Movies like In the Basement (2014)
The best movies like In the Basement (2014) are Welcome to Sodom (2018), Safari (2016) and Wings of Hope (1999). If In the Basement hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedFor Sama (2019)8.2/10 from 323 votes
- NewestWith Hasan in Gaza (2026)Released 2026
- In GermanSafari (2016)Also in German
Welcome to Sodom (2018)
A dark and sensuous film from a landfill in Ghana, where electronic waste from the West is being recycled. An unforgettable experience, told by the workers themselves.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Safari (2016)
Africa. In the wild expanses, where bush-bucks, impalas, zebras, gnus and other creatures graze by the thousands, they are on holiday. German and Austrian hunting tourists drive through the bush, lie in wait, stalk their prey. They shoot, sob with excitement and pose before the animals they have bagged. A vacation movie about killing, a movie about human nature.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Wings of Hope (1999)
Werner Herzog returns to the South American jungle with Juliane Koepcke, the German woman who was the sole survivor of a plane crash there in 1971. They find the remains of the plane and recreate her journey out of the jungle.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Deutschland privat (1980)
"Deutschland privat" is a special project by Robert van Ackeren, who in 1979 asked people to send him their 8mm home movies by placing ads in several magazines in Berlin, Germany. In the ads he announced that he was planning to blow up and mount the best of those movies into a feature documentary to be released in German cinemas. He was surprised how many home movies he received and how generously people allowed him to use them for his feature. Part 1 of "Deutschland privat" gives us typical German home movies of the 1970s, i.e. private holidays, family parties, etc. Part 2 consists of what is now called "amateur porn"; home made 8mm movies featuring real porn action.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
All These Sleepless Nights (2016)
What does it mean to be awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep? Kris and Michal push their experiences of life and love to a breaking point as they restlessly roam the city streets in search of answers, adrift in the euphoria and uncertainty of youth.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEchoes from a Sombre Empire (1990)
Documentary examining Bokassa's rule in the Central African Republic using the testimony of witnesses and visits to key sites.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
La Soufrière: Waiting for an Inevitable Catastrophe (1977)
Werner Herzog takes a film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that the volcano on the island is going to erupt. Everyone has left, except for one old man who refuses to leave.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWhores' Glory (2011)
In Bangkok, Thailand, women punch a clock and wait for clients in a brightly lit glass box; in the red-light district of Faridpur, Bangladesh, a madam haggles over the price of a teenage girl; and in the border town of Reynosa, Mexico, crack-addicted women pray to a deity named Lady Death.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIntent to Destroy: Death, Denial & Depiction (2017)
INTENT TO DESTROY embeds with a historic feature production as a springboard to explore the violent history of the Armenian Genocide and legacy of Turkish suppression and denial over the past century.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Karl Marx City (2017)
Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker take a powerfully personal journey through the former East Germany, as Epperlein investigates her father’s 1999 suicide and the possibility that he may have worked as a spy for the dreaded Stasi security service.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Natascha Kampusch: The Girl in the Cellar (2010)
This extraordinary interview reveals the ordeal of Natascha Kampusch, imprisoned in a cellar for eight years by Wolfgang Priklopil.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Paradise: Faith (2013)
For Anna Maria, paradise lies with Jesus, and she devotes her time to door-to-door missionary work. One day after years of absence, her husband, an Egyptian Muslim confined to a wheelchair, comes home—and soon prayers are replaced by fighting.
