Movies like El Sur (1983)
The best movies like El Sur (1983) are Cria! (1976), Life Goes On (1965) and Elisa, My Life (1977). If El Sur hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedAparajito (1956)7.8/10 from 310 votes
- NewestThe Human Voice (2020)Released 2020
- In SpanishCria! (1976)Also in Spanish
Cria! (1976)
Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLife Goes On (1965)
Madrid, Spain. Eloísa, a self-sacrificing wife and efficient mother, lives in the neighborhood of Maravillas with her husband, a violent policeman; her sanctimonious son, who spends his life studying and praying to atone for the sins of his family; and her two daughters, obsessed with wealth, who hate each other deeply.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Elisa, My Life (1977)
Elisa has not seen her father Luis for nine years, but she receives a telegram from her sister Isabel in a moment of crisis in her marriage with Antonio telling that her father is ill. Elisa decides to travel to the countryside of Madrid with Isabel and her brother-in-law Julián and their two children to visit Luis for his birthday. Elisa decides to stay with her father when her sister returns to Madrid with her family and she gets closer to Luis, understanding why he left her mother years ago. Later she tells him that Antonio cheated on her with her best friend Sophie and their relationship has ended. When Antonio unexpectedly arrives in the house, Elisa makes a decision about her life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Holy Innocents (1984)
In 60s Extremadura, Paco el Bajo and his relatives work during day in a farmhouse, and silently suffer submission to their masters, who exploit them and treat them almost like animals. Meanwhile, Paco dreams that one day his children will be able to study.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisViridiana (1962)
Viridiana is preparing to start her life as a nun when she is sent, somewhat unwillingly, to visit her aging uncle, Don Jaime. He supports her; but the two have met only once. Jaime thinks Viridiana resembles his dead wife. Viridiana has secretly despised this man all her life and finds her worst fears proven when Jaime grows determined to seduce his pure niece. Viridiana becomes undone as her uncle upends the plans she had made to join the convent.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Executioner (1963)
An undertaker gets married to an old executioner's daughter and, although he doesn't like it, must continue the profession of his father-in-law after his retirement.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCousin Angelica (1974)
When the single middle-aged Luis travels from Barcelona to bury the remains of his mother in the vault of his family in Segovia, he is lodged by his aunt Pilar in her old house where he spent his summer of 1936 with her. He meets his cousin Angelica, who was his first love, living on the first floor with her husband and daughter, and he recalls his childhood in times of the Spanish Civil War entwined with the present.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Butterfly (1999)
The film centres on Moncho and his coming-of-age experience in Galicia in 1936. Moncho develops a close relationship with his teacher Don Gregorio who introduces the boy to different things in the world. While the story centres on Moncho's ordinary coming-of-age experiences, tensions related to the looming Spanish Civil War periodically interrupt Moncho's personal growth and daily life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMain Street (1956)
A small town in Spain, October 1955. Isabel, a 35-year-old dreamer who feels like a failure because she is not married yet, becomes the new target of a group of soulless pranksters.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Grandfather (1998)
After his son dies, an elderly man comes back to Spain from the US and hopes to find out which of his granddaughters is true, and which one is bastard.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMartin (Hache) (1997)
After having a nearly fatal drug overdose, 19-year-old Argentine Martin is sent to Madrid, where his film director father lives with his new, younger lover, Alicia, and his bisexual actor friend, Dante.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVoyage to Nowhere (1986)
The Iniesta-Galván family is a theatre company that goes from town to town offering its performances. Over the years, its members will have to adapt to changes and make decisions, like that of whether or not to continue performing. One day, unexpectedly, a son that he has fathered on his travels presents himself to Carlos Galván.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Artist and the Model (2012)
In occupied France in summer 1943, a world-weary famous sculptor finds the desire to work again with the arrival of a beautiful young Spanish refugee.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTristana (1970)
As a young woman, Tristana is orphaned and taken under the guardianship of Don Lope, a respected member of the community, who takes advantage of his innocent charge. When Tristana falls in love with artist Horacio, she must learn to be more assertive in order to achieve independence from her nefarious guardian, or her blossoming relationship with Horacio is doomed.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Weakness of the Bolshevik (2003)
After getting into a minor traffic accident, Pablo attempts to make light of the situation by asking the driver of the other car, Sonsoles, out on a date. When she refuses and instead files an injury report, Pablo snaps and begins stalking her. He soon discovers that Sonsoles has a beautiful teenage sister, Maria, with whom Pablo is immediately infatuated -- a lust that soon turns dark. Can Pablo control his obsession, or will it consume him?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDeath of a Cyclist (1955)
A couple having an affair strike a bicyclist with their car and do not offer aid out of fear of their relationship being exposed.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAparajito (1956)
