Movies like The Student (2016)
The best movies like The Student (2016) are The Banishment (2008), Me Too (2012) and The Fool (2014). If The Student hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Hunt (2012)8.1/10 from 5,080 votes
- NewestCaptain Volkonogov Escaped (2023)Released 2023
The Banishment (2008)
While vacationing in the countryside at his childhood home, a woman suddenly reveals to her husband that she is expecting a child – but not his.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMe Too (2012)
Five passengers - the Bandit, his friend Matvei, Matvei's old father, the Musician, and a young woman - race along an empty road in a big black jeep, searching for the Belfry of Happiness which, according to hearsay, lies somewhere between St. Petersburg and the town of Uglich, near a deserted nuclear power station. The Belfry takes people, but it does not take everyone. Each of the five passengers believes that he or she will be chosen.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Fool (2014)
The Fool is a movie about a simple plumber. An honest man, he is up against an entire system of corrupted bureaucrats. At stake are the lives of 800 inhabitants of an old dorm that is at risk of collapsing within the span of the night.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Geographer Drank His Globe Away (2013)
Victor Sluzhkin signs on as a teacher of geography in a secondary school in his native Perm (in the Urals) and gets lost in a haze of hard vodka, desperate love for a nymphet-like student and the stress of educating teenagers. Geographer, as the students immediately dub Sluzhkin, attempts to escape from the grueling, dull, stultifying reality of Russia's provincial life in a rafting tour to the Urals. Accompanied by wild, adventure-seeking adolescents, faced with the numerous grim surprises of the nature, Geographer is poised to find himself and his own truth.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLoveless (2017)
Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisArrhythmia (2017)
Oleg is a young gifted paramedic. His wife Katya works as a nurse at the hospital emergency department. She loves Oleg, but is fed up with him caring more about patients than her. She tells him she wants a divorce. The new head of Oleg’s EMA department is a cold-hearted manager who’s got new strict rules to implement. Oleg couldn’t care less about the rules – he’s got lives to save; his attitude gets him in trouble with the new boss. The crisis at work coincides with the personal life crisis. Caught up between their patients, alcohol-fueled off-shifts, and an evolving health care system, Oleg and Katya have to find the binding force that will keep them together.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisElena (2011)
After suffering a heart attack, a wealthy elderly Russian man plans to will most of his estate to his estranged daughter. However, his wife has other plans.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Class (2008)
Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLiving (2012)
Fate brings ordeals to characters that find themselves immersed in deep crisis; they must seek the strength to cope with adversity. In a remote and cold region of Russia, Galya, a middle-aged woman with a drinking problem, has been separated from her twin daughters and she wants them back. On the other hand, Grishka and Anton are a young couple who decide to get married, but right after the wedding their relationship is put to the test in a brutal way. Artyom longs to see his missing father, but his mother objects. There is only one element that brings all of these characters together: misfortune.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Return (2003)
Two young brothers in contemporary Russia are reunited with a father they know only from an old photograph after his sudden return from a long absence. With their mother’s reluctant consent, they set out on a remote trip that quickly becomes an uneasy test of authority, trust, and masculinity. As the journey moves deeper into the wilderness, the fragile bonds between father and sons are pushed to their limits.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCloseness (2017)
1998, Nalchik. A Jewish family is in trouble: the youngest son and his bride do not come home, and in the morning, a ransom note arrives. The ransom is so high that the family is forced not only to sell its small business, but also to seek help from its fellow tribesmen.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Hunt (2012)
A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son’s custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLeto (2018)
Leningrad, one summer in the early eighties. Smuggling LPs by Lou Reed and David Bowie, the underground rock scene is boiling ahead of the Perestroika. Mike and his beautiful wife Natasha meet with young Viktor Tsoi. Together with friends, they will change the destiny of rock’n’roll in the Soviet Union.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFirst Reformed (2018)
A pastor of a small church in upstate New York starts to spiral out of control after a soul-shaking encounter with an unstable environmental activist and his pregnant wife.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCalvary (2014)
After being threatened during a confession, a good-natured priest must battle the dark forces closing in around him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHow Viktor "The Garlic" Took Alexey "The Stud" to the Nursing Home (2017)
Viktor spends his free time trawling bars with ladies of questionable repute, from where he is picked up by a wife he doesn’t love, the mother of a child they never planned. Viktor himself was abandoned by his own father, his mother then committed suicide, and he was left to grow up in an orphanage. Years later, his errant dad returns, now a disabled felon, and Viktor discovers a timely legacy is in the offing – his father’s apartment. The documentation for securing dad’s move into an old people’s home is signed in a flash. Nevertheless, the only one that can take him is miles away and, what’s more, the invalid starts to recuperate during the journey, which is when their real problems begin.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInadequate People 2 (2020)
Kristina lives with Vitaly in a quiet family life, but her sarcastic world view does not coincide with Vitaly’s ideals. While she is engaged in household chores, he spends more and more time at work, and Kristina begins to suspect that this is somehow connected with the appearance of his young assistant Sonya in the office.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Miss Meadows (2014)
Miss Meadows is a school teacher with impeccable manners and grace. However, underneath the candy-sweet exterior hides a ruthless gun-toting vigilante who takes it upon herself to right the wrongs in the world by whatever means necessary. For Miss Meadows, bad behavior is simply unforgivable.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisSilent Souls (2010)
