Movies like Holly (2006)
The best movies like Holly (2006) are The Good Lie (2014), The Kite Runner (2007) and Dirty Pretty Things (2002). If Holly hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedDesert Flower (2009)7.6/10 from 508 votes
- NewestMexicali (2026)Released 2026
The Good Lie (2014)
A young refugee of the Sudanese Civil War who wins a lottery for relocation to the United States with three other lost boys. Encountering the modern world for the first time, they develop an unlikely friendship with a brash American woman assigned to help them, but the young man struggles to adjust to this new life and his feelings of guilt about the brother he left behind.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Kite Runner (2007)
After spending years in California, Amir returns to his homeland in Afghanistan to help his old friend Hassan, whose son is in trouble.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDirty Pretty Things (2002)
An undocumented immigrant finds a human heart in one of the toilets of the west London hotel where he works with other undocumented immigrants.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn This World (2003)
Torn straight from the headlines, Michael Winterbottom's compelling and prescient 'In This World' follows young Afghan Jamal and his older cousin Enayat as they embark on a hazardous overland trip from their refugee camp at Peshawar, north-west Pakistan. Entering Turkey on foot through a snowy, Kurdish-controlled pass, the pair again take their lives into their hands and face suffocation when they are locked in a freight container on a ship bound for Italy. From there they plan to travel on to Paris, the Sangatte refuge centre and ultimately asylum in London.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Better Life (2011)
An Indigenous Latino American gardener in East L.A. struggles to keep his son away from gangs and immigration agents while traveling across town to perform landscaping work for the city's wealthy landowners.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBabel (2006)
Tragedy strikes a married couple vacationing in the Moroccan desert, which jumpstarts an interlocking story involving four different families.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDesert Flower (2009)
The autobiography of a Somalian nomad who was sold in marriage at 13, fled from Africa a while later to become finally an American supermodel and is now at the age of 38, the UN spokeswoman against female genital mutilation.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTake Out (2008)
An illegal Chinese immigrant falls behind on payments on an enormous smuggling debt. Ming Ding has only until the end of the day to come up with the money.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTrafficked (2017)
In this story inspired by real characters, three girls from America, Nigeria and India are trafficked through an elaborate global network and enslaved in a Texas brothel, and must together attempt a daring escape to reclaim their freedom.
Why it matches: Fans watch both
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMan Push Cart (2006)
Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former Pakistani rock star turned immigrant, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, however, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken by a glimmer of hope for a better life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Flood (2019)
Wendy, a hardened immigration officer is offered a high-profile asylum case, judged on her ability to quickly and clinically reject applicants. Through her interrogation, she must uncover whether Haile is lying and has a more sinister reason for seeking asylum.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Frozen River (2008)
A financially strapped mother joins a Mohawk woman to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Beautiful Country (2004)
After reuniting with his mother in Ho Chi Minh City, a family tragedy causes Binh to flee from Viet Nam to America. Landing in New York, Binh begins a road trip to Texas, where his American father is said to live.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNight of the Kings (2021)
A young man is sent to "La Maca," a prison in the middle of the Ivorian forest ruled by its inmates. As tradition goes with the rising of the red moon, he is designated by the Boss to be the new "Roman" and must tell a story to the other prisoners. Learning what fate awaits him, he begins to narrate the mystical life of the legendary outlaw named "Zama King" and has no choice but to make his story last until dawn.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe War Boys (2009)
Home from his freshman year of college, David is reunited with his childhood buddies Greg and George - the War Boys are together again. They used to sit in their pick up truck on the US-Mexican border waiting to chase illegal immigrants across the wasteland– just for fun. Now the boys hijack a semi hoping to sell what they think are black market televisions and make a quick buck.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisStrip Search (2004)
Strip Search follows several parallel stories examining personal freedoms vs. national security in the aftermath of 9/11; two main subplots involve an American woman detained in China and an Arab man detained in New York City.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTrade (2007)
A Texas cop, whose own daughter might have been forced into sexual slavery, joins forces with a Mexican youth to find the boy's sister, who was abducted and forced into prostitution. Meanwhile, a Polish woman who was promised a better life in America also becomes a victim.
