Movies like The Olive Trees of Justice (1962)
The best movies like The Olive Trees of Justice (1962) are DNA (2020), The Stranger (2025) and Chocolat (1988). If The Olive Trees of Justice hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedPapillon (1973)7.8/10 from 2,232 votes
- NewestThe Stranger (2025)Released 2025
- In FrenchDNA (2020)Also in French
DNA (2020)
A woman has a close bond with her beloved Algerian grandfather, who protected her from a toxic home life as a child; his death triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate, revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Stranger (2025)
Algiers, 1938. Meursault, a quiet and unassuming employee in his early thirties, attends his mother's funeral without shedding a tear. The next day, he begins a casual affair with Marie, a work colleague. He quickly slips back into his usual routine.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChocolat (1988)
On her way to visit her childhood home in a colonial outpost in Northern Cameroon, a young French woman recalls her childhood, her memories concentrating on her family's houseboy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe First Man (2011)
Based on a novel that Albert Camus was working on when he died, we follow Jacques Comery as he travels back to Algeria in 1957, a place full of childhood memories. The country is split between those wanting to remain a part of France, and those demanding independence. Reminiscences of his mother, his stern grandmother and a young Arab boy come flooding back.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Kick of Sirocco (1979)
A shady Parisian tries to take advantage of a family of French-descended Algerians forced to move to France.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDays of Glory (2006)
1943. They have never stepped foot on French soil but because France was at war, Said, Abdelkader, Messaoud and Yassir enlist in the French Army, along with 130,000 other “indigenous” soldiers, to liberate the “fatherland” from the Nazi enemy. Heroes that history has forgotten...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBamako (2007)
Caught in the stranglehold of debt and structural adjustment, Africa is fighting for its survival. In the face of disaster, representatives of African society bring an action against international financial institutions. The trial takes place in Bamako, in the yard of a house, among its inhabitants.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIntimate Enemies (2007)
A drama following a French platoon during Algeria's war of independence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhite Material (2010)
In the midst of a volatile regime change in a Francophone African state, Maria Vial is fighting to sustain her family’s coffee plantation. With rebels and the army struggling for control, French peacekeeping forces move out, warning the remaining white residents that they’re on their own. But Maria refuses to be driven off the land, even as tragedy looms.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisColonel Chabert (1994)
When Colonel Chabert returns from the war, he discovers that he has lost everything.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSkin (2009)
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFar from Men (2015)
A French teacher in a small Algerian village during the Algerian War forms an unexpected bond with a dissident who is ordered to be turned in to the authorities.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJacquou the Rebel (2007)
In 1815, young Jacquou lives an idyllic peasant life with his parents in the Périgord region of France. But one day, his childhood happiness is cruelly ended when his father is arrested, after a dispute with the arrogant Count de Nansac. With both his parents dead, Jacquou is adopted by Bonal, a kind priest, under whose influence he grows into an assured, morally upright young man. Now an adult, Jacquou has one desire. To repay the Count de Nansac for the evil he once inflicted on his parents...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Dazzled (2019)
Camille, is the eldest of a large family. One day, her parents enter a religious community which gradually, regimentation becomes sectarian and Camille will have to fight to assert her freedom and save her brothers and sisters.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn His Shadow (2023)
After the death of their father, two half-brothers find themselves on opposite sides of an escalating conflict with tragic consequences.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLine of Demarcation (1966)
It is based on upon the memoir Mémoires d'un agent secret de la France libre et La Ligne de démarcation by Gilbert Renault under his pseudonym Colonel Rémy. A small village in the Jura is split by the river Loue which creates the line of demarcation between Nazi occupied France and freedom. A French officer, Pierre, is released by the Nazi soldiers to find his chateau converted into a German command centre. Whilst he is obliged to co-operate with the enemy, his wife Mary supports the resistance movement and is willing to risk her life for it. The Nazis step up their activity against the resistance, insisting that any who attempt to cross the line of demarcation will be shot. When his wife is arrested, Pierre decides to switch his allegiance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisManon of the Spring (1986)
In this, the sequel to Jean de Florette, Manon has grown into a beautiful young shepherdess living in the idyllic Provencal countryside. She plots vengeance on the men who greedily conspired to acquire her father's land years earlier.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMuriel, or the Time of Return (1963)
