Movies like My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read (2017)
The best movies like My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read (2017) are Hounddog (2008), Gigi & Nate (2022) and The Visit (1964). If My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedWhat Maisie Knew (2013)7.1/10 from 466 votes
- NewestOmaha (2025)Released 2025
Hounddog (2008)
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGigi & Nate (2022)
A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Visit (1964)
Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...
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 thisWon't Back Down (2012)
Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.
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 thisOmaha (2025)
A young girl and her brother are awoken by their father and loaded into the car on an early morning in 2008. As they road trip across the American West, she discovers the truth about their seemingly spontaneous journey.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Dry White Season (1989)
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Trials of Cate McCall (2013)
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTalhotBlond (2012)
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
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 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 thisIron Jawed Angels (2004)
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Christmas Shoes (2002)
Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhat Maisie Knew (2013)
In New York City, six-year-old Maisie is caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle between her self-absorbed parents—an aging rock singer mother and a distracted art dealer father. As both quickly marry new partners to strengthen their legal standing, Maisie is shuttled back and forth in an endless game of emotional point-scoring. Yet amid the chaos and upheaval, Maisie begins to find true comfort and affection in her new step-parents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Pumpkin Eater (1964)
Jo, the mother of seven children, divorces her second husband in order to marry Jake, a successful but promiscuous screenwriter. Though they are physically and emotionally compatible, they are slowly torn apart.
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 thisWhere the Red Fern Grows (1974)
Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for two years to achieve his dream of buying two red-bone coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in life as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with his dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGirl in the Box (2016)
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
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 thisNaked Weapon (2002)
A mysterious woman, known as Madame M, kidnaps forty pre-teen girls and transports them to a remote island to train them as the most deadly assassins. CIA operative Jack Chen follows the case for 6 years with no leads, but when a series of assassinations begin to occur, Jack suspects that Madame M is back in business.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhen I Fall In Love (1986)
Tales of young, romantic love intertwine and reflect both the idealism and the naivete of youth.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Blood Trail (2009)
Laya is a young professional photographer who has drifted away from her family. Her father has fallen ill, but she hasn’t once come to visit him at the hospital. Her mother, who left their family when Laya was a child, returns to urge Laya to make amends with her father, but Laya’s pain goes deeper than her mother suspects. Laya is sent to the provinces to document a ritual of a disappearing indigenous tribe, and there, she inadvertently comes face to face with her own demons as she observes the relationships of the last remaining members of this dying culture.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Isang Tasang Pangarap (2011)
In a small town devastated by calamity and chaos, Elias, still holds on to the one thing he considers sacred a shiny red coffee mug. For him, this mug not only symbolizes his love for coffee but his hope for a better life. After an enlightening encounter with a strange sari-sari store owner, he is suddenly gifted with the ability to tell the future. Soon enough, he is proclaimed as “The Coffee Psychic” and personifies hope for the townsfolk. But can hope truly spring eternal in this comedic homage to the award-winning epic Filipino film, “Himala” (Miracle)?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Sali-salita (2011)
A mother who writes children’s storybooks, ironically, doesn’t have enough time to create stories for her own son. The restless child finds a chance to create his own stories when his grandfather, comes up with a game. They fill an old milk can with pieces of paper, each containing a word which will be a “story-starter”. Tales of heroes and villains, magic and places fill up the child’s imagination. But the child’s made-up story is in need of a happy ending. Now, it depends on the storyteller mother to create the greatest ending of them all.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Anak ng Bulkan (1959)
The movie, set in a remote volcanic island, tells of the friendship between a little boy named Bentoy and a giant bird named Goliat
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Filipinas (2003)
Florencia, the matriarch of the Filipinas family, is in poor health, and Yolanda, the eldest of the Filipinas children, finds herself in the unenviable position of keeping her bickering family from disintegration. As the tension rises, Yolanda seeks refuge in a local church. She is critically injured trying to break up a nasty fight between brothers Emman and Samuel, forcing her family to make a life-changing decision.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Third World Happy (2010)
Wesley was a Fil-Am and a naturalized citizen when he left Philippines 12 years ago. In America, he aspired to become a painter, revealed that his parents died before he left the country to finish his dreams. Years later, he received a phone call that his loved one died and he was required to visit the wake. There he met his ex-girlfriend, his friends, his aunt and his own older brother will be his guide to give him a shining light and give him the courage to look at the coffin and say his last goodbyes.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Dalagang Ilocana (1954)
A funny poignant film about an Ilocana maiden.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Unplugged (2011)
A football coach takes his team of teenage boys out on a fieldtrip to the provincial home of his grandfather. But instead of bonding as a team, the boys are more caught up with their gadgets. The coach’s grandfather is determined to change all that as he challenges the boys to detach from their virtual distractions and explore the great outdoors instead. The boys then unlock a new world of natural wonder and discovery, realizing that going offline is the only way to reconnect back to a life that is unplugged.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read?
The closest matches to My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read are Hounddog (2008), Gigi & Nate (2022) and The Visit (1964). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read?
Start with Hounddog (2008), the closest match to My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read.
What is the highest-rated movie like My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read?
What Maisie Knew (2013), rated 7.1/10 by 466 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read?
Omaha (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside My Teacher Who Doesn't Know How to Read, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.