Movies like El Contrato (2003)
The best movies like El Contrato (2003) are OLIVIA RODRIGO: driving home 2 u (a SOUR film) (2022), Embrace the Panda: Making Turning Red (2022) and Leviathan (2013). If El Contrato hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedHearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991)7.9/10 from 445 votes
- NewestYou Can See Everything (2026)Released 2026
OLIVIA RODRIGO: driving home 2 u (a SOUR film) (2022)
Grammy® winner singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo takes a familiar road trip from Salt Lake City, where she began writing her debut album “SOUR,” to Los Angeles. Along the way, Rodrigo recounts the memories of writing and creating her record-breaking debut album and shares her feelings as a young woman navigating a specific time in her life. Through new live arrangements of her songs, intimate interviews and never-before-seen footage from the making of the album, audiences will follow Olivia along on a cinematic journey exploring the story of “SOUR.”
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEmbrace the Panda: Making Turning Red (2022)
A feature length documentary about the all-women team at the helm of Pixar's original feature, Turning Red. With unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to Director Domee Shi and her core leadership crew, this story shines a light on the powerful professional and personal journeys that brought this incredibly comical, utterly relatable, and deeply heartfelt story to the screen.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLeviathan (2013)
An experimental portrait of the North American commercial fishing industry through the lens of GoPro cameras placed on a fishing vessel off the coast of New England.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGod Grew Tired of Us (2006)
Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGirl Model (2011)
A documentary on the modeling industry's 'supply chain' between Siberia, Japan, and the U.S., told through the experiences of the scouts, agencies, and a 13-year-old model.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Irishman: In Conversation (2019)
Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino in conversation about The Irishman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Toxic Love Story (2026)
A string of threatening emails escalates into a revenge plot involving a newly married US marshal and his ex-girlfriend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAmerican Factory (2019)
In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006)
A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn the Realms of the Unreal (2004)
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisYou Can See Everything (2026)
Thirty-four days before she's sent to prison, notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move. What begins as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon becomes a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisCameraperson (2016)
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCon Mum (2025)
A chef's life is upended when a jet-setting, champagne-sipping, hotel-hopping woman claims to be his long-lost mother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Corporation (2003)
Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTime (2020)
Fox Rich, indomitable matriarch and modern-day abolitionist, strives to keep her family together while fighting for the release of her incarcerated husband. An intimate, epic, and unconventional love story, filmed over two decades.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMaternal Instinct (2026)
Police pull over a woman who claims she just gave birth. But the baby — and the blood — aren't hers. Twisted lies unravel in this true-crime documentary.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like this180° South (2010)
The film follows adventurer Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991)
A chronicle of the production problems — including bad weather, actors' health, war near the filming locations, and more — which plagued the filming of Apocalypse Now, increasing costs and nearly destroying the life and career of Francis Ford Coppola.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisFeminists: What Were They Thinking? (2018)
In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Show Must Go On: The Queen + Adam Lambert Story (2019)
A documentary chronicling Queen and Lambert's incredible journey since they first shared the stage together on "American Idol" in 2009.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Wrong Light (2017)
A charismatic activist leads a globally-regarded NGO that provides shelter and education for girls rescued from brothels in Northern Thailand. But as the filmmakers meet the girls and their families, discrepancies begin to emerge and the story takes an unexpected turn.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Free Tibet (1998)
A film about the Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco in 1996.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
So This Is London (1933)
London at its best? This gorgeously photographed portrait of the capital was made by Marion Grierson, sister of the more famous John Grierson, often hailed as the father of documentary film. The film transcends the typical travelogue thanks to the photography of William Shenton and Grierson's poetic approach to editing - which prefigures modern films like the acclaimed From the Sea to the Land Beyond (2012). The film achieved international fame at the time of its original release, yet Marion Grierson is almost completely overshadowed in the history of British documentary film by her brother John.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Indian Rights for Indian Women (2018)
Three intrepid women battle for Indigenous women's treaty rights.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
The Story of a Butcher Shop (2013)
The Kitades run a butcher shop in Kaizuka City outside Osaka, raising and slaughtering cattle to sell the meat in their store. The seventh generation of their family's business, they are descendants of the buraku people, a social minority held over from the caste system abolished in the 19th century that is still subject to discrimination. As the Kitades are forced to make the difficult decision to shut down their slaughterhouse, the question posed by the film is whether doing this will also result in the deconstruction of the prejudices imposed on them. Though primarily documenting the process of their work with meticulous detail, Aya Hanabusa also touches on the Kitades' participation in the buraku liberation movement. Hanabusa's heartfelt portrait expands from the story of an old-fashioned family business competing with corporate supermarkets, toward a subtle and sophisticated critique of social exclusion and the persistence of ancient prejudices.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Once My Mother (2014)
Australian filmmaker Sophia Turkiewicz investigates why her Polish mother abandoned her and uncovers the truth behind her mother's wartime escape from a Siberian gulag, leaving Sophia to confront her own capacity for forgiveness.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Liberators Take Liberties, part 1 (1992)
Based on years of research into the mass rapes committed by the Red Army at the end of the Second World War. In the first part of the documentary Helke Sander interviews multiple German women who were raped in Berlin by Soviet soldiers in May 1945. Most women never spoke of their experience to anyone, after 46 years of silence they talk for the first time publicly about their violent experiences that have left such a mark.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Wilt Chamberlain: Borscht Belt Bellhop (2013)
In 1954, before his senior year of high school, Wilt Chamberlain took a summer job that would change his life, working as a bellhop at Kutsher's Country Club, a Jewish resort in the Catskill Mountains. An unexplored and pivotal chapter in the life of one of basketball's greatest players, and a fascinating glimpse of a time when a very different era of basketball met the Borscht Belt in its heyday.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Edinburgh (1934)
Directed by Marion Grierson, who ran the film unit of the Travel and Industrial Development Association (TIDA), this short film contains some fine photography of the delights on offer to Edinburgh visitors - including trams, bustling streets, restful parks and some familiar tourist sights.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
BETWEEN (TBA)
Initially embarking on an unplanned personal filmmaking project, Ilias Boukhemoucha finds himself drawn to the overlooked corners and marginalized communities within Canadian cities.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like El Contrato?
The closest matches to El Contrato are OLIVIA RODRIGO: driving home 2 u (a SOUR film) (2022), Embrace the Panda: Making Turning Red (2022) and Leviathan (2013). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after El Contrato?
Start with OLIVIA RODRIGO: driving home 2 u (a SOUR film) (2022), the closest match to El Contrato.
What is the highest-rated movie like El Contrato?
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991), rated 7.9/10 by 445 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like El Contrato?
You Can See Everything (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like El Contrato?
Yes: OLIVIA RODRIGO: driving home 2 u (a SOUR film) (2022), Embrace the Panda: Making Turning Red (2022) and Leviathan (2013).
How are movies similar to El Contrato chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside El Contrato, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.