Movies like Son of Saul (2015)
The best movies like Son of Saul (2015) are Escape from Sobibor (1987), Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Operation Crossbow (1965). If Son of Saul hooked you with its war and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedSchindler's List (1993)8.6/10 from 18,179 votes
- NewestTruth & Treason (2025)Released 2025
Escape from Sobibor (1987)
The true story of WWII's notorious Sobibor Nazi death camp, where a courageous inmate orchestrates and leads the escape of over 300 prisoners.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisInglourious Basterds (2009)
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds, lead by Lt. Aldo Raine soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisOperation Crossbow (1965)
Allied agents infiltrate the Nazi rocket complex at Peenemunde in order to obtain their secrets and sabotage the plant. The film alternates between German developments of the V-1 missile and V-2 rocket (with a German cast speaking their own language) and discovery by British Intelligence of the weapon.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Grey Zone (2001)
The story of Auschwitz's twelfth Sonderkommando — one of the thirteen consecutive "Special Squads" of Jewish prisoners placed by the Nazis in the excruciating moral dilemma of assisting in the extermination of fellow Jews in exchange for a few more months of life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAdam Resurrected (2008)
After again attempting to commit murder, a Jewish man with a mysterious past and extraordinary intelligence, charisma, and body control returns to an insane asylum, where he makes a startling discovery.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisConspiracy (2001)
At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, senior Nazi officials meet to determine the manner in which the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" can be best implemented.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFateless (2005)
A Hungarian youth comes of age at Buchenwald during World War II. György Köves is 14, the son of a merchant who's sent to a forced labor camp. After his father's departure, György gets a job at a brickyard; his bus is stopped and its Jewish occupants sent to camps. There, György find camaraderie, suffering, cruelty, illness, and death. He hears advice on preserving one's dignity and self-esteem. He discovers hatred. If he does survive and returns to Budapest, what will he find? What is natural; what is it to be a Jew? Sepia, black and white, and color alternate to shade the mood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe World Will Tremble (2025)
The incredible, untold true story of how a group of prisoners attempt a seemingly impossible escape from the first Nazi death camp in order to provide the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIrena's Vow (2024)
19 year old Irena Gut is promoted to housekeeper in the home of a highly respected Nazi officer in Poland when she finds out that the Jewish ghetto is about to be liquidated. Determined to help twelve Jewish workers, she decides to shelter them in the safest place she can think of – the basement of the German Major's house. Over the next eight months, Irena uses her wit, humour and immense courage to hide her friends as long as possible.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTruth & Treason (2025)
In 1941 Nazi Germany, 16-year-old Helmuth Hübener begins questioning the regime after learning the truth about the war and seeing his Jewish friend persecuted. With two friends, he secretly listens to banned foreign broadcasts and distributes leaflets exposing Nazi lies. As the Gestapo closes in, the teenagers face mounting danger for choosing conscience over obedience. Based on the true story of one of Germany’s youngest resistance fighters.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisSchindler's List (1993)
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisOperation Finale (2018)
In 1960, a team of Israeli secret agents is deployed to find Adolf Eichmann, the infamous Nazi architect of the Holocaust, supposedly hidden in Argentina, and get him to Israel to be judged.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009)
Irena Sendler is a Catholic social worker who has sympathized with the Jews since her childhood, when her physician father died of typhus contracted while treating poor Jewish patients. When she initially proposes saving Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, her idea is met with skepticism by fellow workers, her parish priest, and even her own mother Janina.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTriumph of the Spirit (1989)
During World War II, Salamo Arouch, a passionate boxer, is arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Soon, he is forced to box against his fellow prisoners for the sake of entertainment.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisApt Pupil (1998)
One day in 1984, Todd Bowden, a brilliant high school boy fascinated by the history of Nazism, stumbles across an old man whose appearance resembles that of Kurt Dussander, a wanted Nazi war criminal. A month later, Todd decides to knock on his door.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Big Red One (1980)
A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWe Go In at Dawn (2020)
When a high-ranking war planner is captured and held in a German prisoner of war camp, a team of specialists take on the dangerous mission of trying to break him out. Trouble is, he doesn't want to be rescued.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisColdwater (2013)