Why it matches: Fans watch both
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAnselm (2023)
This unique cinematic experience dives deep into an artist’s work and reveals his life path, inspiration, and creative process. It explores his fascination with myth and history. Past and present are interwoven to diffuse the line between film and painting, allowing the audience to be completely immersed in the remarkable world of one of the greatest contemporary artists, Anselm Kiefer. Wim Wenders shot this unique portrait over the course of two years in stunning 3D.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHomo Sapiens (2016)
HOMO SAPIENS is visionary documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter's exploration of the finiteness and fragility of human existence, the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being. What will remain of our lives after we're gone? Empty spaces, ruins, cities, increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, now abandoned and decaying, gradually reclaimed by nature. Comprised of a succession of eerily depopulated, dystopian landscapes from across the world, HOMO SAPIENS offers an at once mesmerizing and chilling vision of what a posthuman future might look like.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Black Metal Veins (2012)
Black Metal Veins unflinchingly documents the dark realities of despair and morbid self annihilation surrounding the lives of five heroin junkies. The addicts' intertwining stories of pain, loss, sadness, and abandonment lead the viewer down the agonizing and hideous path of horrifying psychological and spiritual destruction as the grim disease of heroin addiction infects and decays the bodies and minds of five young people.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Above and Below (2015)
Above and Below is a rough and rhythmic roller coaster ride seating five survivors in their daily hustle through an apocalyptic world. A journey of challenges and beauty in uncomfortable places: Rick & Cindy, Godfather Lalo in the flood channels deep down under the shiny strip of Sin City. Dave in the dry and lonesome Californian desert and April in simulation for a Mars mission in the Utah desert. Through the hustle, the pain and the laughs, we are whisked away to an unfamiliar world, yet quickly discover the souls we encounter are perhaps not that different from our own.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Fata Morgana (1972)
Shot under extreme conditions and inspired by Mayan creation theory, the film contemplates the illusion of reality and the possibility of capturing for the camera something which is not there. It is about the mirages of nature—and the nature of mirage.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBrothers of the Night (2016)
Soft boys by day, kings by night. The film follows a group of young Bulgarian Roma who come to Vienna looking for freedom and a quick buck. They sell their bodies as if that's all they had. What comforts them, so far from home, is the feeling of being together. But the nights are long and unpredictable.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Oeconomia (2020)
What is money? What are debts? What are the consequences of both? And how can images be found for them? In Oeconomia, Carmen Losmann undertakes a journey in the strategic heartlands of neoliberal policy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Dog Days (2001)
Vignettes of the lives of several residents of a Vienna suburb during a heat wave.
Why it matches: Fans watch both
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSparta (2022)
Ewald moved to Romania years ago. Now in his 40s, he seeks a fresh start. Leaving his girlfriend, he moves to the hinterland. With young boys from the area, he transforms a decaying school into a fortress. The children enjoy a new, carefree existence. But the distrust of the villagers is soon awoken. And Ewald is forced to confront a truth he has long suppressed.
Why it matches: Fans watch both
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPina (2011)
Pina is a feature-length dance film in 3D with the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, featuring the unique and inspiring art of the great German choreographer, who died in the summer of 2009.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWith Hasan in Gaza (2026)
Three MiniDV tapes of life in Gaza from 2001 were recently rediscovered. What started as a search for a former prison mate from 1989 led to an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza with Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Cameraperson (2016)
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)
Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStolen Seas (2013)
A chilling exploration of the Somali pirate phenomenon through audio recordings and found video, right into the middle of the real-life hostage negotiation of a Danish shipping vessel, the CEC Future.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Night Will Fall (2014)
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFor Sama (2019)
A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisHated: GG Allin and The Murder Junkies (1993)
An overview of the life of the most shocking, vile, and notorious of punk rock legends.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988)
An exploration of the heavy metal scene in Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on glam metal. It features concert footage and interviews of legendary heavy metal and hard rock bands and artists such as Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Megadeth, Motörhead, Ozzy Osbourne and W.A.S.P..
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like In the Basement?
The closest matches to In the Basement are Welcome to Sodom (2018), Safari (2016) and Wings of Hope (1999). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after In the Basement?
People who watched In the Basement most often go on to Welcome to Sodom (2018), Safari (2016) and Wings of Hope (1999).
What is the highest-rated movie like In the Basement?
For Sama (2019), rated 8.2/10 by 323 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like In the Basement?
With Hasan in Gaza (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there German movies like In the Basement?
Yes: Safari (2016), Wings of Hope (1999) and Deutschland privat (1980).
How are movies similar to In the Basement chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside In the Basement, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.