Movies like Shadow World (2016)
The best movies like Shadow World (2016) are This Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth (2019), The Weight of Chains (2010) and Censored Voices (2015). If Shadow World hooked you with its documentary and history, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Look of Silence (2014)7.8/10 from 328 votes
- NewestThe Dragon's Prophecy (2025)Released 2025
This Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth (2019)
For more than forty years, British journalist Robert Fisk has reported on some of the most violent conflicts in the world, from Northern Ireland to the Middle East, always with his feet on the ground and a notebook in hand, travelling into landscapes devastated by war, ferreting out the facts and sending reports to the media he works for with the ambition of catching the interest of an audience of millions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
The Weight of Chains (2010)
The Weight of Chains is a Canadian documentary film that takes a critical look at the role that the US, NATO and the EU played in the tragic breakup of a once peaceful and prosperous European state - Yugoslavia. The film, bursting with rare stock footage never before seen by Western audiences, is a creative first-hand look at why the West intervened in the Yugoslav conflict, with an impressive roster of interviews with academics, diplomats, media personalities and ordinary citizens of the former Yugoslav republics. This film also presents positive stories from the Yugoslav wars - people helping each other regardless of their ethnic background, stories of bravery and self-sacrifice.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
Censored Voices (2015)
The 1967 'Six-Day' war ended with Israel's decisive victory; conquering Jerusalem, Gaza, Sinai and the West Bank. It is a war portrayed, to this day, as a righteous undertaking - a radiant emblem of Jewish pride. One week after the war, a group of young kibbutzniks, led by renowned author Amos Oz, recorded intimate conversations with soldiers returning from the battlefield. The recording revealed an honest look at the moment Israel turned from David to Goliath. The Israeli army censored the recordings, allowing the kibbutzniks to publish only a fragment of the conversations. 'Censored Voices' reveals the original recordings for the first time.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both history & documentary
The Gatekeepers (2012)
In an unprecedented and candid series of interviews, six former heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's intelligence and security agency — speak about their role in Israel's decades-long counterterrorism campaign, discussing their controversial methods and whether the ends ultimately justify the means.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhy We Fight (2005)
Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki's shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Human Factor (2021)
How US politicians and diplomats, over the past 25 years, have come close to achieving something almost impossible: securing peace between the State of Israel and its Arab and like-minded neighbors, mired in a struggle both dialectical and violent since the early 20th century, due to historical and religious reasons, entrenched offenses and prejudices, and the invisible and tyrannical hand of third countries' geopolitical interests in the area.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
The Dragon's Prophecy (2025)
October 7 unleashed a new war in the Middle East, a place where nothing ever seems to be solved, or resolved. Whose land is it really? Who is good and who is evil? How can good prevail over evil without becoming evil itself? Could the fate of the world, of humanity itself, be tied to this conflict? And how does America fit into the picture? Based on Jonathan Cahn’s #1 international bestseller, The Dragon’s Prophecy. The film offers dramatic, never-before-seen live footage of October 7, together with on-site reporting and interviews with major figures like Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. It also reveals the astonishing discoveries of biblical archeology, confirming the historic events recorded in the Bible and the ancient presence of the Jews in the land of Israel.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
Orwell Rolls in His Grave (2003)
Has America entered an Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for truth? The country's leading intellectuals discuss and examine the mix of businesses, politics and ideology that is the mainstream media.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
The Unknown Known (2013)
Former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld discusses his career in Washington D.C. from his days as a congressman in the early 1960s to planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006)
Documentary portraying the actions of U.S. corporate contractors in the U.S.-Iraq war. Interviews with employees and former employees of such companies as Halliburton, CACI, and KBR suggest that government cronyism is behind apparent "sweetheart" deals that give such contractors enormous freedom to profit from supplying support and material to American troops while providing little oversight. Survivors of employees who were killed discuss the claim that the companies cared more for profit than for the welfare of their own workers, and soldiers indicate that the quality of services provided is sub-standard and severely in contradiction to the comparatively huge profits being generated. Also depicted are the unsuccessful attempts by the filmmakers to get company spokesmen to respond to the charges made by the interviewees.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The War Around Us (2014)
In 2008 two best friends found themselves trapped in one of the most dangerous places on earth - the only western journalists in the Gaza Strip on what was supposed to be a 24-hour assignment. The War Around Us captures the collision of veteran war correspondent and one of TIME's most 100 influential people, Ayman Mohyeldin, with rookie reporter Sherine Tadros. As missiles shower the city and unspeakable atrocities emerge, the pair is torn by fierce professional rivalry, private terror and grim humor - with no way out and the whole world watching.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Brothers at War (2009)
BROTHERS AT WAR is an intimate portrait of an American family during a turbulent time. Jake Rademacher sets out to understand the experience, sacrifice, and motivation of his two brothers serving in Iraq. The film follows Jake’s exploits as he risks everything—including his life—to tell his brothers’ story.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
The Price We Pay (2014)
A documentary on the history and present-day reality of big-business tax avoidance, which has seen multinationals depriving governments of trillions of dollars in tax revenues by harboring profits in offshore havens.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Bulletproof Salesman (2008)
