Movies like And the Children Shall Lead (1985)
The best movies like And the Children Shall Lead (1985) are Where the Red Fern Grows (2003), Where the Red Fern Grows (1974) and The Help (2011). If And the Children Shall Lead hooked you with its drama and family, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Help (2011)8.2/10 from 9,417 votes
- NewestThose Who Never Left (2025)Released 2025
Where the Red Fern Grows (2003)
Set in the Ozark Mountains during the Great Depression, Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for 2 years to achieve his dream of buying two coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in God as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with "Old Dan" and "Little Ann."
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & family
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhere the Red Fern Grows (1974)
Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for two years to achieve his dream of buying two red-bone coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in life as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with his dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & family
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Help (2011)
Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMississippi Burning (1988)
Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Defiant Ones (1958)
Two convicts—one white, one black—escape while chained to each other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIntruder in the Dust (1949)
Rural Mississippi in the 1940s: Lucas Beauchamp, a local black man with a reputation of not kowtowing to whites, is found standing over the body of a dead white man, holding a pistol that has recently been fired. Quickly arrested for murder and jailed, Beauchamp insists he's innocent and asks the town's most prominent lawyer, Gavin Stevens, to defend him, but Stevens refuses. When a local boy whom Beauchamp has helped in the past and who believes him to be innocent hears talk of a mob taking Beauchamp out of jail and lynching him, he pleads with Stevens to defend Beauchamp at trial and prove his innocence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Lords of Discipline (1983)
Will arrives for his last year at Military Academy, in the Deep South USA, in the 1960's. A black student, Pearce, has been accepted, for the first time and Will is asked to keep an eye out for the inevitable racism. The racists come in the form of The Ten, a secret group of the elite students. They want Pearce to leave on his own free will, but are prepared to torture him to make it 'his free will'. Will is forced to help Pearce and he is prepared to risk his own career to do so.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDetroit (2017)
A police raid in Detroit in 1967 results in one of the largest citizens' uprisings in the history of the United States.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBelfast (2021)
Buddy is a young boy on the cusp of adolescence, whose life is filled with familial love, childhood hijinks, and a blossoming romance. Yet, with his beloved hometown caught up in increasing turmoil, his family faces a momentous choice: hope the conflict will pass or leave everything they know behind for a new life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIn the Heat of the Night (1967)
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRosewood (1997)
Spurred by a white woman's lie, vigilantes destroy a black Florida town and slay inhabitants in 1923.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGhosts of Mississippi (1996)
A Mississippi district attorney and the widow of Medgar Evers struggle to bring a white supremacist to justice for the 1963 murder of the civil rights leader.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTill (2022)
The true story of Mamie Till Mobley's relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSeberg (2019)
An ambitious young FBI agent is assigned to investigate iconic actress Jean Seberg when she becomes embroiled in the tumultuous civil rights movement in late 1960s Los Angeles.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisA Time to Kill (1996)
A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the KKK.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMud (2013)
Two teenage boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and help him reunite with his lover and escape an avenging family and their armed posse.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938)
Tom Sawyer and his pal Huckleberry Finn have great adventures on the Mississippi River, pretending to be pirates, attending their own funeral and witnessing a murder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both family
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMudbound (2017)
In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDesperation Road (2023)
Ex-con Russell Gaines is attempting to rebuild his life with the help of his father, Mitchell. However, the arrival of Maben sends his new life into chaos, leading the pair to go on the run - as their violent pasts catch up to them, the pair must learn to trust each other if they hope to live out the rest of their days.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSon of the South (2021)
In civil rights era Montgomery, Alabama, Klansman's grandson Bob Zellner must choose which side of history to be on during the Movement. Defying his family and white Southern norms, he fought against social injustice, repression and violence to change the world around him
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTiny Light (2020)
Jinmu starts to record things he should remember with a camera after hearing that he could lose his memory due to the prearranged brain surgery. Memories of family and his forgotten father comes to Jinmu's mind as he takes records of his life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & family
Vier Tage Toskana (2008)
Because the late Berlin artist Dorn failed to pay his taxes or inform the family for years, his widow Erika and daughters must urgently sell the splendid estate in Tuscany they hardly visited since his death anyhow. Eldest daughter Valerie, junior partner in fiancé Andreas Imdahl's rising architects firm, travels ahead to negotiate with the suitable candidate Robert Beck, a fellow German, who agreed trough mayor-publican Fredo to keep on caretaker Antonio 'Toni' Gianni. By the time Andreas arrives, he finds Viviane unfaithful with her study lover Stefan Korten, but is interested by Toni's daughter. Second daughter Susi and her fellow arts student fiancé Bruno Tomasi have several announcements. Mother arrives stating she decided to sell the Cologne home instead, but Robert offers an alternative. Written by KGF Vissers
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
VeggieTales: Rack, Shack & Benny (1995)
There's trouble brewing at the Nezzer Chocolate Factory! To celebrate the sale of two million chocolate bunnies, company president Nebby K. Nezzer announces that his workers may eat as many bunnies as they like! This sounds great, until three boys named Rack, Shack and Benny remember that their parents taught them not to eat too much candy. By paralleling the Biblical story of Sadrach, Meschach and Abednego and the fiery furnace, "Rack, Shack, & Benny" teaches kids how to resist peer pressure and stand up for what they believe in. Kids of all ages will love the songs, humor and dazzling 3D computer animation of VeggieTales!
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both family
K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
When Russia's first nuclear submarine malfunctions on its maiden voyage, the crew must race to save the ship and prevent a nuclear disaster.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Tóth Family (1969)
The Tóth family resides in Northern Hungary. The couple has a daughter and a son, the latter a member of the armed forces. When his weary major is ordered to take a vacation, the son talks him into a visit to his family home. Hilarity ensues when the Tóths go overboard trying to make things pleasant for the visiting major in hopes of an easier life for their son, the soldier.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Those Who Never Left (2025)
Two years after the Beirut blast, a girl continually revisits the last night she spent with her family in their home.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Wait Till Your Mother Gets Home (1983)
An award winning high school football coach finds himself out of work, and switching roles with his wife for the summer when she goes back to work for the first time in 15 years.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both family
Son In The Barbershop (2015)
A teenager overhears a phone call and inserts himself into the father-son story behind it. As this strange 'conversation' develops, two separately wounded lives slowly wind into a double helix of pain, regret, and filial love.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Banger Sisters (2002)
In the late '60s, the self-proclaimed belles of the rock 'n' roll ball, rocked the worlds of every music legend whose pants they could take off -- and they have the pictures to prove it. But it's been more than two decades since the Banger Sisters earned their nickname -- or even laid eyes on each other. Their reunion is the collision of two women's worlds; one who's living in the past, and one who's hiding from it. Together they learn to live in the moment.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisReservation Road (2007)
Two fathers' lives intersect when one of them is involved in a terrible and sudden hit-and-run car accident that leaves the other's son dead. In response, the two men react in unexpected ways as a reckoning looms in the near future.
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 And the Children Shall Lead?
The closest matches to And the Children Shall Lead are Where the Red Fern Grows (2003), Where the Red Fern Grows (1974) and The Help (2011). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after And the Children Shall Lead?
Start with Where the Red Fern Grows (2003), the closest match to And the Children Shall Lead.
What is the highest-rated movie like And the Children Shall Lead?
The Help (2011), rated 8.2/10 by 9,417 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like And the Children Shall Lead?
Those Who Never Left (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like And the Children Shall Lead?
Yes: Where the Red Fern Grows (2003), Where the Red Fern Grows (1974) and The Help (2011).
How are movies similar to And the Children Shall Lead chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside And the Children Shall Lead, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.