Movies like Cartel Land (2015)
The best movies like Cartel Land (2015) are Cocaine Cowboys (2006), The Redemption of General Butt Naked (2011) and Dirty Wars (2013). If Cartel Land hooked you with its drama and documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Salt of the Earth (2014)8.1/10 from 700 votes
- NewestCover-Up (2025)Released 2025
Cocaine Cowboys (2006)
In the 1980s, ruthless Colombian cocaine barons invaded Miami with a brand of violence unseen in this country since Prohibition-era Chicago - and it put the city on the map. "Cocaine Cowboys" is the true story of how Miami became the drug, murder and cash capital of the United States, told by the people who made it all happen.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Redemption of General Butt Naked (2011)
Can a ruthless mass killer become a messenger of peace? This spellbinding documentary traces the rise and fall of General Butt Naked—feared warlord of Liberia’s 14-year civil war—and his self-proclaimed quest to heal his country and redeem his own soul as a newborn evangelist.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & drama
Dirty Wars (2013)
Investigative journalist, Jeremy Scahill is pulled into an unexpected journey as he chases down the hidden truth behind America's expanding covert wars, and examines how the US government has responded to international terrorist threats in ways that seem to go against the established laws of the land.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRubble Kings (2015)
Through archival footage Nicholson tells the story of the real Warriors that walked the streets of New York City in the 1970s and the harsh reality of gang life in a city that seemed to be falling apart.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Seven Five (2015)
Meet the dirtiest cop in NYC history. Michael Dowd stole money and dealt drugs while patrolling the streets of '80s Brooklyn.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStrong Island (2017)
Examining the violent death of the filmmaker’s brother and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free, this documentary interrogates murderous fear and racialized perception, and re-imagines the wreckage in catastrophe’s wake, challenging us to change.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNarco Cultura (2013)
To a growing number of Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, narco-traffickers have become iconic outlaws and the new models of fame and success. They represent a pathway out of the ghetto, nurturing a new American dream fueled by the war on drugs. Narco Cultura looks at this explosive phenomenon from within, exposing cycles of addiction to money, drugs, and violence that are rapidly gaining strength on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Square (2013)
The Square looks at the hard realities faced day-to-day by people working to build Egypt’s new democracy. Cairo’s Tahrir Square is the heart and soul of the film, which follows several young activists. Armed with values, determination, music, humor, an abundance of social media, and sheer obstinacy, they know that the thorny path to democracy only began with Hosni Mubarak’s fall. The life-and-death struggle between the people and the power of the state is still playing out.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLife of Crime: 1984-2020 (2021)
An intimate documentary that looks at the vicious cycles of drug addiction and street crime in one of the roughest parts of New Jersey.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & drama
The Infiltrators (2019)
A rag-tag group of undocumented youth – Dreamers – deliberately get detained by Border Patrol in order to infiltrate a shadowy, for-profit detention center.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & documentary
Kingdom of Shadows (2015)
KINGDOM OF SHADOWS follows three people grappling with the hard choices and destructive consequences of the U.S.-Mexico “drug war”. Filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz weaves together the seemingly disconnected stories of an activist nun in deeply scarred Monterrey, Mexico, a U.S. Federal agent on the border, and a former Texas smuggler to reveal the human side of an often-misunderstood conflict that has resulted in the “disappearance” of more than 23,000 people in Mexico—a growing human rights crisis that only recently has made international headlines.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Other Side (2015)
In an invisible territory at the margins of society, at the border between anarchy and illegality, lives a wounded community that is trying to respond to a threat: of being forgotten by political institutions and having their rights as citizens trampled. Disarmed veterans, taciturn adolescents, drug addicts trying to escape addiction through love, ex-special forces soldiers still at war with the world, floundering young women and future mothers, and old people who have not lost their desire to live. Through this hidden pocket of humanity, the door opens to the abyss of today's America.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & drama
Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (2025)
On March 13, 2022, filmmaker Brent Renaud was killed by Russian soldiers, the first American journalist to die while reporting on the war in Ukraine. His younger brother and collaborator, Craig Renaud, recovered Brent’s body and his final recordings from Ukraine and brought them back to their childhood home in Arkansas. As Brent’s journey to his final resting place unfolds, the film chronicles the years he and his brother spent covering some of the world’s most dangerous conflicts.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Act of Killing (2012)
After befriending documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer, former Indonesian death squad leaders reenact their real-life mass killings in the style of various American film genres. As they recreate their past atrocities, the line between reality and performance blurs, exposing the lingering impact of Indonesia's 1965-66 anti-communist purge and the unsettling psychology of its perpetrators.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCity of Ghosts (2017)
