Movies like What the Sun Saw (2006)
The best movies like What the Sun Saw (2006) are Adam (2020), Poor Cow (1967) and Salomé (2013). If What the Sun Saw hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedGreed (1924)7.3/10 from 215 votes
- NewestThe Face under The Face (2025)Released 2025
Adam (2020)
A hard-living salesman becomes a quadriplegic after an accident.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPoor Cow (1967)
Joy lives a life filled with bad choices. At a young age, she marries and has a child–with an abusive thief who quickly ends up incarcerated. Left alone, she takes up with the guy's mate, another thief, who seems to give her some happiness but who also ends up locked up. She then takes up with a series of seedy types who offer nothing but momentary pleasure–if that.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSalomé (2013)
After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCardboard Boxer (2016)
Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll Together Now (2020)
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe River (1984)
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCome Sunday (2018)
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisHardball (2001)
An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Old Oak (2023)
A pub landlord in a previously thriving mining community struggles to hold onto his pub. Meanwhile, tensions rise in the town when Syrian refugees are placed in the empty houses in the community.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBastard Out of Carolina (1996)
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJungleland (2020)
Stanley manages his boxer brother Lion but when a devastating loss in the ring leaves the pair in debt, an opportunity to recoup the cash leads to a series of misadventures that threaten to break the bond between them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJohnny (2022)
After a court order sends him to work at a hospice, an ex-criminal strikes up a friendship with a compassionate priest who changes his life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSame Kind of Different as Me (2017)
International art dealer Ron Hall must befriend a dangerous homeless man in order to save his struggling marriage to his wife, a woman whose dreams will lead all three of them on the journey of their lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBeing Flynn (2012)
Working in a Boston homeless shelter, Nick Flynn re-encounters his father, a con man and self-proclaimed poet. Sensing trouble in his own life, Nick wrestles with the notion of reaching out yet again to his dad.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHome Run (2013)
A pro ball player with a substance abuse problem is forced into rehab in his hometown, finding new hope when he gets honest about his checkered past, and takes on coaching duties for a misfit Little League team
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAdopt a Highway (2019)
Russ Millings has just been released from prison after serving 21 years for a 3rd strike conviction for possessing an ounce of marijuana. As he tries to adapt to a world he doesn’t recognize – including trying to learn how to use the internet – he finds an abandoned baby in a dumpster behind the fast food restaurant where he works as a dishwasher. Unsure of what to do, and caught between impulses of kindness and panic, Russ soon realizes this could be his chance at redemption.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Young One (1960)
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHomeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story (2003)
Based on a true story. Liz Murray is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted parents. Liz becomes homeless at 15 and after a tragedy comes upon her, she begins her work to finish high school.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Nest (2020)
Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Safety of Objects (2002)
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Own Private Idaho (1991)
Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMonster (2003)
In 1989, prostitute Aileen Wuornos befriends and enters a relationship with a young woman named Selby. Determined to straighten out her life, Aileen's limited education lands her back on the corner. She's raped by a trick, who she kills. A string of murder and robbery follows that ultimately leads Aileen to becoming America's first female serial killer.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNun Nancy (2021)
Nun Nancy follows the heartfelt ministry of a passionate woman of God that served the inner city of Baltimore, Maryland disguised as a bartender so that she could more effectively share God's love to the drunks and prostitutes.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Bandit Queen (1994)
Born a lower-caste girl in rural India's patriarchal society, "married" at 11, repeatedly raped and brutalized, Phoolan Devi finds freedom only as an avenging warrior, the eponymous Bandit Queen. Devi becomes a kind a bloody Robin Hood; this extraordinary biographical film offers both a vivid portrait of a driven woman and a savage critique of the society that made her.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Bench (2000)
Kaj is a stubborn man with a great deal of pride. The former chef lives in a council flat. He has wasted his life and is now on a council job training scheme for the long-term unemployed, where he refuses to let the foreman of the activation project boss him about. When Kaj's daughter, with whom he has not been in touch for nineteen years, moves into the same council estate on the run from her violent husband, a change comes over Kaj. His initial instinct is to avoid her, but by chance he ends up helping to look after Jonas, her six-year-old son. For the first time for years Kaj need not survive on his own devices. Now he has responsibilities and a family of his own.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Manjha (2008)
Ranka is a street orphan, all of ten years old. He makes manjha used in kite flying for a living, and he has to take care of his three-year-old little sister Chimi, who is somewhat mentally challenged.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Three Fingers (1973)
Mahmoud, who suffers from a lot of financial difficulties, is now thinking of committing suicide
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Greed (1924)
When housewife Trina wins the lottery, her comfortable life with her dentist husband John slowly deteriorates, in part by her own increasing paranoia and partly by the machinations of villainous acquaintance Marcus.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCinema Libertad (2009)
A boy living in an abandoned cinema meets a young girl. As their friendship develops, the boy entertains the other cinema residents with stories and shadow puppets.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Face under The Face (2025)
A SILENT STORY - An aging refugee clown in Paris masks trauma with silent street performances. Beneath his painted smile lie resilience and displacement’s sorrow, a wordless elegy to those surviving unseen.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like What the Sun Saw?
The closest matches to What the Sun Saw are Adam (2020), Poor Cow (1967) and Salomé (2013). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after What the Sun Saw?
Start with Adam (2020), the closest match to What the Sun Saw.
What is the highest-rated movie like What the Sun Saw?
Greed (1924), rated 7.3/10 by 215 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like What the Sun Saw?
The Face under The Face (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to What the Sun Saw chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside What the Sun Saw, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.