Movies like The Man Who Loves (2008)
The best movies like The Man Who Loves (2008) are Omaha (2025), Here (2024) and Boy Erased (2018). If The Man Who Loves hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedPrayers for Bobby (2009)8.1/10 from 663 votes
- NewestOmaha (2025)Released 2025
- In ItalianSaturn in Opposition (2007)Also in Italian
Omaha (2025)
A young girl and her brother are awoken by their father and loaded into the car on an early morning in 2008. As they road trip across the American West, she discovers the truth about their seemingly spontaneous journey.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHere (2024)
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBoy Erased (2018)
Jared, the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, is outed to his parents at age 19. Jared is faced with an ultimatum: attend a gay conversion therapy program – or be permanently exiled and shunned by his family, friends, and faith.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSaturn in Opposition (2007)
This film focuses on contemporary 30- and 40-somethings trying to make sense of their lives in an age in which the old certainties have disappeared. Lorenzo and Davide make their lives together within a circle that includes Antonio and Angelica, married with children; Nerval and her policeman husband.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHowl (2010)
It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Long Day Closes (1992)
Bud is a lonely and quiet boy whose moments of solace occur when he sits in rapture at the local cinema, watching towering and iconic figures on the movie screen. The movies give Bud the strength to get through another day as he deals with his oppressive school environment and his burgeoning homosexuality.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEnea (2024)
Enea chases after the myth he bears in his name; he does so to feel alive in a dead and decadent age. He does so together with Valentino, a newly baptized aviator. The two, in addition to dealing and partying, share youth. Lifelong friends, victims and perpetrators of a corrupt world, but moved by an incorruptible vitality. Beyond the boundaries of rules, on the other side of morality, there is a sea full of humanity and symbols to be discovered. Enea and Valentino will fly over it to the furthest extremes. However, drugs and the underworld are the invisible shadow of a story about something else: a melancholy father, a brother fighting at school, a mother defeated by love and a beautiful girl, a happy ending and a happy death, a palm tree falling on a glass world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Other Woman (2010)
Emilia, a law-school graduate, falls in love with her married boss, Jack. After Emilia marries Jack, her happiness turns unexpectedly to grief following the death of her infant daughter. Devastated, Emilia nonetheless carries on, attempting to forge a connection with her stepson William and to resist the interference of Jack's jealous ex-wife.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHelen (2009)
On the outside, Helen has it all – a loving family and a successful career – but when her suppressed mental illness resurfaces, the world crumbles around her. Crippled by depression, Helen finds solace through her friendship with Mathilda, a kindred spirit struggling with bipolar disorder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPrayers for Bobby (2009)
Bobby Griffith was his mother's favorite son, the perfect all-American boy growing up under deeply religious influences in Walnut Creek, California. Bobby was also gay. Struggling with a conflict no one knew of, much less understood, Bobby finally came out to his family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisDad (1989)
A busy executive learns during a meeting that his mother may be dying and rushes home to her side. He ends up being his father's caretaker and becomes closer to him than ever before. Estranged from his own son, the executive comes to realize what has been missing in his own life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Giver (2014)
In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 this8½ (1963)
Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisHolding the Man (2015)
Tim and John fell in love while teenagers at their all-boys high school. John was captain of the football team, Tim an aspiring actor playing a minor part in Romeo and Juliet. Their romance endured for 15 years in the face of everything life threw at it – the separations, the discrimination, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses – until the only problem that love can't solve tried to destroy them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNoel (2004)
With Christmas Eve just around the corner in bustling New York, five lonely and sad strangers find their lives inadvertently intersected.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisLilting (2014)
A young man of Chinese-Cambodian descent dies, leaving behind his isolated mother and his lover of four years. Though the two don't share a language, they grow close through their grief.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Hummingbird (2022)
Everyone in Marco's life seems constantly restless, from his brilliant but unhappily married parents to his own wife Marina, or even Luisa, the real love of his life, a girl he met during a fateful summer in the '70s and always stayed in touch with. Tragedy and fate seem to haunt him, yet he somehow manages never to get ensnared in the chaos—like his namesake, “the hummingbird”, he focuses all his energy at standing still.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGiant Little Ones (2019)
Two popular teen boys, best friends since childhood, discover their lives, families, and girlfriends dramatically upended after an unexpected incident occurs on the night of a 17th birthday party.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBirth (2004)
It took Anna 10 years to recover from the death of her husband, Sean, but now she's on the verge of marrying her boyfriend, Joseph, and finally moving on. However, on the night of her engagement party, a young boy named Sean turns up, saying he is her dead husband reincarnated. At first she ignores the child, but his knowledge of her former husband's life is uncanny, leading her to believe that he might be telling the truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMaria Full of Grace (2004)
A pregnant Colombian teenager becomes a drug mule to make some desperately needed money for her family.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSissi: The Young Empress (1956)
Sissi is now the empress of Austria and attempts to learn etiquette. While she is busy being empress she also has to deal with her difficult new mother-in-law, while the arch-duchess Sophie is trying to tell the emperor how to rule and also Sissi how to be a mother.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Own Private Idaho (1991)
Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this7 Virgins (2005)
It is summertime in a blue-collar, marginal district of a city in the South of Spain. Tano, a teenager currently serving a sentence in a juvenile reform center, is given a 48-hour leave to attend his brother’s wedding.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLive Flesh (1997)
When Victor attempts to seduce Elena, all he gets for his trouble is a one-way, six-year ticket to prison, where he concentrates on strengthening his mind, his body... and his desire for vengeance on the man who put him there. After his release and still madly in love with her, Victor will stop at nothing to win her over even if means revenge, for Elena has married David, the cop who sent him to prison!
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEverything Is Illuminated (2005)
A young Jewish American man endeavors—with the help of eccentric, distant relatives—to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II—in a Ukrainian village which was ultimately razed by the Nazis.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSummer Storm (2004)
Tobi and Achim, the pride of the local crew club, have been the best of friends for years and are convinced that nothing will ever stand in the way of their friendship. They look forward to the upcoming summer camp and the crew competition. Then the gay team from Berlin arrives and Tobi is totally confused. The evening before the races begin, the storm that breaks out is more than meteorological.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMala Noche (1987)
Walt is a lonely convenience store clerk who has fallen in love with a Mexican migrant worker named Johnny. Though Walt has little in common with the object of his affections — including a shared language — his desire to possess Johnny prompts a sexual awakening that results in a tangled love triangle.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNobody's Watching (2017)
Nico is a famous actor in Argentina, but in New York, nobody takes notice. He needs to juggle bartending, babysitting and odd jobs to keep himself afloat. But when old friends from Buenos Aires come to visit, he needs to juggle the image of his old life with the reality of the struggling actor in New York City.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Summer in Berlin (2005)
An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Man Who Loves?
The closest matches to The Man Who Loves are Omaha (2025), Here (2024) and Boy Erased (2018). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Man Who Loves?
Start with Omaha (2025), the closest match to The Man Who Loves.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Man Who Loves?
Prayers for Bobby (2009), rated 8.1/10 by 663 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Man Who Loves?
Omaha (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Italian movies like The Man Who Loves?
Yes: Saturn in Opposition (2007), Enea (2024) and 8½ (1963).
How are movies similar to The Man Who Loves chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Man Who Loves, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.