Movies like Il Posto (1961)
The best movies like Il Posto (1961) are La Strada (1954), Bellissima (1952) and Umberto D. (1952). If Il Posto hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedBicycle Thieves (1948)8.2/10 from 2,800 votes
- NewestThe Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971)Released 1971
- In ItalianLa Strada (1954)Also in Italian
La Strada (1954)
When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBellissima (1952)
Film director Blasetti is looking for a little girl for his new movie. Along with other mothers, Maddelena takes her daughter to Cinecittà, hoping she’ll be selected and become a star. She is ready to sacrifice anything for little Maria.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUmberto D. (1952)
When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Roof (1956)
Under provincial Italian law at the time, once a roof is erected, the occupants cannot be evicted from a building. This film follows the efforts of a family to erect the roof on a house overnight so that a newlywed couple can have their own home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Fiancés (1963)
A young man has a renewed interest in his girlfriend when he takes a job that separates the two.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAccattone (1961)
A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBicycle Thieves (1948)
Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisHands Over the City (1963)
Prior to a city council election, the collapse of a building leaves a land developer and his political backers defending themselves against a scandal.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisI Knew Her Well (1965)
A young woman from the Italian countryside experiences the dark side of the business after she moves to Rome to become a star.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIl bell'Antonio (1960)
Problems arise for Antonio Magnano when he is unable to consummate his marriage to the beautiful Barbara Puglisi and his virility is called into question. Despite the fact that he loves his beautiful wife and they have otherwise been happily married for a year, his problem becomes a source of contention for all concerned.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShoeshine (1946)
Two shoeshine boys in postwar Rome, Italy save up to buy a horse, but their involvement as dupes in a burglary lands them in juvenile prison; the experience take a devastating toll on their friendship.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisI Vitelloni (1953)
Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMamma Roma (1962)
After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisIl Grido (1957)
A sugar-refinery worker flees his Northern Italy town after a woman refuses his marriage proposal.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBandits of Orgosolo (1961)
A Sardinian peasant is implicated in the murder of a policeman and, although innocent, he doesn’t give himself up, lacking faith in the judicial system and fearing that he may lose his sheep while awaiting trial.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971)
After losing a finger in a work accident, an Italian worker becomes increasingly involved in political and revolutionary groups.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRed Desert (1964)
In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLa Notte (1961)
A day in the life of an unfaithful married couple and their steadily deteriorating relationship in Milan.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLove and Anger (1969)
Five short stories with contemporary settings. In New York, people are indifferent to derelicts sleeping on sidewalks, to a woman's assault in front of an apartment building, and to a couple injured in a car crash. A man, stripped of his identity, dies in bed with actors expressing his agony. A cheerful, innocent young man walking a city street in a time of war pays a price for this innocence. A couple talks about cinema while it watches another couple talk of love and truth on the eve of one character's return to Cuba. Striking students take over a university classroom; an argument follows about revolution or incremental change.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisFists in the Pocket (1965)
A deeply disturbed and epileptic young man benignly decides to murder other members of his dysfunctional family for altruistic reasons.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLa Terra Trema (1949)
In rural Sicily, the fishermen live at the mercy of the greedy wholesalers. One family risks everything to buy their own boat and operate independently.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNights of Cabiria (1957)
Rome, 1957. A woman, Cabiria, is robbed and left to drown by her boyfriend, Giorgio. Rescued, she resumes her life and tries her best to find happiness in a cynical world. Even when she thinks her struggles are over and she has found happiness and contentment, things may not be what they seem.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Leopard (1963)
As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe 400 Blows (1959)
For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisEuropa '51 (1952)
A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Children Are Watching Us (1943)
In his first collaboration with renowned screenwriter and longtime partner Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica examines the cataclysmic consequences of adult folly on an innocent child. Heralding the pair’s subsequent work on some of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism, The Children Are Watching Us is a vivid, deeply humane portrait of a family’s disintegration.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Moment of Truth (1965)
Miguel, a poor young man living in Franco's Spain becomes a bull fighter to escape poverty.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Seduced and Abandoned (1964)
The film presents the tale of Agnese Ascalone, daughter of prominent miner Vincenzo Ascalone, and takes place in a small town in Sicily. Agnese is seduced by her sister Matilde's fiancé, and has a tryst with him for which she confesses and tries to repent, only to be discovered by her mother and father.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPigsty (1969)
Two dramatic stories. In an undetermined past, a young cannibal (who killed his own father) is condemned to be torn to pieces by some wild beasts. In the second story, Julian, the young son of a post-war German industrialist, is on the way to lie down with his farm's pigs, because he doesn't like human relationships.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Il Posto?
The closest matches to Il Posto are La Strada (1954), Bellissima (1952) and Umberto D. (1952). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Il Posto?
People who watched Il Posto most often go on to La Strada (1954), Bellissima (1952) and Umberto D. (1952).
What is the highest-rated movie like Il Posto?
Bicycle Thieves (1948), rated 8.2/10 by 2,800 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Il Posto?
The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Italian movies like Il Posto?
Yes: La Strada (1954), Bellissima (1952) and Umberto D. (1952).
How are movies similar to Il Posto chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Il Posto, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.