned by their Nazi parents at the end of World War II, five German siblings embark on a harrowing journey across their war-torn country. Led by the eldest, 14 year-old Lore, the children are forced to confront their parents’ actions and the reality of a new world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSomeday We'll Tell Each Other Everything (2023)
Set in a warm summer in 1990 in former East Germany, it follows a young woman who begins a relationship with a charismatic farmer who is twice her age.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisLove in Thoughts (2004)
A posthumous look at the last days of Guenther's life as he, his best friend, and his sister let loose on a four-day binge of alcohol, drugs, and sex.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMammal (2016)
After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAntares (2004)
A deadly car crash sets off three parallel stories of women at crisis points, faltering behind the doors of the same, plain Vienna apartment block.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe American Friend (1977)
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWilbur Wants to Kill Himself (2002)
The strange comedy film of two close brothers; one, Wilbur, who wants to kill himself, and the other, Harbour, who tries to prevent this. When their father dies leaving them his bookstore they meet a woman who makes their lives a bit better yet with a bit more trouble as well.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThree Colors: Red (1994)
Part-time model Valentine unexpectedly befriends a retired judge after she runs over his dog. At first, the grumpy man shows no concern about the dog, and Valentine decides to keep it. But the two form a bond when she returns to his house and catches him listening to his neighbors’ phone calls.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisItalian for Beginners (2000)
Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBefore Sunrise (1995)
An unexpected meeting on a train leads two travelers to spend an evening wandering through Vienna. As the night unfolds, they share stories and conversations about life and love, exploring new ideas while a quiet intimacy grows between them, knowing it may be their only night together.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBefore Sunset (2004)
Nine years later, Jesse travels across Europe giving readings from a book he wrote about the night he spent in Vienna with Celine. After his reading in Paris, Celine finds him, and they spend part of the day together before Jesse has to again leave for a flight. They are both in relationships now, and Jesse has a son, but as their strong feelings for each other start to return, both confess a longing for more.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Elementary Particles (2006)
Based on Michel Houellebecq's controversial novel, Atomised (aka The Elementary Particles) focuses on Michael and Bruno, two very different half-brothers and their disturbed sexuality. After a chaotic childhood with a hippie mother only caring for her affairs, Michael, a molecular biologist, is more interested in genes than women, while Bruno is obsessed with his sexual desires, but mostly finds his satisfaction with prostitutes. But Bruno's life changes when he gets to know the experienced Christiane. In the meantime, Michael meets Annabelle, the love of his youth, again.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLost in Translation (2003)
Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStolen Kisses (1968)
The third in a series of films featuring François Truffaut's alter-ego, Antoine Doinel, the story resumes with Antoine being discharged from military service. His sweetheart Christine's father lands Antoine a job as a security guard, which he promptly loses. Stumbling into a position assisting a private detective, Antoine falls for his employers' seductive wife, Fabienne, and finds that he must choose between the older woman and Christine.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAntoine and Colette (1962)
After indulging in much delinquency in his youth, seventeen-year-old Antoine Doinel is now an upstanding member of society working for Philips Records, which allows him to indulge in his love of music. At the Youth Concerts, he has noticed the same young woman at several performances. She is Colette, and the two begin to date. Colette treats Antoine like a buddy, while Antoine has fallen in love with her.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEdward Scissorhands (1990)
A small suburban town receives a visit from a castaway unfinished science experiment named Edward.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?
The closest matches to Ali: Fear Eats the Soul are Cocoon (2020), Head-On (2004) and Malcolm & Marie (2021). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?
Start with Cocoon (2020), the closest match to Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.
What is the highest-rated movie like Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?
Before Sunrise (1995), rated 8.0/10 by 4,968 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?
Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything (2023) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there German movies like Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?
Yes: Cocoon (2020), Head-On (2004) and Gloomy Sunday (1999).
How are movies similar to Ali: Fear Eats the Soul chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.