Movies like The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009)
The best movies like The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009) are The Counterfeiters (2007), The Zookeeper's Wife (2017) and The Grey Zone (2001). If The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler hooked you with its drama and war, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedSchindler's List (1993)8.6/10 from 18,184 votes
- NewestThe World Will Tremble (2025)Released 2025
The Counterfeiters (2007)
The story of Jewish counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch, who was coerced into assisting the Nazi operation of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Zookeeper's Wife (2017)
The account of keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who helped save hundreds of people and animals during the Nazi invasion.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Grey Zone (2001)
The story of Auschwitz's twelfth Sonderkommando — one of the thirteen consecutive "Special Squads" of Jewish prisoners placed by the Nazis in the excruciating moral dilemma of assisting in the extermination of fellow Jews in exchange for a few more months of life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Hiding Place (2023)
World War II. Darkness has fallen over Europe, and the boots of the Third Reich echo through the streets. But on a quiet city corner in the Netherlands, some choose to resist. Corrie Ten Boom and her family risk everything to hide Jewish refugees by the hundreds, and they ultimately face the consequences when they are discovered.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
White Bird (2023)
After being expelled from Beecher Prep for his treatment of a classmate with a facial deformity, Julian has struggled to fit in at his new school. To transform his life, Julian's grandmother finally reveals her own story of courage of her youth in Nazi-occupied France, where a classmate shelters her from mortal danger.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Birdcatcher (2019)
Norway, 1942, during World War II. After being separated from her family, Esther, a young Jewish girl from Trondheim, arrives at an isolated farm where she must assume a new identity in order to survive the Nazi persecution.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Shop on Main Street (1965)
In a small town in Nazi-occupied Slovakia during World War II, decent but timid carpenter Tono is named "Aryan comptroller" of a button store owned by an old Jewish widow, Rozalie. Since the post comes with a salary and standing in the town's corrupt hierarchy, Tono wrestles with greed and guilt as he and Rozalie gradually befriend each other. When the authorities order all Jews in town to be rounded up, Tono faces a moral dilemma unlike any he's known before.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Zone of Interest (2023)
The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Island on Bird Street (1997)
Alex is an 11-year old boy who, during WWII, hides in the Jewish ghetto from Nazis after all his relatives have been sent to the concentration camp. The movie portrays the ghetto through his eyes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUprising (2001)
In the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, Jews rise against the Nazis.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEuropa Europa (1990)
A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005)
In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisConspiracy (2001)
At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, senior Nazi officials meet to determine the manner in which the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" can be best implemented.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSchindler's List (1993)
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Book Thief (2013)
While subjected to the horrors of WWII Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. Under the stairs in her home, a Jewish refugee is being sheltered by her adoptive parents.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008)
When his family moves from their home in Berlin to a strange new house in Poland, young Bruno befriends Shmuel, a boy who lives on the other side of the fence where everyone seems to be wearing striped pajamas. Unaware of Shmuel's fate as a Jewish prisoner or the role his own Nazi father plays in his imprisonment, Bruno embarks on a dangerous journey inside the camp's walls.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSophie's Choice (1982)
Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNaked Among Wolves (2015)
Taking place at the Concentration camp Buchenwald at the end of March 1945, prisoner Hans Pippig discovers in a carrying case of an incoming prisoner a Jewish child. If reported the three-year-old is sure to die. On the other hand, a violation of the rules of the camp would threaten the long prepared uprising of the concentration camp prisoners against the SS.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Pianist (2002)
The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisSurviving with Wolves (2007)
In 1942, the young Jewish girl Misha, her Russian mother Gerusha and her German father Reuven hide from the Germans in a small house in Ardennes, Belgium. Misha is very connected to her mother that advises her that if one day a person comes to her saying "love of my life", she would follow him or her without any question. When her parents are captured by the Nazis, Misha is delivered to a German family and the abusive matriarch gives a bad treatment to the girl. However, she finds support in the family of Ernest and his deranged wife Marthe that supplies groceries to foster family. Misha loves Ernest's dogs and the old man gives a compass to her and tells that her parents have been sent to East to forced labor. When the old couple is denounced for sheltering the girl and arrested by the Germans, Misha flees through the woods heading east. Along her journey seeking out her parents...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLore (2012)
After being abandoned by their Nazi parents at the end of World War II, five German siblings embark on a harrowing journey across their war-torn country. Led by the eldest, 14 year-old Lore, the children are forced to confront their parents’ actions and the reality of a new world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe World Will Tremble (2025)
The incredible, untold true story of how a group of prisoners attempt a seemingly impossible escape from the first Nazi death camp in order to provide the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSon of Saul (2015)
In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival trying to save from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son, seeking to give him a proper Jewish burial.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPersian Lessons (2020)
Occupied France, 1942. Gilles is arrested by SS soldiers alongside other Jews and sent to a camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids sudden execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but Gilles gets assigned a life-or-death mission: to teach Farsi to Head of Camp Koch, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Through an ingenious trick, Gilles manages to survive by inventing words of "Farsi" every day and teaching them to Koch.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIrena's Vow (2024)
19 year old Irena Gut is promoted to housekeeper in the home of a highly respected Nazi officer in Poland when she finds out that the Jewish ghetto is about to be liquidated. Determined to help twelve Jewish workers, she decides to shelter them in the safest place she can think of – the basement of the German Major's house. Over the next eight months, Irena uses her wit, humour and immense courage to hide her friends as long as possible.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRosenstrasse (2003)
When Ruth's husband dies in New York, in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house - Ruth's cousin - with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lena who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn Darkness (2011)
A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied city of Lviv. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lviv (formerly Poland).
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAu Revoir les Enfants (1987)
Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTrain of Life (1998)
In 1941, the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Central Europe organize a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler?
The closest matches to The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler are The Counterfeiters (2007), The Zookeeper's Wife (2017) and The Grey Zone (2001). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler?
People who watched The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler most often go on to The Counterfeiters (2007), The Zookeeper's Wife (2017) and The Grey Zone (2001).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler?
Schindler's List (1993), rated 8.6/10 by 18,184 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler?
The World Will Tremble (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler?
Yes: The Zookeeper's Wife (2017), The Grey Zone (2001) and The Hiding Place (2023).
How are movies similar to The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.