Miron Alekseevich, director of a paper and pulp mill, goes to bury his wife Tanya in the place where they once spent their honeymoon. He goes not alone, but with a photographer named Stork, to whom he tells touching details of his life with Tanya. The narrative weaves together the memories of the characters, as well as the rituals and beliefs of the Meri people, a small Finnish tribe that once lived in the Northern Volga region and dissolved among the Russians.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOf Freaks and Men (1998)
St. Petersburg, early 20th century. The handsome and secretive Johann specializes in shooting erotic pictures depicting the floggings of bare-bottomed women. With the help of his assistants, the photographic creations gradually penetrate the peaceful households of two upper-class Russian families.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInadequate People (2010)
A 30-year-old man, Vitaly, moves to Moscow in search of inner peace after struggling with personal and psychological issues. As he settles into a seemingly ordinary life, he forms an unexpected bond with his younger neighbor, forcing him to confront his past and emotional instability.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Apostate (2015)
A young man navigates the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church when he tries to renounce his faith.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Clergy (2018)
The fate of three Catholic priests were linked together through tragic events a few years back. Every year, on the anniversary of the catastrophe, they gather to celebrate their survival of the tragedy. Lisowski works at a curia in a big city, building his career while dreaming of the Vatican. Standing in his way, Mordowicz, the archbishop, a luxurious church dignitary who is making use of his political connections to build the largest sanctuary in Poland. Trybus, is a parish priest and often submits to human weaknesses. Kukuła also is not doing well. Despite his passion for faith, he is losing the trust of his flock. Soon, through new tragic events, the paths of the three priests will cross again.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDoctor Lisa (2020)
The film is about a day in the life of Elizaveta Petrovna Glinka, also known as Doctor Liza. Moscow, 2012. The Glinka family prepares for a celebration: thirty years together. The closest friends are invited for dinner, the sons have arrived. Of course, Liza has freed up this day for her family. There’s just a trifle: to stop by the Fund and see the weekly patients at the Paveletsky Station. But the days of Doctor Liza are always full of surprises… In a hospital in a Moscow suburb a five-year-old girl is dying. The duty doctor has to discharge Eva. Due to medical formalities the child, who suffers from cancer, is left without painkillers. In utter despair, the girl’s father turns to Liza for help. When Liza cannot find a way to help the child within the system, she decides on a desperate act…
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Leviathan (2014)
In a Russian coastal town, Kolya is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits a lawyer friend to help, but the man's arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTaurus (2001)
Unfolding over two days in 1924, the film depicts the dying Lenin, world revolutionary and father of the USSR, now powerless and isolated at his Gorki estate. Cared for by his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaia, sister Maniasha, his German doctor and several attendants, Lenin raves about his diminishing faculties, discusses the deaths of great figures (including Marx), rides a car to a picnic in a meadow and ponders his historic legacy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Captain Volkonogov Escaped (2023)
Captain Fedor Volkonogov works in law enforcement. He is on the good books of the management, and his colleagues respect him. But one day, his life abruptly changes: he is declared a criminal. The Captain manages to run away before he is arrested. Suddenly he turns into an outcast, whom his former colleagues search across the whole city. At night Volkonogov is visited by a messenger from the other world, who warns him that after death he will go hell and be tormented forever. But he has an opportunity to change his fate and get to paradise if he repents, and at least one person forgives him. The Captain embarks on his way to find forgiveness. But he cannot even fathom what tests are awaiting him on this way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDAU. Natasha (2021)
Natasha runs the canteen at a secret 1950s Soviet research institute. This is the beating heart of the DAU universe, everyone drops in here: the institute's employees, scientists and visiting foreign guests. Natasha's world is a small one, split between the demands of the canteen during the day and alcohol fuelled nights with her younger colleague Olga, during which the two confide their hopes of romance and for a different future. At a party one evening Natasha becomes close to a visiting French scientist Luc Bige and the two sleep together. The following day her life takes a dramatic turn when she is summoned to an interrogation by the KGB's General Vladimir Azhippo who questions the nature of her relationship with the foreign guest.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Major (2013)
On a cold winter’s day Sergey Sobolev, a major at the local police office, is driving to the hospital where his wife is about to give birth to their child. High from happiness, he’s driving too fast and runs down a boy on a passage walk, who dies. Now the major has only two options: go to prison or conceal the crime. Sobolev decides to compromise with his conscience and calls on a colleague to help him out. But the case turns out to be messy and when Sobolev finally changes his mind and tries to make up for his deed, it’s already too late…
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGod's Not Dead (2014)
After he refuses to disavow his faith, a devout Christian student must prove the existence of God or else his college philosophy professor will fail him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Student?
The closest matches to The Student are The Banishment (2008), Me Too (2012) and The Fool (2014). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Student?
People who watched The Student most often go on to The Banishment (2008), Me Too (2012) and The Fool (2014).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Student?
The Hunt (2012), rated 8.1/10 by 5,080 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Student?
Captain Volkonogov Escaped (2023) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to The Student chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Student, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.