Movies like Woman of the River (1954)
The best movies like Woman of the River (1954) are Vermiglio (2024), The River (1984) and Train Dreams (2025). If Woman of the River hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedIn Cold Blood (1967)7.5/10 from 463 votes
- NewestHalifax Pier (2026)Released 2026
- In ItalianVermiglio (2024)Also in Italian
Vermiglio (2024)
In the last days of the Second World War, a deserting soldier disrupts a tranquil and isolated mountain community. For one family, his arrival brings excitement and romance, but tragedy lies in wait.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe River (1984)
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTrain Dreams (2025)
A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Short History of the Long Road (2019)
Nola grew up living in a van with her father, Clint—two nomads against the world. When tragedy strikes, Nola must confront the reality of life on the road alone, learning to own her grief, her past, and her new destination.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHuman Capital (2013)
The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHappy as Lazzaro (2018)
Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Keys of the Kingdom (1944)
A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShun Li and the Poet (2011)
A study of the friendship between a Chinese woman and a fisherman who came to Italy from Yugoslavia many years ago, who live in a small city-island in the Veneto lagoon.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEuphoria (2018)
Matteo is a young successful businessman, audacious, charming and energetic. Ettore instead, is a calm, righteous, second grade teacher always living in the shadows, still in the small town from where both come from. They’re brothers but with two very different personalities. A dramatic event will force them to live together in Rome for a few months, bringing up the opportunity to face their differences with sympathy and tenderness, in a climax of fear and euphoria.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Safety of Objects (2002)
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Map of the World (1999)
School nurse Alice Goodwin lives with her husband and two daughters on a dairy farm in a small Wisconsin community. After an accident on her property involving a friend's child, the town turns against her and Alice finds herself fighting charges of child abuse.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAspromonte: Land of The Forgotten (2019)
At the end of the 1950s in Africo, a small village in the southern valley of Aspromonte, a woman dies in childbirth because a doctor fails to arrive on time. No road connects Africo with the other villages. In the wake of this tragedy, all of Africo’s citizens -including children - abandon their usual occupations and unite to build their own road. Giulia, the new schoolteacher, comes from the North with a mission to teach standard Italian to help bring cultural cohesion with Africo and the rest of Italy. But she will have to contend with the local mafioso Don Totó, who is determined to ensure this the town remains cut off, and thus, under his power.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this5 Is the Perfect Number (2019)
Peppino, a retired hitman for the Camorra, has now fully passed on his job and know-how to his single son, Nino. But when Nino is brutally assassinated, the old man is back in business to take revenge. Aside his everlasting love Rita and his longtime henchman Totò, Peppino will go to any lengths, even if it means bringing the Camorra down.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhere the Red Fern Grows (1974)
Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for two years to achieve his dream of buying two red-bone coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in life as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with his dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHounddog (2008)
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhere the Red Fern Grows (2003)
Set in the Ozark Mountains during the Great Depression, Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for 2 years to achieve his dream of buying two coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in God as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with "Old Dan" and "Little Ann."
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988)
Andreas Kartak, a homeless man living under the bridges of Paris, is lent 200 francs by a stranger as long as he promises to repay it to a local church when he can afford to. Kartak is determined to pay back his debt but circumstances, and his alcoholism, forever intervene.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn Cold Blood (1967)
After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisXiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (1998)
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTerraferma (2011)
A Sicilian family deals with the arrival of a group of immigrants on their island.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGandhi, My Father (2007)
Unable to live in his father's gigantic shadow, Mahatma Gandhi's eldest son, Harilal, gets distraught and resorts to alcoholism.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Reckless (1984)
Teenager Johnny Rourke is reckless. Born on the wrong side of the tracks, he breaks the law and girls' hearts with equal cool. Cheerleader Tracey Prescott is reckless too. She dumps her conventional life and boring boyfriend to follow Johnny wherever his dangerous path leads.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Year of the Wolf (2007)
Sari is a young, beautiful and intelligent girl who is busy studying at university,but she suffers from epilepsy and has to face death on a daily basis. Mikko is hersomewhat older university teacher, who is tired of life, and who one day decides toabandon his wife, children and idea of a perfect life. Both characters have been tooscared to live their lives to the brim for too long. But they meet, and in spite oftheir prejudices and reserved natures, they manage to create a dramatic and movingmodern romance which confronts numerous taboos. While the imagery explores theboundary between life and death in a most poetic way, the odd couple's romance istold with both bite and humour. Society - be it in the shape of angry ex-wives,overprotective parents, conservative aunts or embittered colleagues - is doing whatit can to put a spanner in the works."
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Chuka (1967)
A group under siege at an Army fort grapple with painful memories.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Hot Road (2014)
Teenager Kazuki Miyaichi has always felt unloved by her mother due the circumstances surrounding her birth. Because she harbors anxiety and perceives herself as being worthless to others, she engages in acts of juvenile delinquency. One day, a transfer student from Yokohama named Eri introduces her to Hiroshi Haruyama, a reckless youth who’s a member of the “Nights” motorcycle gang. Kazuki finds herself increasingly drawn to Hiroshi over time, but he soon becomes leader of the Nights and gets caught up in a conflict with a rival gang.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
New Type: Just For Your Love (2008)
Yuri, who works at the ticket window at a ferry terminal, is one-eyed. One day, she is held at knifepoint and locked away in captivity by an enigmatic man named Kwon, who has missed a ferry. At the very moment Yuri learns that Kwon has supernatural powers. As Kwon and Yuri become closer to each other, Yuri's friend, Akiyama, accidentally finds the secret of Yuri's supernatural power. Yuri has the ability to go back in time. As the price for her supernatural ability, Yuri becomes blind in one eye. In the meantime, Kwon gets shot by mysterious men. Yuri, who has started feeling affection for Kwon, tries to save him using her special power again.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Time Was (2025)
Beth's new house is supposed to be a fresh start, but eerie disturbances make it feel anything but home. Then she meets Melissa-an alluring designer who offers her help. As they work together, Beth finds herself drawn to her in ways she can't explain. But as strange events intensify, so do Beth's doubts. Is she losing her grip on reality, or is something far more unexplainable at play?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Out of the Blue (1981)
A young girl whose father is an ex-convict and whose mother is a junkie finds it difficult to conform and tries to find comfort in a quirky combination of Elvis and the punk scene.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHalifax Pier (2026)
At the end of a tangled relation- ship, Myra and Percy begin to feel the anxiety of the everyday creep in.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Milk (2009)
A high school graduate, Yusuf could not pass the university entrance exam. Writing poetry is his greatest passion and some of his poems are being printed in various obscure literary journals. But neither these poems, nor the rapidly falling price of the milk they sell, are being of any benefit to Yusuf and Zehra's lives. When Yusuf finds out about Zehra's secret affair with the town's stationmaster he gets disconcerted. Will he find the way to cope with his anxiety for the unknown future, the rapid change that he is going through and the pain of taking a step into adulthood and leaving his youth behind
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like this
Like Woman of the River and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Woman of the River?
The closest matches to Woman of the River are Vermiglio (2024), The River (1984) and Train Dreams (2025). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Woman of the River?
Start with Vermiglio (2024), the closest match to Woman of the River.
What is the highest-rated movie like Woman of the River?
In Cold Blood (1967), rated 7.5/10 by 463 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Woman of the River?
Halifax Pier (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Italian movies like Woman of the River?
Yes: Vermiglio (2024), Human Capital (2013) and Happy as Lazzaro (2018).
How are movies similar to Woman of the River chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Woman of the River, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.