Movies like Port of Desire (1958)
The best movies like Port of Desire (1958) are Alone in Berlin (2016), Élisa (1995) and Tigertail (2020). If Port of Desire 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 American Friend (1977)7.1/10 from 469 votes
- NewestEleanor the Great (2025)Released 2025
- In FrenchÉlisa (1995)Also in French
Alone in Berlin (2016)
Berlin in June of 1940. While Nazi propaganda celebrates the regime’s victory over France, a kitchen-cum-living room in Prenzlauer Berg is filled with grief. Anna and Otto Quangel’s son has been killed at the front. This working class couple had long believed in the ‘Führer’ and followed him willingly, but now they realise that his promises are nothing but lies and deceit. They begin writing postcards as a form of resistance and in a bid to raise awareness: Stop the war machine! Kill Hitler! Putting their lives at risk, they distribute these cards in the entrances of tenement buildings and in stairwells. But the SS and the Gestapo are soon onto them, and even their neighbours pose a threat.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisÉlisa (1995)
Marie has had a tough childhood ever since her mother Elisa committed suicide. She has spent most of her life in an orphanage and now makes a living as a small time criminal in Paris. Now she wants to unravel her past and find her father whom she blames for her mother's death.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTigertail (2020)
A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOut of Season (2024)
Mathieu lives in Paris, Alice in a small seaside resort in Western France. He is a famous actor, about to turn fifty. She is a piano teacher in her forties. They were in love fifteen years ago, then separated. Time has passed. They each went their ways and slowly healed. When Mathieu goes try to overcome his melancholia in a thermal spa, he stumbles upon Alice.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGood Day, Ramon (2013)
After five failed attempts to go to the United States, 18-year-old Ramón decides to look for a friend’s aunt in Germany, but never finds her. With no papers or money, and without knowing the language, he barely survives living on the street until he meets Ruth, an old retired nurse who doesn’t speak Spanish. Beyond language barriers and prejudices, they discover that solidarity and humanity make life bearable.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBetween Two Worlds (2022)
Marianne Winckler relocates to the port city of Caen in order to pass herself off as a member of a large community of itinerant workers desperate to make ends meet. She gains employment as a cleaner on a ferry travelling between Ouistreham and Portsmouth, recording the drudgery of the work she and her colleagues are required to do.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChaos (2001)
A bourgeois couple, modern yet conventional. One night by accident, a young prostitute barges into their lives. Hounded down, beaten up, threatened, she will continue to struggle, with the help of a well off lady, first for her survival-her resurrection-then for her dignity and freedom. Stormy encounters for everyone involved.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEleanor the Great (2025)
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSecret Name (2021)
Nelie escaped a miserable existence by becoming a frontline nurse in 1914. One day, she takes the identity of Rose, a young woman from a good family, who dies in front of her. She presents herself in her place at Madame de Lengwil's house, to become the reader of this wealthy woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Long Absence (1961)
Therese, a café owner, mourns the mysterious disappearance of her husband sixteen years earlier. A tramp arrives in the town and she believes him to be her husband. But he is suffering from amnesia and she tries to bring back his memory of earlier times.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIcy Breasts (1974)
On a beach in Nice, François meets the mysterious Peggy and falls in love with her. Following her to a villa, he meets Marc, a lawyer who has a strange relationship with the girl.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Secrets We Keep (2020)
In post-World War II America, a woman, rebuilding her life in the suburbs with her husband, kidnaps her neighbor and seeks vengeance for the heinous war crimes she believes he committed against her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Quiller Memorandum (1966)
After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisBobby Jones: Stroke of Genius (2004)
The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisEffie Gray (2014)
A look at the mysterious relationship between Victorian art critic John Ruskin and his teenage bride Effie Gray.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972)
Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCéline (1992)
After the death of her father, 22-year-old Céline inherits most of his estate, but gives it to her stepmother, causing her greedy fiancé to leave her. Following several failed suicide attempts, Céline is hospitalized and comes to the attention of a nurse, Genevieve, who has struggled with depression. Under her personal care, Céline gradually recovers, and the two women grow close.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies 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: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKompromat (2022)
Mathieu, a member of the French institute in Irkutsk, is arrested overnight by the Russian authorities. Imprisoned and accused of sexual abuse on his own daughter, he realises he is a victim of a Kompromat. With the help of the FSB, someone has built up a case to frame him. Isolated, he has no one to turn to. Proving his innocence is impossible: the only solution is to escape.
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 thisThe American Friend (1977)
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMeine beste Feindin (1999)
Two mismatched women are on the run from gangsters and must help one another to survive.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Between Hamburg and Haiti (1940)
A successful German overseas merchant with a plantation in Haiti is looking for a suitable wife in Hamburg and comes across a barmaid from the Reeperbahn with an illegitimate child. He wants to marry her, but she does not follow him out of nobility. In search of her, he finds her in Mexico as the secretary of his former lover, a writer.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Das Glück ist eine Insel (2000)
The talented young lawyer Corinna Jakobs is given a great opportunity to make her professional breakthrough: she is to represent the well-known Hamburg fishing fleet owner Petersen in court, who is repeatedly denounced in the press as an environmental sinner by an eco-activist. But when the lawyer falls in love with the rough-and-tumble environmentalist, she finds herself in a difficult conflict of conscience.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Chiko (2008)
This is the story of Isa, who grows up in a Hamburg suburb. It might be one of the world's richest cities but every beast has its belly and here, in the very underbelly, Chiko lives in a world where violence, staking and keeping a claim, and drug taking are the norm. Where down is not an option, Chiko is determined to rise to the top, whatever and whomever it costs.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGibbi West Germany (1980)
Gibbi Westgermany is the name of a former sailor with a Mick Jagger look—leather jacket over the bare chest—who roams the Hamburg neighborhood St. Pauli homeless. His destination is a snack bar in St. Pauli run by his mother. But it is not the safe haven he is looking for.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Coup (2021)
Hamburg, Germany, summer 1988. A young bank employee embezzles a large amount of money using an ingenious technique and flees to Australia, from where he phones his girlfriend to tell her what he has done so easily; but her reaction is not what he naively expected.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Royal Children (2003)
In order not to end up as a lock keeper in the country like his father, 18-year-old Abel wants to go to the USA to become a stuntman. Girlfriend Merle is supposed to come along, but then finds out that she is pregnant.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Backbeat (1994)
Chronicles the early days of The Beatles in Hamburg, Germany. The film focuses primarily on the relationship between Stuart Sutcliffe, John Lennon, and Sutcliffe's girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBallhaus Barmbek - Let's Kiss and Say Goodbye (1988)
A study of the alienated people who frequent the Ballhaus Barmbek dance hall, including an obese El groupie, an old man reciting poetry, two young women and a regular dance employee.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Port of Desire?
The closest matches to Port of Desire are Alone in Berlin (2016), Élisa (1995) and Tigertail (2020). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Port of Desire?
Start with Alone in Berlin (2016), the closest match to Port of Desire.
What is the highest-rated movie like Port of Desire?
The American Friend (1977), rated 7.1/10 by 469 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Port of Desire?
Eleanor the Great (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like Port of Desire?
Yes: Élisa (1995), Out of Season (2024) and Between Two Worlds (2022).
How are movies similar to Port of Desire chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Port of Desire, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.