Movies like The Passenger (2012)
The best movies like The Passenger (2012) are Closer (2004), Cocoon (2020) and Earthquake Bird (2019). If The Passenger 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 ratedBrokeback Mountain (2005)7.8/10 from 7,814 votes
- NewestMaterialists (2025)Released 2025
- In GermanCocoon (2020)Also in German
Closer (2004)
The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCocoon (2020)
In the heat of a shimmering Berlin summer, Nora spends her days as a third wheel to her older sister Jule and her best friend Aylin. When Romy comes onto the scene, a friendship blossoms. Nora instantly falls for her, opening up a whole new world and unexpected summer of love.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEarthquake Bird (2019)
Tokyo, Japan, 1989. Lucy Fly, a foreigner who works as a translator, begins a passionate relationship with Teiji, a mysterious man obsessed with photography.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisComing Out (1989)
Philipp, a closeted teacher, is dating a female colleague to keep up appearances. One night he stumbles into a gay bar and falls for a man. Transformed by this love, he is no longer afraid to face up to who he is.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAimée & Jaguar (1999)
In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women – one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Elementary Particles (2006)
Based on Michel Houellebecq's controversial novel, Atomised (aka The Elementary Particles) focuses on Michael and Bruno, two very different half-brothers and their disturbed sexuality. After a chaotic childhood with a hippie mother only caring for her affairs, Michael, a molecular biologist, is more interested in genes than women, while Bruno is obsessed with his sexual desires, but mostly finds his satisfaction with prostitutes. But Bruno's life changes when he gets to know the experienced Christiane. In the meantime, Michael meets Annabelle, the love of his youth, again.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCabaret (1972)
Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles and an impish emcee sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDot the I (2003)
A fiery Spanish woman is about to marry a kind British man when she meets a Brazilian actor who ignites in her a flame of lust she can't ignore.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMaterialists (2025)
A young, ambitious New York City matchmaker finds herself torn between the perfect match and her imperfect ex.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisForever First Love (2020)
Paul travels the world to capture the perfect photographic moment. Amid the colour and chaos of a crowded Filipino market, destiny intervenes when Paul’s first love, Anna appears in his lens. The travellers spend the day exploring the beauty of a 16th century town and whilst passions reignite, their principles on relationships, religion and morality clash. The night they spend together will change everything.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHarvest (2011)
Breathtaking in its subtle beauty, Harvest is an achingly romantic tale of an innocent but ever increasingly passionate affair that develops between two simple farmhands. Life on a farm is all that sullen teen Marco knows- leading a perfunctory and quiet life of working, going to school and avoiding the advances of girls. However, his self-imposed solitude ends when curly-haired Jakob, rejecting the banking world for farming, arrives to train on the farm. Although initially cautious and tentative with each other, it is soon obvious that the unspoken sexual tension is becoming increasingly hard to resist - something a spontaneous trip to Berlin. Proving that true love can blossom in even the most unlikely of places, Harvest is as rich and rewarding as it is heart-warming.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNine 1/2 Weeks (1986)
An erotic story about a woman, the assistant of an art gallery, who gets involved in an impersonal affair with a man. She barely knows about his life, only about the sex games they play, so the relationship begins to get complicated.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Promise (2016)
Set during the last days of the Ottoman Empire, a love triangle develops between Mikael, a brilliant medical student, the beautiful and sophisticated artist Ana, and Chris, a renowned American journalist based in Paris.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLove in Thoughts (2004)
A posthumous look at the last days of Guenther's life as he, his best friend, and his sister let loose on a four-day binge of alcohol, drugs, and sex.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPeople on Sunday (1930)
A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVictoria (2015)
A young Spanish woman who has newly moved to Berlin finds her flirtation with a local guy turn potentially deadly as their night out with his friends reveals a dangerous secret.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
Recently divorced career woman Alex Greville begins a romantic relationship with glamorous mod artist Bob Elkin, fully aware that he's also intimately involved with middle-aged doctor Daniel Hirsh. For both Alex and Daniel, the younger man represents a break with their repressive pasts, and though both know that Bob is seeing both of them, neither is willing to let go of the youth and vitality he brings to their otherwise stable lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAntares (2004)
A deadly car crash sets off three parallel stories of women at crisis points, faltering behind the doors of the same, plain Vienna apartment block.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisJerichow (2008)
In a small Northern German town, a dishonourably discharged Afghanistan veteran is offered a job as a deliveryman by an alcoholic Turkish entrepreneur, through which the former meets the latter's gorgeous wife.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlow-Up (1966)
A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBrokeback Mountain (2005)
In 1960s Wyoming, two men develop a strong emotional and sexual relationship that endures as a lifelong connection complicating their lives as they get married and start families of their own.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRockville Morning (2017)
Follow struggling photographer Eddie through a regular morning in the town of Rockville Maryland
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Mario (2018)
Mario is a promising young footballer in Switzerland on his way to the top, closing in on the success he and his father always dreamed of. But when the talented striker Leon joins the team, they'll get caught up between the politics of the game and the politics of love, as rumours and prejudice threaten their careers and everything they've managed to build.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDuck Butter (2018)
Dissatisfied with the dishonesty they see in dating, strangers Naima and Sergio make a pact to spend 24 straight hours together in an attempt to fast forward their relationship.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisButch Jamie (2008)
The film follows the story of Jamie, a struggling butch lesbian actress who gets cast as a man in a film. The main plot is a romantic comedy between Jamie's male alter-ego, "Male Jamie," and Jill, a heterosexual woman on set. The film's subplots include Jamie's bisexual roommate Lola and her cat actor Howard, Lola's abrasive butch German girlfriend Andi, and Jamie's gay Asian friend David.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance
Johnny Minotaur (1971)
Johnny Minotaur is a lyrical explosion of taboos: incest, intergenerational desire, pansexuality and autoeroticism are a few of the issues Charles Henri Ford grapples with through mythopoeic, sensual imagery, recitations of his diaries and a philosophical debate featuring an impressive narration by such artists as Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Warren Sonbert and Lynne Tillman.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
All About My Mother (1999)
Following the tragic death of her teenage son, Manuela travels from Madrid to Barcelona in an attempt to contact the long-estranged father the boy never knew. She reunites with an old friend, an outspoken transgender sex worker, and befriends a troubled actress and a pregnant, HIV-positive nun.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSeduced and Abandoned (1964)
The film presents the tale of Agnese Ascalone, daughter of prominent miner Vincenzo Ascalone, and takes place in a small town in Sicily. Agnese is seduced by her sister Matilde's fiancé, and has a tryst with him for which she confesses and tries to repent, only to be discovered by her mother and father.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBusiness for Pleasure (1997)
A voyeuristic tycoon orchestrates a risky, passion-charged triangle between himself, his right-hand man, and a beautiful executive. Another classy, erotic production from Zalman King
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
A Million Little Pieces (2019)
A young drug-addled writer approaching the bottom of his descent submits to two months of agonizing detox at a treatment center in Minnesota.
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 Passenger?
The closest matches to The Passenger are Closer (2004), Cocoon (2020) and Earthquake Bird (2019). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Passenger?
Start with Closer (2004), the closest match to The Passenger.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Passenger?
Brokeback Mountain (2005), rated 7.8/10 by 7,814 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Passenger?
Materialists (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there German movies like The Passenger?
Yes: Cocoon (2020), Coming Out (1989) and Aimée & Jaguar (1999).
How are movies similar to The Passenger chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Passenger, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.