Movies like Breath of Life (1990)
The best movies like Breath of Life (1990) are Blackbird (2019), Living (2022) and Men in War (1957). If Breath of Life hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedUmberto D. (1952)7.9/10 from 779 votes
- NewestThe Final Run (2025)Released 2025
- In ItalianVermiglio (2024)Also in Italian
Blackbird (2019)
A terminally ill mother invites her family to their country house for one final gathering, but tensions quickly boil over between her two daughters.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLiving (2022)
London, 1953. Mr. Williams, a veteran civil servant, is an important cog within the city's bureaucracy as it struggles to rebuild in the aftermath of World War II. Buried under paperwork at the office and lonely at home, his life has long felt empty and meaningless. Then a devastating medical diagnosis forces him to take stock, and to try and grasp some fulfilment before it passes permanently beyond reach.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMen in War (1957)
In Korea, on 6 September 1950, Lieutenant Benson's platoon finds itself isolated in enemy-held territory after a retreat. Soon they are joined by Sergeant Montana, whose overriding concern is caring for his catatonic colonel. Benson and Montana can't stand each other, but together they must get the survivors to Hill 465, where they hope the division is waiting. It's a long, harrowing march, fraught with all the dangers the elusive enemy can summon.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisVermiglio (2024)
In the last days of the Second World War, a deserting soldier disrupts a tranquil and isolated mountain community. For one family, his arrival brings excitement and romance, but tragedy lies in wait.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBad Tales (2020)
In a small suburb on the outskirts of Rome, the cheerful heat of summer camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. From a distance, the families seem normal, but it’s an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence shrouds the subtle sadism of the fathers, the passivity of the mothers and the guilty indifference of adults. But it’s the desperation and repressed rage of the children that will explode and cut through this grotesque façade, with devastating consequences for the entire community.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFeeling Better (2025)
A man spends peacefully his days in hospital without too many worries. He has been hospitalized for a while but that condition seems like the best way to live his life, safe from everything and everyone, without responsibilities and problems of any kind. It feels really good in there and even if some of his ward companions feel trapped, for them he can also feel free like nowhere else. That precious routine runs smoothly until a new person is admitted to the same ward. She is a restless, angry companion, she accepts nothing of that condition, especially the unwritten rules. She is not willing to wait, she wants to leave that place better or even worse. She wants to live as she should or die, as happens to those who end up in there. He is overwhelmed by that fury, first trying to defend himself and then accepting something incomprehensible. That encounter will help him accept that if you choose to truly face your heart and your emotions, there is no possible repair.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Big Red One (1980)
A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChrist Stopped at Eboli (1979)
In the fascist Italy of 1935, a painter trained as a doctor is exiled to a remote region near Eboli. Over time, he learns to appreciate the beauty and wisdom of the peasants, and to overcome his isolation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Terrace (1980)
A terrace in Rome is a recurrent gathering place for a group of friends from the intellectual upper-class. Their lives unfold and intertwine, as they struggle with aging, disappointment and disillusion, until they are left with the realization that their generation, and everything it stood for, is coming to an end.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this90 Minutes in Heaven (2015)
A man involved in a horrific car crash is pronounced dead, only to come back to life an hour and a half later, claiming to have seen Heaven.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Man Who Will Come (2009)
A group of Italian villagers struggle to survive during a tumultuous time in 1943, debating how much assistance to give the partisans with the impending arrival of the Germans. Based on True Events.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCloak and Dagger (1946)
Italian partisans help a professor sent by the OSS to find an atomic scientist held by Nazis.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBang the Drum Slowly (1973)
The story of a New York pro baseball team and two of its players. Henry Wiggen is the star pitcher and Bruce Pearson is the normal, everyday catcher who is far from the star player on the team and friend to all of his teammates. During the off-season, Bruce learns that he is terminally ill, and Henry, his only true friend, is determined to be the one person there for him during his last season with the club. Throughout the course of the season, Henry and his teammates attempt to deal with Bruce's impending illness, all the while attempting to make his last year a memorable one.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFinally Dawn (2024)
