Movies like The Tunnel (2001)
The best movies like The Tunnel (2001) are The Day Will Come (2016), The Way Back (2010) and Balloon (2018). If The Tunnel hooked you with its drama and thriller, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Lives of Others (2006)8.0/10 from 4,354 votes
- NewestJe suis Karl (2021)Released 2021
- In GermanBalloon (2018)Also in German
The Day Will Come (2016)
Set in the blooming 1960s, the film centres on two young brothers who are instantly robbed of their lives when they are placed in a boy's home forgotten by time. Armed only with a vivid imagination and a fickle hope, the boys engage in the frightening battle against Headmaster Heck and his lethal tyranny. The film is based on actual events.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Way Back (2010)
A small band of multicultural convicts stages a daring escape from a WWII-era Siberian gulag, and embarks on a treacherous journey across five countries in a desperate race for freedom and survival.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBalloon (2018)
Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDistant Lights (2003)
Two countries, two towns, one river. The Oder River separates not only Frankfurt in Germany from Slubice in Poland, but entire worlds. People, whether rich or poor, come here in search of happiness—and often find themselves pushed to their limits. A film about people who, by a twist of fate, are inextricably linked for two days—stealing and cheating, loving and helping, hoping and despairing.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Je suis Karl (2021)
An explosion sends fear and terror through Berlin. Young Maxi's home is reduced to rubble and ashes, burying her mother and little brothers. Only she and her father survive the terrorist bomb attack. When she happens to meet the charismatic Karl, who tells her about a conference for young people in Prague, she seizes the opportunity to flee Berlin and her grieving father. The political movement behind the meeting claims to be working for a better Europe. Maxi has no idea how close the murderers really are to her family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Wave (2008)
A school teacher discusses types of government with his class. His students find it too boring to repeatedly go over national socialism and believe that dictatorship cannot be established in modern Germany. He starts an experiment to show how easily the masses can become manipulated.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKing of Devil's Island (2010)
Norwegian winter, 1915. On the island Bastøy, outside Oslo, a group of young boys aged 11 to 18, are held in an institution for delinquent youth, notorious for its sadistic regime. One day a new boy, Erling, arrives, determined to escape from the island. After a tragic incident, he ends up leading the boys in a violent uprising. When the boys manage to take over the island, 150 soldiers are sent in to restore order.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEscape from Alcatraz (1979)
San Francisco Bay, January 18, 1960. Frank Lee Morris is transferred to Alcatraz, a maximum security prison located on a rocky island. Although no one has ever managed to escape from there, Frank and other inmates begin to carefully prepare an escape plan.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBerlin Alexanderplatz (2020)
In 2015, thirty year old refugee Francis, the sole survivor of a boat that illegally crossed the Mediterranean, is drawn into Berlin's seedy underbelly.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Lives of Others (2006)
In 1984 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTough Enough (2006)
From the youth directed novel of the same name by Greogor Tressnow comes a film by Detlev Buck that is a realistic portrait of life in the section of Berlin called Neukölln. It’s about power and weakness, delinquents and victims, and the difficulties a 15-year-old faces in a poor and criminal environment.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTwo Lives (2012)
Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a “war child”; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPacto de Fuga (2020)
During the last years of Pinochet's military regime, a group of militants from the "Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front" plan a prison break of political prisoners, through a tunnel that will take them 18 months to dig.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like this23 (1998)
The movie's plot is based on the true story of a group of young computer hackers from Hannover, Germany. In the late 1980s the orphaned Karl Koch invests his heritage in a flat and a home computer. At first he dials up to bulletin boards to discuss conspiracy theories inspired by his favorite novel, R.A. Wilson's "Illuminatus", but soon he and his friend David start breaking into government and military computers. Pepe, one of Karl's rather criminal acquaintances senses that there is money in computer cracking - he travels to east Berlin and tries to contact the KGB.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Tunnel (2019)
When a truck crashes inside a tunnel, people on their way home for Christmas are brutally trapped in a deadly fire. With a blizzard raging outside, and the first responders struggling to get to the accident, it's every man for himself.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBarbara (2012)
Exiled to a rural clinic in 1980s East Germany for seeking an exit visa, a disillusioned doctor maintains a guarded distance from her colleagues, unsure if the kindly head physician is a genuine ally or a Stasi informant.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlame Game (2019)
Martin Behrens is a Middle East expert for the German intelligence agency BND. He obtains information leading to a U.S. drone strike on a wanted terrorist in Zahiristan. A few days later, there's a terrorist attack on a restaurant – the video claiming responsibility calls it payback for the drone strike. Freelance journalist Aurice, with whom Martin was having an affair, is among the victims – she was investigating corruption at the heart of the BND. Martin soon has to realize that in a world where big corporations profit from arms deals as well as from homeland security contracts, good and evil are sometimes hard to tell apart.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisWe Are Young. We Are Strong. (2014)
