Movies like White Water (2015)
The best movies like White Water (2015) are Red Hook Summer (2012), Flint (2017) and Stealing Cars (2016). If White Water hooked you with its tv movie and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)7.0/10 from 382 votes
- NewestSarah's Oil (2025)Released 2025
Red Hook Summer (2012)
When his mom deposits him at the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn to spend the summer with the grandfather he’s never met, young Flik may as well have landed on Mars. Fresh from his cushy life in Atlanta, he’s bored and friendless, and his strict grandfather, Enoch, a firebrand preacher, is bent on getting him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Only Chazz, the feisty girl from church, provides a diversion from the drudgery. As hot summer simmers and Sunday mornings brim with Enoch’s operatic sermons, things turn anything but dull as people’s conflicting agendas collide.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Flint (2017)
A woman deals with the toxic water scandal in Flint, Michigan, and the effect it has on her family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Stealing Cars (2016)
A rebellious teenager navigates his way through the juvenile court system.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983)
Zack Homer takes over managing the barbershop after Joe is killed for trying to rip off his "investor", Mr. Lovejoy. All Zack wants to do is run a traditional barbershop giving traditional haircuts, but modern styles have passed him by and business is slow. One evening, Mr. Lovejoy shows up to offer Zack the same deal he gave to Joe. It could turn his business around, but what will he have to give in return?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Carter High (2015)
The true story of four student athletes from Carter High School in Dallas, Texas in the 1980s, whose bright futures irrevocably changed due to their off-field activities.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
American Pastime (2007)
American Pastime tells a poignant story set against the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. Rounded up and uprooted from their everyday lives, they remained loyal to the United States and ironically turned to that most American of sports - baseball - as a way to deal with their plight.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Eve's Bayou (1997)
Summer heats up in rural Louisiana beside Eve’s Bayou, 1962, as the Batiste family tries to survive the secrets they’ve kept and the betrayals they’ve endured.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPass Over (2018)
Moses and Kitch, two young black men, chat their way through a long, aimless day on a Chicago street corner. Periodically ducking bullets and managing visits from a genial but ominous stranger and an overtly hostile police officer, Moses and Kitch rely on their poetic, funny, at times profane banter to get them through a day that is a hopeless retread of every other day, even as they continue to dream of their deliverance.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Warm Springs (2005)
Franklin Roosevelt, left a paraplegic from polio at 39 years of age, seeks out a miracle cure in the backwoods of Georgia.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Burden (2018)
Ku Klux Klansman Mike Burden opens the Redneck Shop and KKK museum in historic Laurens, SC. He subsequently falls in love with a single mother and, under her influence, quits the Klan and is taken in by an African American Reverend.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisImperial Dreams (2014)
A 21-year-old reformed gangster's devotion to his family and his future is put to the test when he is released from prison and returns to his old stomping grounds in Watts, Los Angeles.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBig Sur (2013)
Big Sur is a film adaptation of the Jack Kerouac autobiographical novel of the same name.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Cold Lands (2013)
After his mother’s sudden death, a young boy disappears into the deep woods of upstate New York and takes up with an unpredictable and mysterious drifter.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Jasper, Texas (2003)
In 1998, three white men in the small town of Jasper, Texas, chained a black man to the back of their pickup truck and dragged him to his death. This film relates that story and how it affected all of the residents of the town, both black and white.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Beautiful Wave (2012)
In Santa Cruz for the summer, a young woman discovers the sport of surfing -- and a family secret as well.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Seven Days in Utopia (2011)
Talent can only get you so far. For golfer Luke Chisholm, that turns out to be Utopia, Texas -- where he's left stranded after blowing his pro debut.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Wild Girl (2010)
Ned Giles, an aspiring news photographer, joins the 1932 Great Apache Expedition on the search for a young boy, the son of a wealthy Mexican land owner who was kidnapped by wild Apaches. Ned finds himself on an unexpected and perilous journey through rugged terrain, when a captured wild Apache girl must be exchanged for the kidnapped boy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Things Never Said (2013)
An aspiring poet in a troubled marriage sparks with a new man who helps her find her artistic voice.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Tater Tot & Patton (2017)
A wayward millennial escapes to a South Dakota ranch, unhinging her Uncle's placid alcoholic life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)
Jimmie Fails dreams of reclaiming the Victorian home his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco. Joined on his quest by his best friend Mont, Jimmie searches for belonging in a rapidly changing city that seems to have left them behind.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJoshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean (2012)
Part period melodrama, part film noir, part 50s road movie "JOSHUA TREE, 1951" is a portrait of screen legend and outsider icon James Dean as you have never seen him before.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Mississippi Damned (2009)
Three poor Black kids in rural Mississippi reap the consequences of their family's cycle of abuse, addiction, and violence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Sarah's Oil (2025)
Sarah Rector, a Black girl born in early 20th-century Oklahoma Indian Territory, believes there is oil beneath the barren land she’s allotted, and her faith proves right. As greedy oil sharks close in, Sarah turns to family, friends, and some Texas wildcatters to maintain control of her oil-rich land, eventually becoming among the nation's first Black female millionaires—at eleven years old.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisSelma, Lord, Selma (1999)
In 1965 Alabama, an 11 year old girl is touched by a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and becomes a devout follower. But her resolution is tested when she joins others in the famed march from Selma to Montgomery.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Ernest Green Story (1993)
Follows the story of Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine who were the first blacks to integrate into an all white school.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Place of No Words (2019)
A young boy battles the complexities of a grown-up world with his father.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Sound of Christmas (2016)
Lizzie is a young piano teacher working at a music school while trying to save enough money for a Steinway piano. The school is gearing up for their major Christmas fundraiser and she has committed much of her time to plan the event. One afternoon, she meets Brad who takes an interest in her playing and asks if she will teach his uninterested teenage daughter. She begins to break through to the young girl, and sparks begin to fly with Brad, but she is shocked to find out that his interest is not solely in her playing, but in the property that houses the music school. She sets out to save the school and the event, but can she work things out with Brad?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Dinner with Hervé (2018)
An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTalhotBlond (2012)
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCheaters (2000)
In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like White Water?
The closest matches to White Water are Red Hook Summer (2012), Flint (2017) and Stealing Cars (2016). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after White Water?
People who watched White Water most often go on to Red Hook Summer (2012), Flint (2017) and Stealing Cars (2016).
What is the highest-rated movie like White Water?
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), rated 7.0/10 by 382 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like White Water?
Sarah's Oil (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like White Water?
Yes: Red Hook Summer (2012), Flint (2017) and Stealing Cars (2016).
How are movies similar to White Water chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside White Water, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.