Fidelis Cloer is a self-confessed war profiteer who found The Perfect War when the US invaded Iraq. It wasn't about selling a dozen cars, or even a hundred, it was a thousand-car war where security would become the ultimate product.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Exiles (2022)
Brash and opinionated, Christine Choy is a documentarian, cinematographer, professor, and quintessential New Yorker whose films and teaching have influenced a generation of artists. In 1989 she started to film the leaders of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests who escaped to political exile following the June 4 massacre. Though Choy never finished that project, she now travels with the old footage to Taiwan, Maryland, and Paris in order to share it with the dissidents who have never been able to return home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
The Fog of War (2003)
Former corporate whiz kid Robert McNamara was the controversial Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, during the height of the Vietnam War. Augmented by archival footage and cabinet conversation recordings, Errol Morris gives the conflicted McNamara a platform on which he attempts to confront his and the U.S. government's actions in Southeast Asia in light of the horrors of modern warfare, the end of ideology and the punitive judgment of history.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like this638 Ways to Kill Castro (2006)
Dollan Cannell's documentary on the hundreds of alleged plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, and a look at the evolution of Cuban politics. If the title of this extraordinary film sounds ludicrous, don't be fooled. This film looks at the incredible story of the 638 alleged plots by the CIA and Cuban exiles to kill the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both history & documentary
The Russian Woodpecker (2015)
As his country is gripped by revolution and war, a Ukrainian victim of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster discovers a dark secret and must decide whether to risk his life and play his part in the revolution by revealing it.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
Taxi to the Dark Side (2008)
An in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Square (2013)
The Square looks at the hard realities faced day-to-day by people working to build Egypt’s new democracy. Cairo’s Tahrir Square is the heart and soul of the film, which follows several young activists. Armed with values, determination, music, humor, an abundance of social media, and sheer obstinacy, they know that the thorny path to democracy only began with Hosni Mubarak’s fall. The life-and-death struggle between the people and the power of the state is still playing out.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe War on Democracy (2007)
Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger says that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the film’s message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both history & documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWar Made Easy (2007)
War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Yes Men Fix the World (2009)
THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world's most outrageous pranks.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Look of Silence (2014)
An Indonesian man with a communist background named Ramli was brutally murdered when the "Communist" purge occurred in 1965. His remaining family members lived in fear and silence until the making of this documentary. Adi, a brother of his, decided to revisit the horrific incident and visited the men who were responsible for the killings and one survivor of the purge. These meetings uncovered sadistic details of the murders and exposed raw emotions and reactions of the killers' family members about what happened in the past - much to Adi's disappointment.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both history & documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisZeitgeist: Addendum (2008)
Director Peter Joseph examines examples of economic subjugation and offers solutions based on alignment with nature.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Princess (2022)
Decades after her untimely death, Princess Diana continues to evoke mystery, glamour, and the quintessential modern fairy tale gone wrong. As a symbol of both the widening fissures weakening the British monarchy and the destructive machinery of the press, the Princess of Wales navigated an unparalleled rise to fame and the corrosive challenges that came alongside it. Crafted entirely from immersive archival footage and free from the distraction of retrospective voices, this hypnotic and audaciously revealing documentary takes a distinctive formal approach, allowing the story of the People’s Princess to unfold before us like never before.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisZeitgeist: The Movie (2007)
A documentary examining possible historical and modern conspiracies surrounding Christianity, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Federal Reserve bank.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Worth the HypeMovies like this9/11: Inside the President's War Room (2021)
Experience the events of September 11, 2001 through the eyes of President Bush and his closest advisors as they personally detail the crucial hours and key decisions from that historic day.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Accountant of Auschwitz (2018)
Oskar Gröning, known as the "Accountant of Auschwitz," was charged with the murder of 300,000 Jews. When he took the stand in 2015, at the age of 94, his trial made headlines worldwide.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Michael Moore's view on how the Bush administration allegedly used the tragic events on 9/11 to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Shadow World?
The closest matches to Shadow World are This Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth (2019), The Weight of Chains (2010) and Censored Voices (2015). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Shadow World?
People who watched Shadow World most often go on to This Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth (2019), The Weight of Chains (2010) and Censored Voices (2015).
What is the highest-rated movie like Shadow World?
The Look of Silence (2014), rated 7.8/10 by 328 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Shadow World?
The Dragon's Prophecy (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Shadow World?
Yes: This Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth (2019), The Weight of Chains (2010) and Censored Voices (2015).
How are movies similar to Shadow World chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Shadow World, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.