Movies like Mainline (2011)
The best movies like Mainline (2011) are Hounddog (2008), The Safety of Objects (2002) and Bastard Out of Carolina (1996). If Mainline hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Trials of Cate McCall (2013)6.4/10 from 320 votes
- NewestAuf der Walz – Drei Jahre und ein Tag (2025)Released 2025
Hounddog (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 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 thisBastard Out of Carolina (1996)
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisThe Trials of Cate McCall (2013)
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLucky Them (2013)
More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIron Jawed Angels (2004)
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Girl in the Book (2015)
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisStrange Weather (2016)
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisA Dry White Season (1989)
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Poker House (2008)
Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Believe in Unicorns (2015)
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Truth About Emanuel (2013)
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHoly Lands (2019)
When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIntroducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999)
An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 thisTalhotBlond (2012)
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTuesday (2024)
A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSky (2016)
A woman embarks on a journey alone across the United States after fleeing from her violent husband.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Caveman's Valentine (2001)
Romulus, a misunderstood musician turned recluse hiding from personal demons in a New York City cave, finds the frozen body of a young drifter in a tree. The authorities, including his police officer daughter, claim the death is accidental. Romulus is convinced the man was murdered by a prominent art photographer but how can he prove he's right when everyone thinks he's insane?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisI Built a Rocket Imagining Your Arrival (2026)
Fifty-something Rosa, lying in an MRI scanner, is prompted to summon a happy memory. She plunges into a meandering, subconscious road trip with her indomitable mother, both queer, where wild imagination becomes a tender, unruly form of therapy.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Coming SoonMovies like thisNadia and Sarra (2004)
Nadia is a 45 year old female professor at the University of Tunis. She is married and has a daughter of 18, Sarra. For some time, Nadia has problems in her marriage also symptoms of menopause are inseparable. The physical and psychological state deteriorates inexorably Nadia.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Game (2017)
A new kid in town tests the limits at the high school basketball tryouts.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Season of Men (2000)
An 18 year old on the island Djerba, Aicha, is married to Said, who works in Tunis for much of the year. Aicha breaks with tradition and decides to join Said in Tunis, weaving rugs to make money. Said asks that she give him a son, so Aicha lives under the rule of her mother-in-law.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Just Like Us (2013)
A familiar landscape of box stores and parking lots proves a rich site for longing. Celebrities observed in this environment and are reduced to ordinary beings in the process. A curious narrator reveals little moments of subjectivity that evidence the paradox of connection and belonging within systems that simultaneously contain us and comprise us.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Nobody's Child (1986)
Fact-based drama about the life of Marie Balter, who spent most of her young life in mental institutions. At age 16, she first attempted suicide and the next 20 years she spent in and out of the institutions. At last, a caring doctor started treating her for extreme depression and panic disorder. Weened from strong medications she had taken all her life, at age 36, she emerged for the last time and started a rehabilitation program in the home of a volunteer married couple. There she met a fellow patient with whom she developed a romantic relationship. She also started a college degree. This followed with a long-term professional success in the field of mental health.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Auf der Walz – Drei Jahre und ein Tag (2025)
Carpenter Maria Abeler is supposed to take over her father's carpentry business and start a family with her longtime boyfriend Steffen, at least if Volker and Steffen have their way. When journeyman Cem turns up at the carpentry workshop, Maria decides to join Cem on a three-year journey against the wishes of her father and her boyfriend
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Puppet Syndrome (2015)
Since early childhood Peter has been obsessed with the world of puppets, but his greater obsession is with a real girl, Lisa. He crafts his perfect woman out of her. But Lisa isn't a docile marionette. She's a living human being and she rebels against her creator. Based on the critically-acclaimed, brilliant and poignant novel by one of the best contemporary Russian writers, Dina Rubina, "Petrushka Syndrome" is a multidimensional metaphor, where a sense of duality pervades everything. People and dolls, life and art, the Creator and the creation depend on one another. And where does one draw the line between them?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
East Coast Park Lovers (2020)
In this microcosm of the modern world, three couples, each at a different stage of their lives and relationship, face up to the conflicts of their differing cultures, backgrounds and beliefs.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
A Good Wife (2016)
When 50-year-old Milena finds out about the terrible past of her seemingly ideal husband, while simultaneously learning of her own cancer diagnosis, she begins an awakening from the suburban paradise she has been living in.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Like Mainline and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Mainline?
The closest matches to Mainline are Hounddog (2008), The Safety of Objects (2002) and Bastard Out of Carolina (1996). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Mainline?
Start with Hounddog (2008), the closest match to Mainline.
What is the highest-rated movie like Mainline?
The Trials of Cate McCall (2013), rated 6.4/10 by 320 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Mainline?
Auf der Walz – Drei Jahre und ein Tag (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to Mainline chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Mainline, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.