Movies like Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One (2015)
The best movies like Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One (2015) are Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One (2015), Goodbye to Language (2014) and Holy Motors (2012). If Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedA Separation (2011)7.9/10 from 2,065 votes
- NewestTwo People Exchanging Saliva (2025)Released 2025
- Same seriesArabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One (2015)Arabian Nights
Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One (2015)
Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells King Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. As in the book, these stories are tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events.
Why it matches: Same series: Arabian Nights · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGoodbye to Language (2014)
"The idea is simple / A married woman and a single man meet / They love, they argue, fists fly / A dog strays between town and country / The seasons pass / The man and woman meet again / The dog finds itself between them / The other is in one, / the one is in the other / and they are three / The former husband shatters everything / A second film begins: / the same as the first, / and yet not / From the human race we pass to metaphor / This ends in barking / and a baby's cries / In the meantime, we will have seen people talking of the demise of the dollar, of truth in mathematics and of the death of a robin." -JLG
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHoly Motors (2012)
We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisArabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One (2015)
In which Scheherazade doubts that she will still be able to tell stories to please the King, given that what she has to tell weighs three thousand tonnes. She therefore escapes from the palace and travels the Kingdom in search of pleasure and enchantment. Her father, the Grand-Vizier, arranges to meet her at the Ferris wheel, and Scheherazade resumes her narration: “Auspicious King, in old shanty towns of Lisbon there was a community of bewitched men who, in all rigour and passion, dedicated themselves to teaching birds to sing…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.
Why it matches: Same series: Arabian Nights · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDecalogue X (1989)
Jerzy and Artur’s father dies, leaving behind a valuable stamp collection, which, they discover, is coveted by dealers of varying degrees of shadiness. The more involved the brothers get in their father’s world, the more dire and comical their situation becomes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTabu (2012)
Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDogtooth (2009)
Three teenagers are confined to an isolated country estate that could very well be on another planet. The trio spend their days listening to endless homemade tapes that teach them a whole new vocabulary. Any word that comes from beyond their family abode is instantly assigned a new meaning. Hence 'the sea' refers to a large armchair and 'zombies' are little yellow flowers. Having invented a brother whom they claim to have ostracized for his disobedience, the uber-controlling parents terrorize their offspring into submission.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Suffering from a kidney disease and sure of his death, Uncle Boonmee assembles his relatives in the countryside. He reminisces about his past lives and plans to visit a place before dying.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFilm Socialisme (2010)
A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday... Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Turin Horse (2011)
A look at the monotonous daily struggle of a father and daughter in a windswept, desolate landscape. Over six days, their routine of eating boiled potatoes and tending a failing horse crumbles, symbolizing a slow descent into darkness, emptiness, and the end of existence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisYou Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (2012)
From beyond the grave, celebrated playwright Antoine d'Anthac gathers all his friends who have appeared over the years in his play 'Eurydice'. These actors watch a recording performed by a young acting company, La Compagnie de la Colombe. Do love, life, death and love after death still have any place on a theater stage? It's up to them to decide. And the surprises have only just begun...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Tale of King Crab (2021)
Small town in Italy, end of the 19th century. Luciano, a drunk, doesn't fit in the town. Rebelion against authority and a forbidden love makes him to commit a crime accidentally. To pay for his crime, he is forced into exile on the most remote island in the world, Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego. The hunt for the shipwreck treasure hidden on the island becomes his opportunity for redemption.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisForce Majeure (2014)
While holidaying in the French Alps, a Swedish family deals with acts of cowardliness as an avalanche breaks out.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisVitalina Varela (2019)
A Cape Verdean woman navigates her way through Lisbon, following the scanty physical traces her deceased husband left behind and discovering his secret, illicit life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Square (2017)
A prestigious Stockholm museum's chief art curator finds himself in times of both professional and personal crisis as he attempts to set up a controversial new exhibit.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAlps (2011)
A nurse, a paramedic, a gymnast and her coach offer a service for hire wherein they stand in for dead people by appointment, hired by relatives, friends or colleagues of the deceased, to assist with the grieving process.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Separation (2011)
A married couple are faced with a difficult decision – to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLong Day's Journey Into Night (2018)
Luo Hongwu returns to Kaili, the hometown from which he fled many years ago. He begins the search for the woman he loved and whom he has never been able to forget.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Man Who Sleeps (1974)
A young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Great Beauty (2013)
Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTaste of Cherry (1997)
A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task because he needs the money, but his new associate soon tries to talk him out of committing suicide.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Lobster (2015)
In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into animals and sent off into The Woods.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKontinental '25 (2025)
Orsolya is a bailiff in Cluj, the main city in Transylvania. One day she has to evict a homeless man from a cellar, an action with tragic consequences that triggers a moral crisis which Orsolya must weather as best she can.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMuseum Hours (2012)
A security guard working at an art museum in Vienna crosses paths with a Canadian woman in town to visit her ailing cousin.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHorse Money (2014)
While the young captains lead the revolution in the streets, the people of Fontainhas search for Ventura, lost in the woods.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAbout Endlessness (2019)
A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality, guided by a Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments have the same significance as historical events. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTwo People Exchanging Saliva (2025)
In a society where kissing is punishable by death, and people pay for things by receiving slaps to the face, Angine, an unhappy woman, shops compulsively in a department store. There, she becomes fascinated by a playful salesgirl. Despite the prohibition of kissing, the two become close, raising the suspicions of a jealous colleague.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisConfirmation (2016)
Judge Clarence Thomas' nomination to the United States' Supreme Court is called into question when former colleague, Anita Hill, testifies that he had sexually harassed her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRed (2008)
Avery, a reclusive older man, has a best friend in his dog, Red. When three teens kill Red without reason, Avery sets out for justice and redemption, attempting to follow the letter of the law. But when the law fails him, and the boys' father clearly defines right and wrong in his own way, Avery must avenge himself by any means possible.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn a Valley of Violence (2016)
The story of a drifter named Paul who arrives in a small town seeking revenge on the thugs who murdered his friend. Sisters Mary Anne and Ellen, who run the town's hotel, help Paul in his quest for vengeance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One?
The closest matches to Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One are Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One (2015), Goodbye to Language (2014) and Holy Motors (2012). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One?
People who watched Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One most often go on to Goodbye to Language (2014), Holy Motors (2012) and Decalogue X (1989).
What is the highest-rated movie like Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One?
A Separation (2011), rated 7.9/10 by 2,065 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One?
Two People Exchanging Saliva (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Is Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One part of a series?
Yes. It belongs to Arabian Nights, which includes Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One (2015) and Arabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One (2015).
How are movies similar to Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.