On 24th August 1992 in the eastern German city of Rostock, a rampaging mob, to the applause and cheering of more than 3,000 bystanders, besieged and set fire to a residential building containing, among others, more than 120 Vietnamese men, women, and children on what has since become known as "The Night of the Fire." The riots became a symbol of xenophobia in the just-reunited Germany. This film recounts the incident from the perspectives of three very different characters.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Experiment (2001)
20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like this7500 (2019)
When terrorists try to seize control of a Berlin-Paris flight, a soft-spoken young American co-pilot struggles to save the lives of the passengers and crew while forging a surprising connection with one of the hijackers.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRescue Dawn (2007)
A US Fighter pilot's epic struggle of survival after being shot down on a mission over Laos during the Vietnam War.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Execution (2021)
The ambitious scientist Franz Walter doesn't hesitate when he is promised a professorship at the university. He immediately accepts, pledges absolute loyalty to the system and agrees to work for the GDR's foreign intelligence service until he can take up his new position. Together with his colleague Dirk, he is sent on foreign assignments to West Germany. Franz soon has to use blackmail to get innocent people to talk. But his superiors go even further: GDR refugees and their relatives are targeted to be psychologically destroyed, forged letters, medical diagnoses, surveillance and wiretapping are on the agenda. However, this is more than Franz can bear: he feels powerless and increasingly isolates himself. When he then decides to steal secret documents for a later defection to the West, this results in an unfortunate chain reaction leading to his arrest and ultimately to his execution...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlight 93 (2006)
Flight 93 is a 2006 made-for-TV film, directed by Peter Markle, which chronicles the events aboard United Airlines Flight 93 during the September 11 attacks. It premiered January 30, 2006 on the A&E Network and was re-broadcast several times throughout 2006. The film focused heavily on eight passengers, namely Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Lauren Grandcolas, Donald Greene, Nicole Miller, and Honor Elizabeth Wainio. It features small appearances from many other passengers, namely Donald Peterson and his wife, Jean, and also from flight attendant Sandra Bradshaw.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisZero Kelvin (1995)
Larsen, an aspiring poet in '20s Oslo, leaves his girlfriend to spend a year as a trapper in East Greenland. There he is teamed with a seemingly rough old sailor/trapper, Randbæk, and a scientist, Holm. Trapped in a tiny hut together as the Arctic winter sets in, a complex and intense love/hate relationship develops between Randbæk and Larsen, who are more similar than either would like to admit. A powerful psychological and physical drama set against stunningly bleak Arctic scenery.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWest (2013)
East Germany. Summer, late 70's. Three years after her boyfriend Wassilij's apparent death, Nelly Senff decides to escape from behind the Berlin wall with her son Alexej, leaving her traumatic memories and past behind. Pretending to marry a West German, she crosses the border to start a new life in the West. But soon her past starts to haunt her as the Allied Secret Service begin to question Wassilij's mysterious disappearance. Is he still alive? Was he a spy? Plagued by her past and fraught with paranoia, Nelly is forced to choose between discovering the truth about her former lover and her hopes for a better tomorrow.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
9/11 (2017)
Five random strangers find themselves trapped in an elevator in the World Trade Center's North Tower on 9/11. They work together, never giving up hope, to try to escape before the unthinkable happens.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisWhat to Do in Case of Fire? (2001)
The humorous and touching story of six former creative anarchists who lived as house squatters in Berlin during its heyday in the 80s when Berlin was still an island in the middle of the former East Germany. At the end of the 80s, they went their separate ways with the exception of Tim and Hotte, who have remained true to their ideals and continue to fight the issues they did as a group. In 2000, with Berlin as Germany's new capital, an event happens forcing the group out of existential reason to reunite and, ultimately, come to terms with the reason they separated 12 years ago.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Wave (1981)
A teacher conducts an experiment in an American high school where students learn how easy it is to be seduced by the same social forces which led to the horrors of Nazi Germany.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Robber (2010)
A champion marathoner leads a double life as a serial bank robber, sprinting between fixes (and away from police cavalcades) as many as three times a day.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStranded (2002)
A retelling of the classic Swiss Family Robinson story.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Tunnel?
The closest matches to The Tunnel are The Day Will Come (2016), The Way Back (2010) and Balloon (2018). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Tunnel?
People who watched The Tunnel most often go on to The Day Will Come (2016), The Way Back (2010) and Balloon (2018).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Tunnel?
The Lives of Others (2006), rated 8.0/10 by 4,354 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Tunnel?
Je suis Karl (2021) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there German movies like The Tunnel?
Yes: Balloon (2018), Distant Lights (2003) and Je suis Karl (2021).
How are movies similar to The Tunnel chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Tunnel, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.