Movies like Ivan's Childhood (1962)
The best movies like Ivan's Childhood (1962) are Come and See (1985), Kanal (1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958). If Ivan's Childhood 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 ratedCome and See (1985)8.2/10 from 2,022 votes
- NewestThe Painted Bird (2019)Released 2019
Come and See (1985)
The invasion of a village in Belarus by German forces sends young Flyora into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Flyora finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisKanal (1957)
In the last few days of the Warsaw Uprising during World War II, a modest group of Resistance members remains. The band must take refuge in the sewers under the orders of leader Zadra, but it's only a matter of time before they will have to emerge. However, when they try, they are met only with intense hostility from the Nazis. Despite their attempts stay resolute through immense mental strain, it becomes increasingly apparent that they may be doomed.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAshes and Diamonds (1958)
A young academy soldier, Maciek Chelmicki, is ordered to shoot the secretary of the KW PPR. A coincidence causes him to kill someone else. Meeting face to face with his victim, he gets a shock. He faces the necessity of repeating the assassination. He meets Krystyna, a girl working as a barmaid in the restaurant of the "Monopol" hotel. His affection for her makes him even more aware of the senselessness of killing at the end of the war. Loyalty to the oath he took, and thus the obligation to obey the order, tips the scales.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Generation (1955)
Stach is a wayward teen living in squalor on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Guided by an avuncular Communist organizer, he is introduced to the underground resistance—and to the beautiful Dorota. Soon he is engaged in dangerous efforts to fight oppression and indignity, maturing as he assumes responsibility for others’ lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Cranes Are Flying (1957)
Veronika and Boris come together in Moscow shortly before World War II. Walking along the river, they watch cranes fly overhead, and promise to rendezvous before Boris leaves to fight. Boris misses the meeting and is off to the front lines, while Veronika waits patiently, sending letters faithfully. After her house is bombed, Veronika moves in with Boris' family, into the company of a cousin with his own intentions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisForbidden Games (1952)
Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Ascent (1977)
During a freezing WWII winter, two Soviet partisans on a mission to gather food contend with the temperature, the occupying Germans, and their own psyches.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisFather of a Soldier (1965)
When peasant Georgy Makharashvili hears that his soldier son is lying wounded in a hospital, he sets out to visit him. However, unknown to him, his son has been sent back to the front. Reluctant to return home and in a vain attempt to locate his boy, Georgy joins the Red Army in it's unrelenting push to the west.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBallad of a Soldier (1959)
During World War II, earnest young Russian soldier Alyosha Skvortsov is rewarded with a short leave of absence for performing a heroic deed on the battlefield. Feeling homesick, he decides to visit his mother. Due to his kindhearted nature, however, Alyosha is repeatedly sidetracked by his efforts to help those he encounters, including a lovely girl named Shura. In his tour of a country devastated by war, he struggles to keep hope alive.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisDiamonds of the Night (1964)
Two Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. Beyond themes of war and anti-Nazism, the film concerns itself with man's struggle to preserve human dignity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMirror (1975)
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTwenty Days Without War (1976)
War correspondent Lopatin takes a 20-day-leave from his hard work at the front in 1942. He travels to faraway Tashkent to meet the family of the killed soldier and visit the film set of the screen adaptation of his war-time stories. Lopatin also manages to walk the streets of Tashkent, take part in a factory workers' meeting and have a short-lived love affair. Although with no bombings and fighting, the city dwellers breathe the atmosphere of the ongoing war.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
They Fought for Their Motherland (1975)
In July 1942, in the Second World War, the rearguard of the Russian army protects the bridgehead of the Don River against the German army while the retreating Russian troops cross the bridge. While they move back to the Russian territory through the countryside, the soldiers show their companionship, sentiments, fears and heroism to defend their motherland.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Notebook (2013)
In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Tin Drum (1979)
In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRome, Open City (1945)
During the Nazi occupation of 1944 Rome, Resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi is pursued by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a means of escape.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Absolute CinemaMovies 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 thisThe Dawns Here Are Quiet (1972)
In a remote village in Karelia, Sergeant Vaskov commands an anti-aircraft unit that protects a rail depot. While his men are transferred to the front line, he is reprimanded for their unruly behavior. He retorts that he wants replacements that aren't drunks or womanizers. In response, he is assigned a unit made up entirely of young women, fresh from training.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisKatyn (2007)
On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invades Poland, unleashing World War II. On September 17th, the Soviet Red Army crosses the border. The Polish army, unable to fight on two fronts, is defeated. Thousands of Polish men, both military and government officials, are captured by the invaders. Their fate will only be known several years later.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Way Home (1965)
In the aftermath of World War II, a Hungarian teenager, captured by Soviet troops, forms an unlikely bond with a Russian soldier in a remote prison camp.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Long Live Death (1971)
At the end of the Spanish civil war, Fando, a boy of about ten, tries to make sense of war and his father's arrest. His mother is religious, sympathetic to the Fascists; his father is accused of being a Red. Fando discovers that his mother may have aided in his father's arrest. Sometimes we witness Fando imagining explanations for what's going on; sometimes we see him at play, alone or with his friend Thérèse. Oedipal fantasies and a lad's natural curiosity about sex and death mix with his search for his mother's nature and his father's fate. Will Fando survive the search?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Bridge (1959)
A group of German boys are ordered to protect a small bridge in their home village during the waning months of the second world war. Truckloads of defeated, cynical Wehrmacht soldiers flee the approaching American troops, but the boys, full of enthusiasm for the "blood and honor" Nazi ideology, stay to defend the useless bridge. The film is based on a West German anti-war novel of the same name, written by Gregor Dorfmeister.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Commissar (1967)
Klavdia Vavilova, a Red Army cavalry commissar, is waylaid by an unexpected pregnancy. She stays with a Jewish family to give birth and is softened somewhat by the experience of family life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHope and Glory (1987)
A middle-aged man recalls his childhood growing up in and around London during World War II.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Painted Bird (2019)
After losing his parents, a young Jewish boy wanders Eastern Europe, seeking refuge during World War II.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Third Part of the Night (1972)
Set during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the story follows Michał, who witnesses the murder of his mother, wife and child and then is hurled into a life that is not his own; a surreal world littered with trapdoors, doppelgängers and wormholes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPassenger (1963)
A German woman on a ship returning to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she had been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Travelling Players (1975)
A traveling theatre troupe tours the Greek countryside from 1939 to the early 1950s, staging “Golfo the Shepherdess”. As the years pass, its members endure persecution, betrayal, executions, and exile. Their personal stories become entangled with the country’s major historical events, in a seemingly endless cycle of violence and loss.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Steamroller and the Violin (1961)
Seven year old Sasha practices violin every day to satisfy the ambition of his parents. Already withdrawn as a result of his routines, Sasha quickly regains confidence when he accidentally meets and befriends worker Sergei, who works on a steamroller in their upscale Moscow neighborhood.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
Like Ivan's Childhood and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Ivan's Childhood?
The closest matches to Ivan's Childhood are Come and See (1985), Kanal (1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Ivan's Childhood?
People who watched Ivan's Childhood most often go on to Come and See (1985), Kanal (1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958).
What is the highest-rated movie like Ivan's Childhood?
Come and See (1985), rated 8.2/10 by 2,022 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Ivan's Childhood?
The Painted Bird (2019) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to Ivan's Childhood chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Ivan's Childhood, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.