With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Cove (2009)
The Cove tells the amazing true story of how an elite team of individuals, films makers and free divers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate the hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The shocking discoveries were only the tip of the iceberg.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Fog of War (2003)
Former corporate whiz kid Robert McNamara was the controversial Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, during the height of the Vietnam War. Augmented by archival footage and cabinet conversation recordings, Errol Morris gives the conflicted McNamara a platform on which he attempts to confront his and the U.S. government's actions in Southeast Asia in light of the horrors of modern warfare, the end of ideology and the punitive judgment of history.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWormwood (2017)
In this genre-bending tale, Errol Morris explores the mysterious death of a U.S. scientist entangled in a secret Cold War program known as MK-Ultra.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCitizenfour (2014)
In June 2013, Laura Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBowling for Columbine (2002)
This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of Oscar-winning NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with The Anarchist's Cookbook to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old. Bowling for Columbine is a journey through the US, through our past, hoping to discover why our pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCover-Up (2025)
He's devoted his career to uncovering stories the powerful want buried. From My Lai to Abu Ghraib, dig into the life's work of journalist Seymour Hersh.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTaxi to the Dark Side (2008)
An in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFrank Serpico (2017)
In 1972, officer Frank Serpico exposes the corruption which poisons the roots of the NYPD and becomes famous in 1973 when director Sidney Lumet tells his story in the classic film “Serpico,” starring Al Pacino.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Birds of Passage (2018)
During the marijuana bonanza, a violent decade that saw the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia, Rapayet and his indigenous family get involved in a war to control the business that ends up destroying their lives and their culture.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this13th (2016)
An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Salt of the Earth (2014)
During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMeth Storm (2017)
As police and DEA agents battle sophisticated cartels, rural, economically-disadvantaged users and dealers–whose addiction to ICE and lack of job opportunities have landed them in an endless cycle of poverty and incarceration–are caught in the middle.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded (2014)
In the 1980s, ruthless Colombian cocaine barons invaded Miami with a brand of violence unseen in this country since Prohibition-era Chicago. Cocaine Cowboys is the true story of how Miami became the drug, murder and cash capital of the United States. But it isn't the whole story - Pulling from hundreds of hours of additional interviews and recently uncovered archival news footage, Cocaine Cowboys has been RELOADED: packed with footage and stories that have never been told about Griselda Blanco, the Medellín Cartel, and Miami's Cocaine Wars, with firsthand accounts by hit man Jorge 'Rivi' Ayala, cocaine trafficker Jon Roberts, smuggler Mickey Munday, and others. Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded recreates Miami's Cocaine Wars like you've never experienced it.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Cocaine Cowboys 2 (2008)
Set in 1991 on the inner-city streets of Oakland, California, cocaine dealer Charles Cosby has his life is changed forever when he writes a fan letter to the "Cocaine Godmother" Griselda Blanco, who is serving time at a nearby federal prison. Six months later, Cosby is a multi-millionaire, Blanco's lover, and the head of her $40 million a year cocaine business.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKidnapped for Christ (2014)
Kidnapped For Christ tells the shocking stories of American teenagers who were taken from their homes and shipped to Escuela Caribe, an American-run Christian behavior modification program in the Dominican Republic. The film centers on David, a straight-A student who was sent to Escuela Caribe because he is gay and his parents can't deal with the situation. When a young evangelical filmmaker is granted unprecedented access to film behind the gates of this controversial school, she discovers shocking secrets and young students that change her life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Cartel Land?
The closest matches to Cartel Land are Cocaine Cowboys (2006), The Redemption of General Butt Naked (2011) and Dirty Wars (2013). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Cartel Land?
People who watched Cartel Land most often go on to Cocaine Cowboys (2006), The Redemption of General Butt Naked (2011) and Dirty Wars (2013).
What is the highest-rated movie like Cartel Land?
The Salt of the Earth (2014), rated 8.1/10 by 700 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Cartel Land?
Cover-Up (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Cartel Land?
Yes: Cocaine Cowboys (2006), The Redemption of General Butt Naked (2011) and Dirty Wars (2013).
How are movies similar to Cartel Land chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Cartel Land, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.