Movies like Where the Spirit Lives (1990)
The best movies like Where the Spirit Lives (1990) are Indian Horse (2018), Rez Ball (2024) and Skin (2009). If Where the Spirit Lives hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedWings of Desire (1987)7.8/10 from 1,566 votes
- NewestRez Ball (2024)Released 2024
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: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRez Ball (2024)
After losing their star player, a high school basketball team rooted in Native American culture must unite to keep their state championship dreams alive.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSkin (2009)
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBilly Jack (1971)
A Euro-Indigenous American Ex-Green Beret hapkido expert saves wild horses from being slaughtered for dog food and helps protect a desert "freedom school" for runaways.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhat Maisie Knew (2013)
In New York City, six-year-old Maisie is caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle between her self-absorbed parents—an aging rock singer mother and a distracted art dealer father. As both quickly marry new partners to strengthen their legal standing, Maisie is shuttled back and forth in an endless game of emotional point-scoring. Yet amid the chaos and upheaval, Maisie begins to find true comfort and affection in her new step-parents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Boys of St. Vincent (1994)
The true story of boys being sexually abused at their orphanage, run by a religious community in Newfoundland.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAll Together Now (2020)
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Book Thief (2013)
While subjected to the horrors of WWII Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. Under the stairs in her home, a Jewish refugee is being sheltered by her adoptive parents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Dead Don't Hurt (2024)
In the 1860s, fiercely independent French-Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy embarks on a journey with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen, attempting to forge a life together in the dusty town of Elk Flats, Nevada. When Holger decides to go fight for the Union in the burgeoning Civil War, Vivienne must fend for herself, which isn't easy in a town controlled by a corrupt mayor.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007)
Beginning just after the bloody Sioux victory over General Custer at Little Big Horn, the story is told through two unique perspectives: Charles Eastman, a young, white-educated Sioux doctor held up as living proof of the alleged success of assimilation, and Sitting Bull the proud Lakota chief whose tribe won the American Indians’ last major victory at Little Big Horn.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPay It Forward (2000)
Like some other kids, 12-year-old Trevor McKinney believed in the goodness of human nature. Like many other kids, he was determined to change the world for the better. Unlike most other kids, he succeeded.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDoubt (2008)
In 1964 Bronx, two Catholic school nuns question the new priest's ambiguous relationship with a troubled African-American student.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKid Cannabis (2014)
An eighteen year old high school drop out and his twenty-seven year old friend start trafficking marijuana across the border of Canada in order to make money and their lives are changed forever.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Way West (1967)
In the mid-19th century, Senator William J. Tadlock leads a group of settlers overland in a quest to start a new settlement in the Western US. Tadlock is a highly principled and demanding taskmaster who is as hard on himself as he is on those who have joined his wagon train. He clashes with one of the new settlers, Lije Evans, who doesn't quite appreciate Tadlock's ways. Along the way, the families must face death and heartbreak and a sampling of frontier justice when one of them accidentally kills a young Indian boy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAcross the Tracks (1991)
When Billy returns from reform school he has to attend a different high school at the other side of town. He tries to start with a clean slate but his old rival doesn't make it easy on him and his buddy Louie tries to make him go astray again. His brother Joe, quite the opposite of Billy, is a good runner and determined to win a track scholarship. He suggests Billy to join his school's track team, which pits the two brothers against each other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisCall Me Crazy: A Five Film (2013)
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNo One Would Tell (1996)
Shy sixteen-year-old Stacy Collins can't believe that the most popular guy in school, an attractive athlete named Bobby Tennison, is interested in her. At first she is flattered by his constant attention, but then he becomes possessive and jealous-telling her who she can speak to and what she can wear. Threats escalate into violence when Bobby thinks Stacy has stepped out of line. Soon she is walking on egg shells and living in fear. Having seen the tell-tale bruises, Stacy's best friend convinces her to break things off with Bobby-but in a moment of weakness, Stacy goes to meet him. It will be the last time she is seen alive.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972)
Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · 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: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWonderstruck (2017)
The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShort Working Day (1995)
A dramatisation of the workers' protests in June 1976 in Radom, seen from the perspective of the local Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Mifune (1999)
Kresten, newly wed, is on the threshold of a great career success in his father-in-law’s company. But when the death of his own father takes him back to his poverty-stricken childhood home, far out in the country, his career plans fall apart. For one thing he has to deal with his loveable, backward brother, who is now all alone; for another, he meets a stunning woman who comes to the farm as a housekeeper, in disguise of her real profession as a call-girl.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBad Education (2004)
When an old friend brings filmmaker Enrique Goded a semi-autobiographical script chronicling their adolescence, Enrique is forced to relive his youth spent at a Catholic boarding school. Weaving through past and present, the script follows a transvestite performer who reconnects with a grade school sweetheart. Spurred on by this chance encounter, the character reflects on her childhood sexual victimization and the trauma of closeting her sexual orientation.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWings of Desire (1987)
Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds — with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk — that it might be possible for him to take human form.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSnow Cake (2006)
A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDances with Wolves (1990)
Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNanook of the North (1922)
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDavid (1997)
A distinguished military leader whose reign was touched by great scandal, shocking betrayals and rousing victories. A simple shepherd boy chosen to be king, under the watchful eyes of prophet Samuel.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNurse Betty (2000)
What happens when a person decides that life is merely a state of mind? If you're Betty, a small-town waitress and soap opera fan from Fair Oaks, Kansas, you refuse to believe that you can't be with the love of your life just because he doesn't really exist. After all, life is no excuse for not living. Traumatized by a savage event, Betty enters into a fugue state that allows -- even encourages -- her to keep functioning... in a kind of alternate reality.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Man Without a Face (1993)
Justin McLeod is a former teacher who lives as a recluse on the edge of town after his face is disfigured from an automobile accident ten years earlier, in which a boy was incinerated--and for which he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Also suspected of being a paedophile, he is befriended by Chuck, causing the town's suspicions and hostility to be ignited.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
Like Where the Spirit Lives and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Where the Spirit Lives?
The closest matches to Where the Spirit Lives are Indian Horse (2018), Rez Ball (2024) and Skin (2009). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Where the Spirit Lives?
Start with Indian Horse (2018), the closest match to Where the Spirit Lives.
What is the highest-rated movie like Where the Spirit Lives?
Wings of Desire (1987), rated 7.8/10 by 1,566 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Where the Spirit Lives?
Rez Ball (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Where the Spirit Lives?
Yes: Indian Horse (2018), Rez Ball (2024) and Skin (2009).
How are movies similar to Where the Spirit Lives chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Where the Spirit Lives, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.