Movies like Bitter Sugar (1996)
The best movies like Bitter Sugar (1996) are The Lost City (2005), Viva Cuba (2005) and Affair in Trinidad (1952). If Bitter Sugar hooked you with its drama and romance, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedScarface (1983)8.2/10 from 13,668 votes
- NewestKiller Heat (2024)Released 2024
- In SpanishViva Cuba (2005)Also in Spanish
The Lost City (2005)
In Havana, Cuba in the late 1950's, a wealthy family, one of whose sons is a prominent nightclub owner, is caught in the violent transition from the oppressive regime of Batista to the Marxist government of Fidel Castro. Castro's regime ultimately leads the nightclub owner to flee to New York.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisViva Cuba (2005)
The friendship between two children is threatened by their parents’ differences. Malú is from a family that was upper-class before the Revolution and remains well-to-do through remittances from relatives overseas, and her single mother (Larisa Vega Alamar) does not want her to play with Jorgito, as she thinks his background coarse and commonplace. Jorgito’s mother (Luisa María Jiménez Rodríguez),
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAffair in Trinidad (1952)
A nightclub singer enlists her brother-in-law to track down her husband's killer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKiller Heat (2024)
An expat PI is hired to investigate a suspicious death in Crete, Greece, where jealousies run deep amongst the victim's powerful family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisNotorious (1946)
In order to help bring Nazis to justice, U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin recruits Alicia Huberman, the American daughter of a convicted German war criminal, as a spy. As they begin to fall for one another, Alicia is instructed to win the affections of Alexander Sebastian, a Nazi hiding out in Brazil. When Sebastian becomes serious about his relationship with Alicia, the stakes get higher, and Devlin must watch her slip further undercover.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Dancer Upstairs (2002)
A police detective in a South American country is dedicated to hunting down a revolutionary guerilla leader.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHeaven (2002)
A woman takes the law into her own hands after police ignore her pleas to arrest the man responsible for her husband's death, and finds herself not only under arrest for murder but falling in love with an officer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWasp Network (2020)
Havana, Cuba, 1990. René González, an airplane pilot, unexpectedly flees the country, leaving behind his wife Olga and his daughter Irma, and begins a new life in Miami, where he becomes a member of an anti-Castro organization.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBefore Night Falls (2000)
Spanning several decades, this powerful biopic offers a glimpse into the life of famed Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas, an artist who was vilified for his homosexuality in Fidel Castro's Cuba.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Am Cuba (1964)
A study in contrasts set in and around Havana that explores Cuba's 1959 revolution: a young woman's fascination with the excess of an American-owned casino leads to her downfall in the eyes of her street vendor boyfriend; a tenant farmer revolts the only way he knows how, attacking the land he works; university students gain first-hand knowledge of political upheaval; and, in the hills outside the city, the members of a poor peasant family are patriotically swept up into the burgeoning revolt.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisScarface (1983)
After getting a green card in exchange for assassinating a Cuban government official, Tony Montana stakes a claim on the drug trade in Miami. Viciously murdering anyone who stands in his way, Tony eventually becomes the biggest drug lord in the state, controlling nearly all the cocaine that comes through Miami. But increased pressure from the police, wars with Colombian drug cartels and his own drug-fueled paranoia serve to fuel the flames of his eventual downfall.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisChe: Part One (2008)
Ernesto Guevara, known as 'Che', leads a group of Cuban exiles under Fidel Castro in a revolution to overthrow Fulgencio Batista, the dictator of Cuba.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAmistad (1997)
In 1839, the slave ship Amistad set sail from Cuba to America. During the long trip, Cinque leads the slaves in an unprecedented uprising. They are then held prisoner in Connecticut, and their release becomes the subject of heated debate. Freed slave Theodore Joadson wants Cinque and the others exonerated and recruits property lawyer Roger Baldwin to help his case. Eventually, John Quincy Adams also becomes an ally.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe King of Havana (2015)
Recently escaped from reformatory, Reinaldo struggles to get by in the streets of Havana in the late 90s, one of the worst decades for Cuban society. Hopes, disillusionment, rum, good humor and above all hunger, accompany him in his wanderings, until he meets Magda and Yunisleidy, survivors like himself. In one or the other's arms, he will try to escape the material and moral misery surrounding him, living love, passion, tenderness and uninhibited sex to the limit.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAlpha Dog (2006)