In the seacoast town of Boulogne, antique furniture saleswoman Hélène lives with her stepson, Bernard, who's back from military duty in Algiers. An old lover of Hélène's comes to visit, Alphonse, with his niece Françoise; he too is back from Algiers, where he ran a café. Bernard speaks of his fiancée, Muriel, whom Hélène has not met. The past is obscured by guilt, misperceptions, and missed possibilities. Appearances deceive, things change. As Hélène and Alphonse try to sort out a renewal, everyone seems off-kilter just enough to hint that all cannot end well.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWinter in Sokcho (2025)
In the snowy seaside town of Sokcho, 25-year-old Soo-Ha works at a guesthouse. She drifts between her mother’s fish stall and her boyfriend until a French artist’s arrival stirs questions about her identity. As winter deepens, Soo-Ha and the artist form an unspoken connection through food and art.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNoua (1972)
In Algeria in 1954, in a village in the Aurès region, poverty reigns over peasants enslaved by colonial administrators and Algerian landowners. Noua, in love with the son of a peasant dispossessed of his land, must be sold to a wealthy landowner.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951)
The life and career of Erwin Rommel and his involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPépé le Moko (1937)
Pépé le Moko, one of France's most wanted criminals, hides out in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows police will be waiting for him if he tries to leave the city. When Pépé meets Gaby, a gorgeous woman from Paris who is lost in the Casbah, he falls for her.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWild Reeds (1994)
As the Algerian War draws to a close, a teenager with a girlfriend starts feeling homosexual urges for two of his classmates: a country boy, and a French-Algerian intellectual.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHoney and Ashes (1996)
Set against the vibrant backdrop of contemporary North Africa, this drama follows three women as they navigate the complex interplay between tradition and modernity. Each woman, driven by her own desires for success and meaningful relationships, faces societal pressures and cultural constraints that test their resolve. As their lives unexpectedly intersect, they reveal the shared struggles and resilience needed to overcome the obstacles placed in their path.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Refusal (1982)
In 1971, the Algerian government nationalized hydrocarbons. The consequences of this decision on the community of Algerians in France are numerous. The Galti family is prey to these economic problems. The father, Khaled, former member of the F.L.N. in France, does not escape the sentence. Sharazade, his wife and comrade in combat, finds herself torn between her role as wife, mother and nostalgia for a country and a bygone past. As for his son Karim, a victim of socio-cultural division, all he has left is refusal.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Papillon (1973)
A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMémoires du 17 octobre 1961 (2002)
Three demonstrators from October 17, 1961, and a journalist recount the peaceful success of the demonstration and its brutal repression in the streets of Paris. Five months before the end of the Algerian War, the Gaullist government violently suppressed (40 to 300 deaths in a single evening, according to various sources) a peaceful demonstration by the entire Algerian civilian population of the Paris region, protesting the curfew imposed solely on this population (all participants held French citizenship). The government long denied this state crime; the official version: 3 deaths! In 1962, these events were granted amnesty by a simple decree (later enacted into law) issued by the same Gaullist government.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
October 17, 1961: A day that went missing (1992)
This documentary bears witness to the events that took place more than thirty years before the filming of this movie, on October 17, 1961, in Paris, during the Algerian War. It is a work not only about historical truth but also about memory. Constructed primarily from interviews conducted with those involved in the events, along with archival footage, photographs, and radio broadcasts from the time, our investigation proves that nearly 200 Algerians were killed (drowned, tortured) that night and in the days that followed by the French police. "A Missing Day" seeks to ask two key questions: how could such events have unfolded in the capital of a Western democracy barely thirty years ago? And why have they been silenced ever since?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Baya's Mountain (1997)
Set in the 1800s among the Berbers of North Africa, this 1997 Algerian feature concerns a noble widow who receives a customary purse of gold coins from the enemy tribe that murdered her husband; the gift puts her in conflict with her kinsmen, who want the money to buy back land taken by the enemy in cahoots with French colonials.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Olive Trees of Justice?
The closest matches to The Olive Trees of Justice are DNA (2020), The Stranger (2025) and Chocolat (1988). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Olive Trees of Justice?
Start with DNA (2020), the closest match to The Olive Trees of Justice.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Olive Trees of Justice?
Papillon (1973), rated 7.8/10 by 2,232 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Olive Trees of Justice?
The Stranger (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like The Olive Trees of Justice?
Yes: DNA (2020), The Stranger (2025) and Chocolat (1988).
How are movies similar to The Olive Trees of Justice chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Olive Trees of Justice, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.