Why it matches: Fans watch both
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Pirates of Somalia (2017)
After an inspiring chance encounter with his idol, rookie journalist Jay Bahadur uproots his life and moves to Somalia looking for the story of a lifetime. Hooking up with a local fixer, he attempts to get embedded with the local Somali pirates, only to quickly find himself in over his head.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCrossing Over (2009)
Immigrants from around the world enter Los Angeles every day, with hopeful visions of a better life, but little notion of what that life may cost. Their desperate scenarios test the humanity of immigration enforcement officers. In Crossing Over, writer-director Wayne Kramer explores the allure of the American dream, and the reality that immigrants find – and create -- in 21st century L.A.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCity of Joy (1992)
Max Lowe is a Houston surgeon who has grown weary of the bureaucracy of American medicine. When he loses a patient on the operating table, Max impulsively decides to leave America and travel to India in the hope of finding himself. Not long after he arrives in Calcutta, Max is attacked by a group of thugs and left without money or a passport.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPrincess Kaiulani (2010)
Ka'iulani, a 19th-century Hawaiian princess, is raised in England but determined to maintain her people's independence from aggressive American businessmen. After being sent to England as a child by her Scottish father, Ka'iulani returns to Hawaii and becomes a political activist who fights to retain her throne, even though she must leave her English paramour.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisPromised Land (2004)
"Promised Land" tells the story of a group of young unwitting Estonian girls smuggled through Egypt to be auctioned off as prostitutes in Israel, and of their initiation into this trade of flesh, and finally of the accidental freeing of one girl who most fight for her freedom.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Accidental Friendship (2008)
Homeless woman Yvonne Caldwell is a woman with good reason to be bitter: she has lost everything except her two beloved dogs, Bebe and Man-Man. With her one friend, Wes, Caldwell lives the daily struggle of being homeless in Los Angeles until a chance encounter caused by her dogs leads to a friendship with LAPD officer Tami Baumann, and hope for a better life begins in earnest for Yvonne.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Steal This Movie (2000)
Five years after Yippie founder Abbie Hoffman goes underground to avoid a drug-related prison sentence, he contacts a reporter to get out the story of the FBI's covert spying, harassment and inciting of violence they then blame on the Left.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
An American Rhapsody (2001)
A Hungarian family forced to flee the Communist country for the United States must leave a young daughter behind. Six years later, the family arranges to bring the absent daughter to the United States where she has trouble adjusting. The daughter then decides to travel to Budapest to discover her identity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEyimofe (This Is My Desire) (2021)
A man and a woman in Lagos want to escape their everyday lives, but extricating themselves is no easy task. Two stories narrated with tenderness and restraint that only fleetingly touch, the dream of migrating to Europe floating above them all the while.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Brokedown Palace (1999)
Best friends Alice and Darlene take a trip to Thailand after graduating high school. In Thailand, they meet a captivating Australian man, who calls himself Nick Parks. Darlene is particularly smitten with Nick and convinces Alice to take Nick up on his offer to treat the two of them to what amounts to a day trip to Hong Kong. In the airport, the girls are seized by the police and shocked to discover that one of their bags contains heroin.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHoly Rollers (2010)
Inspired by actual events in the late nineties when Hasidic Jews were recruited as mules to smuggle ecstasy from Europe into the United States.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisMexicali (2026)
A former special forces contractor is forced out of retirement as an avocado farmer in Mexico when local gangsters try to force him and his family off their farm.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPimp (2018)
An urban love story set on the hard streets of the Bronx. A struggling female pimp, named Wednesday, grows up learning the game from her dad. Once he's gone she's left to look out for her prostitute mother and girlfriend Nikki.
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 Holly?
The closest matches to Holly are The Good Lie (2014), The Kite Runner (2007) and Dirty Pretty Things (2002). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Holly?
People who watched Holly most often go on to The Good Lie (2014), The Kite Runner (2007) and Dirty Pretty Things (2002).
What is the highest-rated movie like Holly?
Desert Flower (2009), rated 7.6/10 by 508 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Holly?
Mexicali (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Holly?
Yes: The Good Lie (2014), The Kite Runner (2007) and Dirty Pretty Things (2002).
How are movies similar to Holly chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Holly, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.