A teenage boy is sent to a juvenile reform facility in the wilderness. As we learn about the tragic events that sent him there, his struggle becomes one for survival with the inmates, counselors, and the retired war colonel in charge.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNowhere to Run (1993)
Escaped convict Sam Gillen single-handedly takes on ruthless developers who are determined to evict a widow with two young children.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSlaughterhouse-Five (1972)
Billy Pilgrim, a veteran of the Second World War, finds himself mysteriously detached from time, so that he is able to travel, without being able to help it, from the days of his childhood to those of his peculiar life on a distant planet called Tralfamadore, passing through his bitter experience as a prisoner of war in the German city of Dresden, over which looms the inevitable shadow of an unspeakable tragedy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHimeyuri (2012)
The 30-minute film centers around a group of high school students who became nurses called Himeyuri and served during the Battle of Okinawa during World War II. The Himeyuri Alumnae Incorporated Foundation, which runs the Himeyuri Peace Museum in Okinawa, produced the film with the aim to convey the experiences of those high school students, many of whom lost their lives during the battle, to children.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & war
The Trap (2007)
Mladen and Marija are an ordinary and happy married couple of the "middle class" of the society in which they live as tenants. Mladen works as a civil engineer in a state company, and Marija is an English teacher in primary school. The couple finds joy in their only son, Nemanja. They discover that Nemanja has a rare heart disease and healing is possible with an operation in a foreign medical center, which costs €26,000.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLampáš malého plavčíka (1984)
The dramatic story of the life of Slovak boatmen on the Danube during World War II is depicted through the eyes of a six-year-old boy who is forced by the events of the war to spend a dark time with his grandparents in the village. Despite the fairy-tale-sounding title, this film takes place at the end of the war in the Slovak countryside during World War II, and its child hero is the son of a Danube boatman who experiences incredible adventures. The Little Lifeguard's Lamp ranks among children's films that seek speciality in the realities of war. It explores both a children's world with a shifted lens of perception and the impact of battles interfering in the lives of the youngest.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & war
The Peaks of Zelengore (1976)
During the Battle of Sutjeska, partisan troops must endure 24 hours of big and heavy attacks on German units Ljubino grave, to the main Partisan units, with the wounded and the Supreme Headquarters, pulled out the ring that is tightened around them.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & war
Lust, Caution (2007)
During World War II, a secret agent must seduce, then assassinate an official who works for the Japanese puppet government in Shanghai. Her mission becomes clouded when she finds herself falling in love with the man she is assigned to kill.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Crossing (2020)
One day, just before Christmas in 1942, Gerda's and Otto's parents are arrested for being part of the Norwegian resistance movement during the Second World War, leaving the siblings on their own. Following the arrest, they discover two Jewish children, Sarah and Daniel, hidden in a secret cupboard in their basement at home. It is now up to Gerda and Otto to finish what their parents started: To help Sarah and Daniel flee from the Nazis cross the border to neutral Sweden and reunite them with their parents.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both war & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNever So Few (1959)
A U.S. military troop takes command of a band of Burmese guerillas during World War II.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both war & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisAriel (1988)
A Finnish man goes to the city to find a job after the mine where he worked is closed and his father commits suicide.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this6th Marine Division on Okinawa (1945)
A documentary covering the actions of the 6th Marine Division on Okinawa during WWII.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both war
Eagles Fly Early (1966)
A group of kids from the Bosnian village often run away from school from the terror of Pepper, a teacher who got his nickname because of his red nose. Soon they formed a brigand division, but have been discovered and caught. The sudden arrival of year 1941 turns their game into reality.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both war
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Son of Saul?
The closest matches to Son of Saul are Escape from Sobibor (1987), Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Operation Crossbow (1965). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Son of Saul?
Start with Escape from Sobibor (1987), the closest match to Son of Saul.
What is the highest-rated movie like Son of Saul?
Schindler's List (1993), rated 8.6/10 by 18,179 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Son of Saul?
Truth & Treason (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to Son of Saul chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Son of Saul, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.