Movies like The Order of Things (2017)
The best movies like The Order of Things (2017) are Borderline (1980), Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and Saint Judy (2018). If The Order of Things hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedA Better Life (2011)7.2/10 from 292 votes
- NewestIn The Shadows 75 (2026)Released 2026
- In ItalianTerraferma (2011)Also in Italian
Borderline (1980)
Jeb Maynard is a patrolman guarding the U.S.-Mexican border, whose partner and buddy Scooter has just been murdered. Maynard knows that a smuggler of illegal aliens is responsible for Scooter's death, but the feds insist that drug dealers committed the crime.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies 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: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSaint Judy (2018)
The true story of immigration attorney Judy Wood and how she singlehandedly changed the U.S. law of asylum to save women's lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Visitor (2008)
A college professor travels to New York City to attend a conference and finds a young couple living in his apartment.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNormal (2003)
A Midwestern husband and father announces his plan to have a sex change operation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBorder Incident (1949)
The story concerns two agents, one Mexican (PJF) and one American, who are tasked to stop the smuggling of Mexican migrant workers across the border to California. The two agents go undercover, one as a poor migrant.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · 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: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisTerraferma (2011)
A Sicilian family deals with the arrival of a group of immigrants on their island.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Sound of Silence (2019)
A successful "house tuner" in New York City, who calibrates the sound in people's homes in order to adjust their moods, meets a client with a problem he can't solve.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisFrozen River (2008)
A financially strapped mother joins a Mohawk woman to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · 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: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisAmerican Son (2019)
Time passes and tension mounts in a Florida police station as an estranged interracial couple awaits news of their missing teenage son.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · 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: 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 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 thisCall Me Crazy: A Five Film (2013)
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRogue Agent (2022)
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNight Always Comes (2025)
Facing eviction in a city her family can no longer afford, a woman plunges into a desperate and increasingly dangerous all-night search to raise $25,000.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 thisMaria Full of Grace (2004)
A pregnant Colombian teenager becomes a drug mule to make some desperately needed money for her family.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWelcome (2009)
Bilal is 17 years old, a Kurdish boy from Iraq. He sets off on an adventure-filled journey across Europe. He wants to get to England to see his love who lives there. Bilal finally reaches Calais, but how do you cover 32 kilometers of the English Channel when you can't swim? The boy soon discovers that his trip won't be as easy as he imagined... The community of struggling illegal aliens in Calais
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPrincesses (2005)
Caye is a young prostitute whose family is unaware of her profession. She meets her striking Dominican neighbour Zulema, an illegal immigrant, after she finds her in the bathroom, badly beaten up. They strike up a close friendship unbeknownst to Caye's xenophobic co-workers.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies 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: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSpanglish (2004)
Mexican immigrant and single mother Flor Moreno finds housekeeping work with Deborah and John Clasky, a well-off couple with two children of their own. When Flor admits she can't handle the schedule because of her daughter, Cristina, Deborah decides they should move into the Clasky home. Cultures clash and tensions run high as Flor and the Claskys struggle to share space while raising their children on their own, and very different, terms.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Class (2008)
Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisYour Happiness Depends on Me (2006)
When the hard-working bread-winner Katja and Hendrik the intellectual meet Saida, an illegal immigrant from Algeria, and accept to organize a "passport marriage" between her and Hendrik, they are caught up in a chain of events and feelings over which they have no control.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Fast Food Nation (2006)
A dramatised examination of the health issues and social consequences of America's love affair with fast food.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTrue North (2007)
The crew of a bankrupt Scottish trawler turn to smuggling illegal immigrants over the stormy waters of the North Sea.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
In The Shadows 75 (2026)
In 1970s turbulent Libya, a weary Nigerian man and a young Cameroonian woman hide on their journey to Europe. As night falls, confessions spark connection, but a violent knock shatters fragile truths. Inspired by Dupe Okundaye's journey.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Order of Things?
The closest matches to The Order of Things are Borderline (1980), Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and Saint Judy (2018). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Order of Things?
Start with Borderline (1980), the closest match to The Order of Things.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Order of Things?
A Better Life (2011), rated 7.2/10 by 292 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Order of Things?
In The Shadows 75 (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Italian movies like The Order of Things?
Yes: Terraferma (2011) and Bad Tales (2020).
How are movies similar to The Order of Things chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Order of Things, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.