A young Roman woman during the 1950s is on the verge of becoming engaged to a man. She goes to Cinecittà to do an audition as an extra and is thrust into this almost infinite night during which she discovers herself.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThree Christs (2017)
Dr. Alan Stone breaks new ground for treatment of the mentally ill through an experiment on three paranoid schizophrenic patients who believe they are Jesus Christ.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisUmberto D. (1952)
When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTwo Weeks in Another Town (1962)
After spending three years in an asylum, a washed-up actor views a minor assignment from his old director in Rome as a chance for personal and professional redemption.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHoly Lands (2019)
When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWaiting for Anya (2020)
During the harrows of WWII, Jo, a young shepherd along with the help of the widow Horcada, helps to smuggle Jewish children across the border from southern France into Spain.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDon't Make Me Go (2022)
A terminally ill man and his teenage daughter embark on a road trip from California to New Orleans for his 20th college reunion. While there, he secretly hopes she can reunite with the mother who left them long ago.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAt Eternity's Gate (2018)
Famed but tormented artist Vincent van Gogh spends his final years in Arles, France, painting masterworks of the natural world that surrounds him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPeaceful (2021)
A son in denial of a serious illness. A mother facing the unbearable. And between them a doctor fighting to do his job and bring them to acceptance. The three of them have one year and four seasons to come together and understand what it means to die while living.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGlass Girls (2023)
After a bitter teen Anais, gets placed in a mental hospital for the same peculiar reason as a devout-christian, Michelle, their bond rapidly grows closer, with one girl desperately trying to save the other’s life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Professor (2019)
A world-weary college professor is given a life-changing diagnosis and decides to throw all pretense and conventions to the wind and live his life as boldly and freely as possible with a biting sense of humor, a reckless streak and a touch of madness.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTomorrow Is Also Another Day (TBA)
Simon has cancer, a diagnosis that makes him lose hope. In the hospital he meets Frida, she is already doing her therapy, dreams of big things, one day traveling to Machu Pichu and seeing the world. From now on both try to go a common way.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Henry Poole Is Here (2008)
Henry Poole abandons his fiancée and family business to spend what he believes are his remaining days alone. The discovery of a 'miracle' by a nosy neighbor ruptures his solitude and restores his faith in life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisLungs (TBA)
When a teenage girl is desperately admitted to hospital after contracting an intense new respiratory virus, her doctor grapples with the decision to permit an emergency lung transplant at the risk of causing an outbreak.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
There Lived a Doctor (1984)
A young doctor Nikolai Alexandrovich Zaostrovtsev, a fourth generation medical professional, found himself in the Gladuny village directly after the Institute. Neither he himself, nor his father, a town surgeon, expected that he would linger long their. But having become a real doctor in this working village community, he remains true to his profession without any dreams of glory or city life…
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Final Run (2025)
Pierce Butler, a former Marine and long-retired marijuana smuggler, whose wife is suffering from a rare type of cancer, must return to his drug-running ways and make one Final Load in order to save his house, his company, and his wife.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Italian Alphabet (2015)
Seven students from different countries come to Rome to a school for foreigners. The diverse age group joins in the classroom. Everyone is very excited, talking to each other, socialising, and laughing and found in a very cheerful atmosphere. Then comes the teacher begins to ask questions about them, asking where they come from, what they do in life, and what reasons are for coming to Italy. Everyone answers the questions. When everyone talks about their experience, all the other laughing and joking, suddenly the phone of one of the students start ringing, and the teacher turns to him and asks the same questions. But, the cheerful atmosphere changes.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Like Breath of Life and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Breath of Life?
The closest matches to Breath of Life are Blackbird (2019), Living (2022) and Men in War (1957). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Breath of Life?
Start with Blackbird (2019), the closest match to Breath of Life.
What is the highest-rated movie like Breath of Life?
Umberto D. (1952), rated 7.9/10 by 779 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Breath of Life?
The Final Run (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Italian movies like Breath of Life?
Yes: Vermiglio (2024), Bad Tales (2020) and Feeling Better (2025).
How are movies similar to Breath of Life chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Breath of Life, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.