Movies like Pretenders (2019)
The best movies like Pretenders (2019) are The Model (2016), Clementine (2019) and Lovelace (2013). If Pretenders hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedJackie (2016)6.4/10 from 2,489 votes
- NewestEleanor the Great (2025)Released 2025
The Model (2016)
When emerging fashion model Emma gets a chance to pursue her dream of becoming an international top model, she leaves her everyday life in Denmark behind, and moves to Paris. At a photo shoot in her new hometown, she meets the attractive photographer Shane White and they fall in love. But their relationship soon turns into a dangerous obsession for Emma.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisClementine (2019)
Reeling from a one-sided breakup, heartbroken Karen breaks into her ex’s lakehouse. There, she strikes up a complicated relationship with provocative younger woman Lana.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisLovelace (2013)
Story of Linda Lovelace, who is used and abused by the porn industry at the behest of her coercive husband, before taking control of her life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFrom Straight A's to XXX (2017)
When a change of circumstances leaves Miriam unable to pay her college tuition, she makes a surprising decision: to start performing in adult films, using the pseudonym Belle Knox. Miriam lies to her family and her friends at school, keeping her double life a secret. But soon rumours spread and Miriam becomes the subject of vicious online attacks and unwanted attention. Miriam fights back: she talks to the media, saying her new line of work empowers her as a feminist. But her confident stand has unintended consequences. Miriam is shunned by her conservative family and her colleagues in the adult film world. One impulsive decision has quickly spiralled out of control - and Miriam's problems are just beginning.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Land (2016)
Four teenage boys devote their summer to escaping the streets of Cleveland, Ohio, by pursuing a dream life of professional skateboarding. But when they get caught in the web of the local queenpin, their motley brotherhood is tested, threatening to make this summer their last.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Monica (2023)
After years of estrangement, a trans woman returns home to help care for her dying mother.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisSo Pretty (2019)
Four young queers in New York City struggle to maintain their proto-utopian community against the outside world as their lives curiously merge with the 1980s German novel "So schön" by Ronald M. Schernikau.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Maps to the Stars (2014)
Driven by an intense need for fame and validation, members of a dysfunctional Hollywood family chase celebrity, one another, and the relentless ghosts of their pasts. Their fragile ecosystem is disrupted by the arrival of Agatha, the scarred and estranged pyromaniac daughter.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhite Girl (2016)
Summer, New York City. A college girl falls hard for a guy she just met. After a night of partying goes wrong, she goes to wild extremes to get him back.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisJackie (2016)
An account of the days of First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, in the immediate aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Great Pretender (2018)
The lives of a French theater director, her ex-boyfriend, and the two actors playing them intersect dramatically.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Actors Anonymous (2017)
The film adaption of James Franco's popular novel Actors Anonymous, exploring the lives of young actors in Hollywood, from the highs to the lows, to the lies and the heartbreak.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Night Comes On (2018)
Angel is released from juvenile detention on the eve of her 18th birthday. Haunted by her past, she embarks on a journey with her 10 year-old sister that could destroy their future.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Golden Exits (2018)
An intersectional narrative of two families in Brooklyn and the unraveling of unspoken unhappiness that occurs when a young foreign girl spending time abroad upsets the balance on both sides.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisSugar Daddy (2021)
When a struggling musician can't afford her rent, she signs up for a website where rich older men pay to date younger women. Her new money-making venture sends her down a dark rabbit hole that forces her to grow up fast, shaping her music, and how she sees the world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPretty Red Dress (2023)
Travis has just been released from prison and it quickly becomes apparent that much has changed while he’s been gone. While girlfriend Candice is on the up and auditioning to star in a Tina Turner musical, daughter Kenisha is struggling in school and her relationship with her mum is tense. So, when Travis buys Candice her dream dress for an audition, rather than smoothing over the family’s problems, it ends up creating even more. As secrets and desires left unsaid threaten to spill out, Travis is forced to re-examine who he is and how he wants to be perceived in the world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
My First Film (2024)
Vita revisits her first attempt at filmmaking 15 years prior. Shooting a semi-autobiographical film starring her friend Dina, Vita’s eager but inexperienced approach causes the production to spiral into chaos, leading to significant disruptions and a near-fatal accident.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Come Sunday (2018)
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisMadeline's Madeline (2018)
Madeline has become an integral part of a prestigious physical theater troupe. When the workshop's ambitious director pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation rips out of the rehearsal space and through all three women's lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisCuriosa (2019)
A passionate love story set against a backdrop of sexual freedom, loosely based on the relationship between 19th century authors Pierre Louÿs and Marie de Régnier.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisWhite Lie (2019)
Katie Arneson is faking cancer. A university dance major, Katie's falsified diagnosis and counterfeit fundraising have transformed her into a campus celebrity surrounded by the supportive community she's always dreamed of. But now dependent on a bursary for sick students to maintain her ruse, Katie learns the funding is in jeopardy unless she can provide copies of her medical records within the week.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNovitiate (2017)
In the early 1960s, during the Vatican II era, a young woman training to become a nun struggles with issues of faith, sexuality and the changing church.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPlease Baby Please (2022)
After witnessing a murder in the gritty streets of 1950s Manhattan, newlyweds Suze and Arthur become the dangerous obsession of a greaser gang that awakens a sleeping quandary into the couple's sexual identity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisDark Angel (2019)
Based on the second book in the Casteel Series, Heaven has finally found the new life she always dreamed of with her newly discovered grandparents. Upon closer inspection, beauty and riches hide sinister secrets Heaven has tried desperately to rid herself of.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Look Back in Anger (1959)
A disillusioned, angry university graduate comes to terms with his grudge against middle-class life and values.
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 thisThe Woman on the Beach (1947)
A sailor suffering from post-traumatic stress becomes involved with a beautiful and enigmatic seductress married to a blind painter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Locket (1946)
A dark personal secret drives a young woman to use every man she encounters.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Christmas Shoes (2002)
Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWon't Back Down (2012)
Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Pretenders?
The closest matches to Pretenders are The Model (2016), Clementine (2019) and Lovelace (2013). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Pretenders?
People who watched Pretenders most often go on to The Model (2016), Clementine (2019) and Lovelace (2013).
What is the highest-rated movie like Pretenders?
Jackie (2016), rated 6.4/10 by 2,489 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Pretenders?
Eleanor the Great (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Pretenders?
Yes: Clementine (2019), Lovelace (2013) and From Straight A's to XXX (2017).
How are movies similar to Pretenders chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Pretenders, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.