Movies like The Sacrifice (1986)
The best movies like The Sacrifice (1986) are Father and Son (2003), Winter Light (1963) and Decalogue I (1989). If The Sacrifice hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedDecalogue I (1989)8.1/10 from 277 votes
- NewestAurora Borealis: Northern Light (2017)Released 2017
Father and Son (2003)
In this dreamlike film, a nameless father and his son, Aleksei, live together in an apartment in St. Petersburg. Aleksei's mother has died and consequently the two have a very close relationship. When Aleksei acquires a girlfriend, she refuses to take a back seat to his bond with his dad, and breaks up with him. Aleksei is also experiencing nightmares, dreading separation from his father to be a part of the military as his father was.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisWinter Light (1963)
A Swedish pastor fails a loving woman, a suicidal fisherman and God.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisDecalogue I (1989)
Krzysztof, a semantics professor and computer hobbyist, is raising his young son, Paweł, to look to science for answers, while Irena, Paweł’s aunt, lives a life rooted in faith. Over the course of one day, both adults are forced to question their belief systems.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMirror (1975)
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Passion of Anna (1969)
A recently divorced man and an emotionally devastated widow begin a love affair.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Seventh Seal (1957)
When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisPersona (1966)
A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Silence (1963)
Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStalker (1979)
Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisCries and Whispers (1972)
As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOrdet (1955)
The three sons of devout Danish farmer Morten have widely disparate religious beliefs. Youngest son Anders shares his father's religion, but eldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while middle child Johannes has become delusional and proclaims that he is Jesus Christ himself. When Mikkel's wife, Inger goes into a difficult childbirth, everyone's beliefs are put to the test.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Turin Horse (2011)
A look at the monotonous daily struggle of a father and daughter in a windswept, desolate landscape. Over six days, their routine of eating boiled potatoes and tending a failing horse crumbles, symbolizing a slow descent into darkness, emptiness, and the end of existence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHeart of Glass (1976)
A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHamlet (1964)
Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWhispering Pages (1994)
An anonymous man wanders through decomposing, fog-enshrouded catacombs and encounters a series of “the degraded and the humiliated,” including a holy prostitute and a Kafkaesque bureaucrat.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Family Nest (1979)
A family slowly disintegrates under various pressures in late 1970s communist Hungary.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMoses and Aaron (1975)
A familiar Biblical tale transformed into a cinematic opera of seemingly endless possibility. In expressive, melodic tones, the fraternal pair debate God’s true message and intent for His creations, a conflict that leads their followers towards chaos and sin. Set almost entirely within a Roman amphitheater whose history lends every precise line-reading and gesture, every startling camera move and cut, a totalizing force.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Aurora Borealis: Northern Light (2017)
The Aurora Borealis is a story of family that is rich in twists and turns. It breaks the depths of the relationship between mother and daughter. A successful lawyer in Vienna, Olga is called back to Hungary when her old mother, Mary suddenly falls into a coma. While Mary is floating between life and death, Olga finds a deeply silent secret. The increasingly passionate research leads back to the post-war Europe of the '50s.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Karin hopes to recover from her recent stay at a mental hospital by spending the summer at her family's cottage on a tiny island. Her husband, Martin, cares for her but is frustrated by her physical withdrawal. Her younger brother, Minus, is confused by Karin's vulnerability and his own budding sexuality. Their father, David, cannot overcome his haughty remoteness. Beset by visions, Karin descends further into madness.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Beekeeper (1986)
Following the wedding of his daughter, stone-faced beekeeper Spyros makes an annual journey from the north of Greece to the south, traveling along with his hives. En route, he meets an erratic, young female drifter, with whom he strikes up an unusual, self-destructive relationship.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Island (2006)
Somewhere in Northern Russia in a small Russian Orthodox monastery lives an unusual man whose bizarre conduct confuses his fellow monks, while others who visit the island believe that the man has the power to heal, exorcise demons and foretell the future.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAu Hasard Balthazar (1966)
The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDecalogue II (1989)
Dorota Geller, a married woman, faces a dilemma involving her sick husband's prognosis. Her husband's doctor, who believes in God, sweared about it in vain.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWild Strawberries (1957)
Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Seventh Continent (1989)
Chronicles three years of a middle-class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, troubled only by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, however, they're planning something much more sinister.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBurnt by the Sun (1994)
Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other assorted family and friends. Things change dramatically with the unheralded arrival of Cousin Dmitri from Moscow, who charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. But Kotov isn't fooled: this is the time of Stalin's repression, with telephone calls in the middle of the night spelling doom - and he knows that Dmitri isn't paying a social call...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Man Who Sleeps (1974)
A young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisFrom the Life of the Marionettes (1980)
An account of the events before and after a murder committed by a disturbed businessman in a strained marriage, and what led him to perform such a shocking act.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNostalgia (1983)
Russian poet Andrei Gorchakov journeys through Italy with his interpreter Eugenia to research the life of an 18th-century Russian composer who once lived abroad. Isolated and consumed by an unrelenting longing for his homeland, Andrei becomes drawn to Domenico, a radical mystic obsessed with spiritual redemption. Through austere imagery and extended temporal rhythms, Tarkovsky examines exile, memory, and the profound melancholy of being unable to belong fully to either place or language.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDead Man's Letters (1986)
In a desolate world following the nuclear apocalypse, a scholar helps a small group of adults and children survive in the basement of a former museum of history. In his mind, he writes letters to his only son that will never be read and tries to find shreds of hope in his new reality.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Sacrifice?
The closest matches to The Sacrifice are Father and Son (2003), Winter Light (1963) and Decalogue I (1989). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Sacrifice?
People who watched The Sacrifice most often go on to Father and Son (2003), Winter Light (1963) and Decalogue I (1989).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Sacrifice?
Decalogue I (1989), rated 8.1/10 by 277 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Sacrifice?
Aurora Borealis: Northern Light (2017) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to The Sacrifice chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Sacrifice, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.