Movies like I Love You (1999)
The best movies like I Love You (1999) are Her Love Boils Bathwater (2016), The Quiet (2006) and Johnny Belinda (1948). If I Love You hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
I Love You
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Miracle Worker (1962)7.9/10 from 362 votes
- NewestBlue Giant (2023)Released 2023
- In JapaneseHer Love Boils Bathwater (2016)Also in Japanese
Her Love Boils Bathwater (2016)
After being diagnosed with a terminal illness, Futaba resolves to spend her remaining time reuniting her broken family, reopening the long-closed bathhouse, and helping her shy daughter Azumi learn to stand on her own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Quiet (2006)
After her widowed father dies, deaf teenager Dot moves in with her godparents, Olivia and Paul Deer. The Deers' daughter, Nina, is openly hostile to Dot, but that does not prevent her from telling her secrets to her silent stepsister, including the fact that she wants to kill her lecherous father.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJohnny Belinda (1948)
A small-town doctor helps a deaf-mute farm girl learn to communicate.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
Singer is a deaf-mute whose small world brings him in contact with a young girl, Mick, who cherishes a seemingly hopeless dream of becoming a concert pianist. At first hostile, Mick soon becomes friends with Singer, hoping to enlarge his small world. Three other central characters come to Singer for help also, each of them seeing in him a powerful force.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSmall, Slow But Steady (2022)
Keiko surprises everyone when she overcomes adversity to win her first two boxing fights. But when an unexpected incident threatens the closure of her gym, she is pushed further than she thought possible.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAn American Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong (2009)
A fourth grader and her friends deal with bullying from a more popular girl in their class.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKids Return (1996)
Shinji and Masaru spend most of their school days harassing fellow classmates and playing pranks. They drop out and Shinji becomes a small-time boxer, while Masaru joins up with a local yakuza gang. However, the world is a tough place.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSound of Metal (2020)
Metal drummer Ruben begins to lose his hearing. When a doctor tells him his condition will worsen, he thinks his career and life is over. His girlfriend Lou checks the former addict into a rehab for the deaf hoping it will prevent a relapse and help him adapt to his new life. After being welcomed and accepted just as he is, Ruben must choose between his new normal and the life he once knew.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTaboo (1999)
Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering on a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)
Charts the troubled teenage years of students Yūichi Hasumi and Shūsuke Hoshino, exploring the shifting and complex power dynamics of their relationship against the backdrop of Yūichi's love for the dreamy and abstract music of pop star Lily Chou-Chou.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Miracle Worker (1962)
The true story of the frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness of 7-year-old Helen Keller who, since infancy, has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. Then Annie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touch, the only tool they have in common, and leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation to happiness and light.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLove & Pop (1998)
Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMOTHER (2020)
Shuhei is leading a tough life. His alcoholic mother Akiko can only hook up with bad guys and order Shuhei to go get money from his disapproving grandparents instead of going to school. Except raising the little half-sister, his rock-bottom life seems to have no end.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRiver's Edge (2018)
High schooler Haruna befriends loner Yamada, then is drawn into the tangled relationship between him, a model and the girl who loves him unreasonably.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Miracle Worker (2000)
Devoted teacher Anne Sullivan leads deaf, blind and mute Helen Keller out of solitude and helps integrate her into the world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWhere Hope Grows (2014)
Calvin Campbell is a former professional baseball player sent to an early retirement due to his panic attacks at the plate. Even though he had all the talent for the big leagues, he struggles with the curveballs life has thrown him. Today, he mindlessly sleepwalks through his days and the challenge of raising his teenager daughter. His life is in a slow downward spiral when it is suddenly awakened and invigorated by the most unlikely person – Produce, a young-man with Down syndrome who works at the local grocery store.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisI Just Didn't Do It (2007)
A young man is falsely accused of molesting a high-school girl on a train. He is arrested and charged, and goes through endless court sessions, all the while insisting that he is innocent.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIntentions of Murder (1964)
The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlood on the Sun (1945)
Nick Condon, an American journalist in 20s Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination. Reaction from the understandably upset Japanese provides the action, but this is overshadowed by the propaganda of the time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisBlue Giant (2023)
High school student Dai Miyamoto has his life is turned upside down the day he discovers jazz. Picking up a saxophone and leaving his sleepy hometown for the bustling nightclubs of Tokyo, Dai will find that the life of a professional musician isn’t for the faint of heart, as he must confront what it truly means to be great.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBeyond Silence (1996)
Beyond Silence is about a family and a young girl’s coming of age story. This German film looks into the lives of the deaf and at a story about the love for music. A girl who has always had to translate speech into sign language for her deaf parents yet when her love for playing music grows strong she must decide to continue doing something she cannot share with her parents.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFaggot (2017)
This short film tells the story of Alexis, a 16-years-old hockey player who, after discovering he is gay, must face a heartbreaking dilemma: come out to his homophobic friends at the risk of being rejected and ridiculed, or stay in the closet even if that would mean abandoning Elliot, the only person who really loves him for what he is.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Children of a Lesser God (1986)
Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMr. Holland's Opus (1995)
In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFace 2 Face (2017)
Over a series of video chats, a teenage outcast reaches out to his childhood friend, but finds that behind the veneer of popularity and a seemingly perfect life, she hides a disturbing secret.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDuma (2005)
An orphaned cheetah becomes the best friend and pet of a young boy living in South Africa.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCamp Harlow (2014)
On the brink of a family crisis, Alex finds herself being sent to the last place she wants to be, summer camp. Knowing that a young admirer from school will be at the camp, Alex reluctantly agrees. Thrown into a group of people she has never met, Alex is determined to shut out the world. However, Alex is brought out of the corners of her own heart by the most unlikely of friends: a horse.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Bridge to Terabithia (2007)
Jesse Aarons trained all summer to become the fastest runner in school. So he's very upset when newcomer Leslie Burke outruns him and everyone else. Despite this and other differences including that she's rich, he's poor, she's a city girl, and he's a country boy the two become fast friends. Together they create Terabithia, a land of monsters, trolls, ogres, and giants where they rule as king and queen.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Fear (1966)
In this disturbing family drama, a prosperous middle-aged farmer takes up gambling and whoring at the expense of his devoted second wife. Meanwhile, his son the pervert becomes fascinated with the family's maid, a deaf-mute.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Wild Child (1970)
The true story of Victor of Aveyron. In a French forest circa 1798, an abandoned child — feral, filthy and mentally impaired — is found. Dr Jean Marc Gaspard Itard becomes interested in the case and patiently attempts to civilise the boy.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like I Love You?
The closest matches to I Love You are Her Love Boils Bathwater (2016), The Quiet (2006) and Johnny Belinda (1948). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after I Love You?
Start with Her Love Boils Bathwater (2016), the closest match to I Love You.
What is the highest-rated movie like I Love You?
The Miracle Worker (1962), rated 7.9/10 by 362 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like I Love You?
Blue Giant (2023) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Japanese movies like I Love You?
Yes: Her Love Boils Bathwater (2016), Small, Slow But Steady (2022) and Kids Return (1996).
How are movies similar to I Love You chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside I Love You, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.