Apu and his family have moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of Benares. As he progresses from wide-eyed child to intellectually curious teenager, eventually studying in Kolkata, we witness his academic and moral education, as well as the growing complexity of his relationship with his mother.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCasa de Lava (1995)
The film tells a story of Mariana, a nurse who leaves Lisbon to accompany an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip home to Cape Verde. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Green Years (1963)
Nineteen-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, his working-class values collide with the bourgeois trappings of modern life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Miracle of Marcelino (1955)
Left on the doorstep of a monastery as an infant, Marcelino was raised by the monks. He was well-cared for but lonely and missed having a mother. One day he found a special friend in the forbidden attic, hanging on a cross. A friend that would repay Marcelino's kindness by granting him one heart-felt wish.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Nest (1980)
In a town near Salamanca, an eccentric widower, aged 60, is captivated by an imp, a precocious 13 year old. Alejandro is wealthy and alone, passing time with music, chess, and his shotgun. Gregoria (Goyita) the daughter of a weak-willed policeman and his bullying wife, is a budding naturalist who conspires to meet Alejandro. Even though he knows the village is talking, Alejandro spends time with Goyita, on walks, horseback rides, and dinners. He's enchanted and tells his friend the village priest that he's living for the first time. Goyita makes new demands on Alejandro, and he must decide how to be true to his ethics and to this Platonic yet highly-charged relationship.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Butterfly Wings (1991)
Ami is a 6 year old girl, extremely sensitive. Her mother, Carmen, lives with the obsession of giving a son to her husband, Gabriel. When finally she gets pregnant, the relation between mother and daughter becomes a tragic one, driving the family to an inevitable nightmare.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Lute: Forge On or Die (1987)
In Spain of the 1960s, a poor family of quinquis - a nomadic ethnic group with a tradition as old as that of the gypsises of Spain but with even more obscure origins - have a nomadic life marked by poverty. The son, Eleuterio Sánchez Rodriguez, nicknamed "El Lute", steals some chickens and is condemned to six months in jail. El Lute moves to the slum outskirts of Madrid with his common law wife, Chelo, starting an itinerant life as a peddler of pots and pans and living in a quinqui shantytown. He gradually embarks upon as life of petty criminality, eventually participating in the theft of a jewelry store during which a bystander is killed.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisCarmen (2003)
A French writer documents the seductive power of the beautiful Carmen, who has enchanted José, a young soldier, awakening his most fervent passions leading to tragedy. A path chained to obsession, jealousy, betrayal, and blood.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Beehive (1982)
As in the novel of the same title from Camilo Jose Cela, "La Colmena" is a sad composition with the stories of many people in the Madrid of 1942, just the postwar of the spanish civil war. The main theme of the film is the contrast between the poets, surviving close to misery under the Franco's regime, and the winners of the war, the emerging class of the people that makes easy money with illegal business.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBegin the Beguine (1982)
A Nobel prize winner returns to his natal city looking for his home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPoachers (1975)
The relationship between a poacher and his domineering mother in rural Spain is upended when he falls for an escapee from a reform school.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Human Voice (2020)
A woman watches time pass beside the suitcases of her ex-lover (who is supposed to come pick them up but never arrives) and a restless dog who doesn't understand that his master has abandoned him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWelcome Mr. Marshall! (1953)
A small Spanish town, Villar del Río, is alerted to the upcoming visit of American diplomats and its ruling townsmen begin preparations to impress the American visitors, in the hopes of benefiting under the Marshall Plan. Hoping to demonstrate the side of Spanish culture with which the visiting foreign officials would be more familiarized, the Castilian citizens don unfamiliar Andalusian costumes, hire a renowned flamenco performer, and re-decorate their town in Andalusian style, meantime waiting for their uncertain arrival.
Why it matches: Fans watch both
Worth the HypeMovies like thisColossal Youth (2006)
After the Portuguese government demolishes his slum and relocates him to a housing project on the outskirts of Lisbon, 75-year-old Cape Verde immigrant Ventura wanders between his new and old homes, reconnecting with people from his past.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
Like El Sur and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like El Sur?
The closest matches to El Sur are Cria! (1976), Life Goes On (1965) and Elisa, My Life (1977). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after El Sur?
People who watched El Sur most often go on to Cria! (1976), Life Goes On (1965) and Elisa, My Life (1977).
What is the highest-rated movie like El Sur?
Aparajito (1956), rated 7.8/10 by 310 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like El Sur?
The Human Voice (2020) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Spanish movies like El Sur?
Yes: Cria! (1976), Life Goes On (1965) and Elisa, My Life (1977).
How are movies similar to El Sur chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside El Sur, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.