Movies like A Scene at the Sea (1991)
The best movies like A Scene at the Sea (1991) are Kikujiro (1999), The Taste of Tea (2004) and Like Father, Like Son (2013). If A Scene at the Sea hooked you with its drama and romance, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedTokyo Story (1953)8.1/10 from 1,290 votes
- NewestI Met a Girl (2020)Released 2020
- In JapaneseKikujiro (1999)Also in Japanese
Kikujiro (1999)
Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Taste of Tea (2004)
A spell of time in the life of the five-piece Haruno family in rural Tochigi Prefecture. Yoshiko is not an ordinary housewife, instead working on an animated film project. Uncle Ayano, a successful music producer, is looking to get his head together after living in Tokyo. Meanwhile, Sachiko is concerned with why she seems to be followed by a giant version of herself. As the lazy days pass by, each member of the family is followed in a series of episodic vignettes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLike Father, Like Son (2013)
Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNobody Knows (2004)
In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisStill Walking (2008)
A family gathers together for a commemorative ritual whose nature only gradually becomes clear.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisChungking Express (1994)
Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisDepartures (2008)
Daigo, a cellist, is laid off from his orchestra and moves with his wife back to his small hometown where the living is cheaper. Thinking he’s applying for a job at a travel agency he finds he’s being interviewed for work with departures of a more permanent nature – as an undertaker’s assistant.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisA Stranger of Mine (2005)
In one long Friday evening, Takeshi Miyata, a straight-arrow businessman, will encounter a number of people (some only fleetingly) who have intertwining fates.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Echoes of the Rainbow (2010)
Told through the eyes of sticky-fingered eight-year-old boy Big Ears, Echoes of the Rainbow takes place in a close-knit grassroots community in 1960s Hong Kong. Big Ears' mother and father run the neighborhood shoe store, and his older brother Desmond is every family's dream son - an outstanding athlete with grades worthy of Hong Kong's best school.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDolls (2002)
Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Mourning Forest (2007)
A young woman working at a retirement home takes an elderly man living there on an excursion into the countryside, but the two wind up stranded in the titular forest.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGO (2001)
Sugihara, a Japanese-born, third-generation Korean teenager struggles to find a place in a society that will not accept him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShall We Dance? (1996)
A bored accountant spots a beautiful woman in the window of a ballroom dance studio. He secretly starts taking dancing lessons to be near her, and then over time discovers how much he loves dancing. His wife, meanwhile, has hired a private detective to find out why he has started coming home late smelling of perfume.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShower (1999)
An aged father and his younger, mentally challenged son have been working hard every day to keep the bathhouse running for a motley group of regular customers. When his elder son, who left years ago to seek his fortune in the southern city of Shenzhen, abruptly returns one day, it once again puts under stress the long-broken father-son ties. Presented as a light-hearted comedy, Shower explores the value of family, friendship, and tradition.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTokyo Towers: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad (2007)
Adapted from the bestselling Japanese autobiography of the same title, this gentle coming-of-age drama concerns an adolescent boy, Boku - Masaya, torn between the inherited recklessness of his father Oton and the inherited responsibility, wisdom and emotional strength of his mother Okan. Following a period of intensely rebellious behavior, Boku learns that his mom has contracted cancer; suddenly, his mother comes to live with him in Tokyo the entire emotional landscape of his life is altered.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Yi Yi (2000)
Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank and his business partners make bad decisions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisA Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn (2003)
A young widow, Noriko, lives with her senile father-in-law on a farm. Noriko pretends to be his long-gone favorite cow and lets him milk her—a satisfying arrangement for them both.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Tokyo Story (1953)
The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Yellow Handkerchief (1977)
A convict, newly released from prison for murder, joins two strangers on a road trip through Hokkaido to visit his ex-wife, whom he hasn't seen in four years, knowing that if she puts a yellow handkerchief on the window, it would mean that she wants him back at home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIt's Only Talk (2006)
Based on an award winning novel, It's Only Talk is about the life of Yuko, a 35-year old woman. She is single and unemployed, and suffers from manic depression. The movie begins with Yuko moving to Kamata Town.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
A Story of Yonosuke (2013)
The year is 1987 and Japan is just reaching the peak of its economic success. Eighteen-year old Yonosuke Yokomichi arrives in Tokyo from Nagasaki. Ordinary in every way possible, he lives in a suburb far from the excitement of the big city and commutes to a university in the center of Tokyo.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFish Story (2009)
A rock band writes a song called "Fish Story" that is foretold to save the world. The song exceeds the boundaries of space and time and ties people and their stories together.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAfter Life (1999)
On a cold Monday morning, a group of counselors clock in at an old-fashioned social services office. Their task is to interview the recently deceased, record their personal details, then, over the course of the week, assist them in choosing a single memory to keep for eternity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHana & Alice (2004)
Two teenage best pals attracted to the same boy end up scrambling his life after he walks into a door and is knocked unconscious.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMadadayo (1993)
In postwar Tokyo, beloved writer-professor Hyakken Uchida retires and is buoyed through hardship by the fierce devotion of his former students, who honor him each year with a raucous “Not yet!” birthday toast. Told in warm, gently comic vignettes, Kurosawa’s farewell celebrates aging, friendship, and the sustaining ritual of teacher and pupils refusing to say goodbye.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like this9 Souls (2003)
After discovering a hole in their crowded cell, nine prisoners escape their confinement to track down the key of the universe, which a fellow prisoner known as the Counterfeit King said he had hidden.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Met a Girl (2020)
An aspiring musician struggling with schizophrenia falls for a mysterious woman who may be all in his head. When she suddenly vanishes, he takes off on a cross-country journey across Australia to find her, forcing his long-suffering brother to chase after him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisQuartet (2012)
Cissy, Reggie, and Wilf are in a home for retired musicians. Every year, there is a concert to celebrate Composer Giuseppe Verdi's birthday and they take part. Jean, who used to be married to Reggie, arrives at the home and disrupts their equilibrium. She still acts like a diva, but she refuses to sing. Still, the show must go on, and it does.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHe Said, She Said (1991)
Womanising, right-wing Dan Hanson and quiet, liberal Lorie Bryer work for the Baltimore Sun. Rivals for the job of new writer of a vacant column, the paper ends up instead printing their very different opinions alongside each other, which leads to a similarly combative local TV show. At the same time their initial indifference to each other looks like it may evolve into something more romantic.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisChéri (2009)
The son of a courtesan retreats into a fantasy world after being forced to end his relationship with the older woman who educated him in the ways of love.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like A Scene at the Sea?
The closest matches to A Scene at the Sea are Kikujiro (1999), The Taste of Tea (2004) and Like Father, Like Son (2013). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after A Scene at the Sea?
People who watched A Scene at the Sea most often go on to Kikujiro (1999), The Taste of Tea (2004) and Like Father, Like Son (2013).
What is the highest-rated movie like A Scene at the Sea?
Tokyo Story (1953), rated 8.1/10 by 1,290 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like A Scene at the Sea?
I Met a Girl (2020) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Japanese movies like A Scene at the Sea?
Yes: Kikujiro (1999), The Taste of Tea (2004) and Like Father, Like Son (2013).
How are movies similar to A Scene at the Sea chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside A Scene at the Sea, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.