Johnny Truelove likes to see himself as tough. He's the son of an underworld figure and a drug dealer. Johnny also likes to get tough when things don't go his way. When Jake Mazursky fails to pay up for Johnny, things get worse for the Mazursky family, as Johnny and his 'gang' kidnap Jake's 15 year old brother and hold him hostage.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Clan (2015)
In Argentina, between 1982 and 1985, the Puccios, a well-established family of San Isidro, an upper-class suburb of Buenos Aires, kidnap several people and hold them as hostages for a ransom.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Baker (2023)
A quiet, stoic man, lives a monk-like existence in self-imposed exile. When his estranged son is killed in a drug deal gone bad, he is left to look after a granddaughter he never knew existed, and he is forced back into a life he tried to put behind him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisColombiana (2011)
After witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota, Cataleya Restrepo grows up to be a stone-cold assassin. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders that she hopes will lead her to her ultimate target: the mobster responsible for her parents' death.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this3 Days to Kill (2014)
A dangerous international spy is determined to give up his high stakes life to finally build a closer relationship with his estranged wife and daughter. But first, he must complete one last mission - even if it means juggling the two toughest assignments yet: hunting down the world's most ruthless terrorist and looking after his teenage daughter for the first time in ten years, while his wife is out of town.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
An American doctor and his wife, a former singing star, witness a murder while vacationing in Morocco, and are drawn into a twisting plot of international intrigue when their young son is kidnapped.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNotes on a Scandal (2006)
A veteran high school teacher befriends a younger art teacher, who is having an affair with one of her 15-year-old students. However, her intentions with this new "friend" also go well beyond platonic friendship.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStranger Than Fiction (2006)
Harold Crick is a lonely IRS agent whose mundane existence is transformed when he hears a mysterious voice narrating his life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGloomy Sunday (1999)
Budapest in the 1930s. Restaurant owner Laszlo hires pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody sets off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans falls in love with Ilona as well.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Dreamers (2003)
When Isabelle and Theo invite Matthew to stay with them, what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and everything is possible.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSex and Lucía (2001)
Lucía is a young waitress in Madrid who seeks refuge on a quiet, secluded Mediterranean island after the loss of her longtime boyfriend. Amidst the fresh air, dazzling sun, and glistening deep blue water, Lucía begins to piece together the dark corners of her past relationship.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAsk the Dust (2006)
Mexican beauty Camilla hopes to rise above her station by marrying a wealthy American. That is complicated by meeting Arturo Bandini, a first-generation Italian hoping to land a writing career and a blue-eyed blonde on his arm.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisOriginal Sin (2001)
A young man is plunged into a life of subterfuge, deceit and mistaken identity in pursuit of a femme fatale whose heart is never quite within his grasp.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStreet Kings (2008)
Tom Ludlow is a disillusioned L.A. Police Officer, rarely playing by the rules and haunted by the death of his wife. When evidence implicates him in the execution of a fellow officer, he is forced to go up against the cop culture he's been a part of his entire career, ultimately leading him to question the loyalties of everyone around him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSamaritan Girl (2004)
Jae-Young is an amateur prostitute who sleeps with men while her best friend Yeo-Jin "manages" her, fixing dates, taking care of the money, and making sure the coast is clear. When Jae-Young falls in love with one of those men, she suppresses her feelings towards him in respect of her friend who's jealous.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Discovery of Heaven (2001)
Disappointed with humanity, God wants to revoke his contract with humanity and wants to take back the stone tablets containing the ten commandments. To this end an angel is sent out to affect the personal lives of three humans so an appropriate child may be conceived.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Like Bitter Sugar and something else?
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Bitter Sugar?
The closest matches to Bitter Sugar are The Lost City (2005), Viva Cuba (2005) and Affair in Trinidad (1952). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Bitter Sugar?
Start with The Lost City (2005), the closest match to Bitter Sugar.
What is the highest-rated movie like Bitter Sugar?
Scarface (1983), rated 8.2/10 by 13,668 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Bitter Sugar?
Killer Heat (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Spanish movies like Bitter Sugar?
Yes: Viva Cuba (2005), I Am Cuba (1964) and The King of Havana (2015).
How are movies similar to Bitter Sugar chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Bitter Sugar, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.