Movies like Return of a Citizen (1986)
The best movies like Return of a Citizen (1986) are Tigertail (2020), The Nest (2020) and The Cut (2025). If Return of a Citizen hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedInside I'm Dancing (2004)7.4/10 from 244 votes
- NewestThe Cut (2025)Released 2025
Tigertail (2020)
A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Nest (2020)
Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Cut (2025)
A retired boxer intends to return to the ring for one last shot at the title, but first he must make the weight. Holed up in a room in Las Vegas with an unscrupulous trainer, he embarks on an intensive and illegal weight-cutting program.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisAdam (2020)
A hard-living salesman becomes a quadriplegic after an accident.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · 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: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSkin (2009)
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEleanor the Great (2025)
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHands of Stone (2016)
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFast Girls (2012)
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJungleland (2020)
Stanley manages his boxer brother Lion but when a devastating loss in the ring leaves the pair in debt, an opportunity to recoup the cash leads to a series of misadventures that threaten to break the bond between them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThat Evening Sun (2009)
An aging Tennessee farmer returns to his homestead and must confront a family betrayal, the reappearance of an old enemy, and the loss of his farm.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAbove the Rim (1994)
Story of a promising high school basketball star and his relationships with two brothers, one a drug dealer and the other a former basketball star fallen on hard times and now employed as a security guard.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHome (2021)
An ex-felon returns home from prison and must confront the demons of his past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHerself (2020)
Struggling to provide her daughters with a safe, happy home, Sandra decides to build one - from scratch. Using all her ingenuity to make her ambitious dream a reality, Sandra draws together a community to lend a helping hand to build her house and ultimately recover her own sense of self.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBennett's War (2019)
After surviving an IED explosion in combat overseas, a young soldier with the Army Motorcycle Unit is medically discharged with a broken back and leg. Against all odds he trains to make an impossible comeback as a motocross racer in order to support his family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInside I'm Dancing (2004)
Michael is a 24-year-old who has cerebral palsy and long-term resident of the Carrigmore Residential Home for the Disabled, run by the formidable Eileen. His life is transformed when the maverick Rory O'Shea moves in.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIce Castles (2010)
Young, beautiful, talented Alexis Winston comes from nowhere to become a figure skating superstar. But her rise to stardom isn’t easy. She has to push herself, reinvent herself, and most painfully of all, leave her hometown boyfriend behind. When a tragic fall leaves her blind, she needs someone to believe in her, to love her; someone to convince her she has the strength to skate and dream again.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Color of Friendship (2000)
Mahree Bok lives on a farm in South Africa. Her father is a policeman who cannot hide his joy when activist Steve Biko is caught by the South African authorities. Piper Dellums is the daughter of a US congressman from California and who lives in a nice home in Washington DC. When Mahree is chosen to spend a semester at the Dellums' house, she doesn't expect that her host family would be black. Nor do her hosts suspect that she is not a black South African.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhat Maisie Knew (2013)
In New York City, six-year-old Maisie is caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle between her self-absorbed parents—an aging rock singer mother and a distracted art dealer father. As both quickly marry new partners to strengthen their legal standing, Maisie is shuttled back and forth in an endless game of emotional point-scoring. Yet amid the chaos and upheaval, Maisie begins to find true comfort and affection in her new step-parents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGigi & Nate (2022)
A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSea Shadow (2011)
Mansoor, a 16 year-old teenager, living in a coastal "freej" (an Emirati neighborhood), has strong feelings for 16 year-old girl Kaltham. But culture and tradition, as well as family hardship, make it difficult for him to express his feelings. A conversation with his "know-it-all" friend convinces him that a gift is the best way to express love, and so, he begins to look for ways to save money for the gift without arousing the suspicion of his family and friends.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
A Day and a Night (2020)
The film revolves around an officer who examines some social issues, especially those related to the crises of the poor within moled el saida, and the problems they face.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Ali's Wedding (2017)
After a "white lie" which spirals out of control, a neurotic, naive and musically gifted Muslim cleric's eldest son must follow through with an arranged marriage, except he is madly in love with an Australian born-Lebanese girl.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDesert Cat (1995)
Youssef joins a United Nations disaster-fighting group dubbed the Desert Cat. When he discovers an alternative for petrol, an international gang tries to steal his discovery and recruits a girl to seduce him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Beach House (2016)
Four people from an Arab generation roaming over the ruins of ideologies, causes and virtues of their predecessors. It portrays their intellectual and emotional nonchalance about what is happening around them in their daily lives and relationships. In a house whose architecture is a sixties' experiment in mixing modern and Islamic architecture, a stone and concrete cube suspended over a rocky shore bashed by the waves of the Mediterranean, by famed Iraqi architect Refaat Chaderji, we spend a night with four characters whose non-stop conversations and peculiar actions reflect the void and chaos they are living in.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
New Year's Eve (2020)
The events of the film takes place on new year's eve of 2009 in the Red Sea at a resort near the city of Hurgahda inside the world of the wealthy where difficult situations and crises happen when they get together.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Goodnight (2017)
The story of the film, in a different context of a successful and wealthy engineer named Hossam Khedive, but recently suffers from problems in his natural life resort to alternative life through a new device enters the world of dreams.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Tale of Three Girls (1968)
Three women each have their own ambitions and aspirations. The first dreams of fame and fortune and meets a rich, married man she attempts to court. The second is a secretary with designs on her boss, even though he too is married. Having learned from her friends' experiences, the third takes an altogether different path.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Treasure: Truth & Imagination (2017)
The events revolve around three eras: the Pharaonic era, the Mamluk era, and the first half of the 20th century. The events revolve around corruption and the power of some clerics over the ages to power and false and bad dealings with the people, and how to involve religion in politics in order to obtain positions. That there are clerics deliberately coloring and counterfeiting in this period of time to be the strongest and maintain their positions.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Mr. Omar (1941)
Gaber Effendi is a simple employee at Ezbet Omar al-Alfi's, expelled by the head of the family after Jabir discovers that there is fraud in the accounts of the estate. Gaber meets with Berlanti, the wife of Omar Bey's, noting a great similarity between him and her absent husband in India, Omar. Following the advice of a legal advisor, Omar Bey's family believes that he is still alive and living in India. By chance, Jaber Effendi goes to Omar's house and is seen by the family and gets married, but Omar finds out the truth and tries to exploit the resemblance to seize wealth, but ultimately fails.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Like Return of a Citizen and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Return of a Citizen?
The closest matches to Return of a Citizen are Tigertail (2020), The Nest (2020) and The Cut (2025). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Return of a Citizen?
Start with Tigertail (2020), the closest match to Return of a Citizen.
What is the highest-rated movie like Return of a Citizen?
Inside I'm Dancing (2004), rated 7.4/10 by 244 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Return of a Citizen?
The Cut (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to Return of a Citizen chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Return of a Citizen, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.