Movies like Trial (2003)
The best movies like Trial (2003) are Close-Up (1990), Midnight Express (1978) and And Life Goes On (1992). If Trial hooked you, these 20 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedModern Times (1936)8.3/10 from 4,256 votes
- NewestReading Lolita in Tehran (2024)Released 2024
Close-Up (1990)
This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMidnight Express (1978)
Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAnd Life Goes On (1992)
After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisReading Lolita in Tehran (2024)
In 1979, amidst censorship and religious extremism, a revolutionary literature professor in Tehran gathers seven of her most dedicated female students to immerse themselves in banned literary classics.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDogville (2003)
A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAs I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000)
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (2017)
Through the lens of his stunningly immersive performance as Andy Kaufman, Jim Carrey ponders the meaning of life, reality, identity and career.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBronson (2009)
A young man who was sentenced to 7 years in prison for robbing a post office ends up spending 30 years in solitary confinement. During this time, his own personality is supplanted by his alter ego, Charles Bronson.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThrough the Olive Trees (1994)
When the actor in a scene for his film Life And Nothing More… has to quit, a film director casts another man for the part. However, complications arise since the man and the woman who was cast for the scene know each other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Souvenir (2019)
A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTaste of Cherry (1997)
A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task because he needs the money, but his new associate soon tries to talk him out of committing suicide.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTehran Taboo (2017)
The lives of three strong-willed women and a young musician cross paths in Tehran’s schizophrenic society where sex, adultery, corruption, prostitution and drugs coexist with strict religious law. In this bustling modern metropolis, avoiding prohibition has become an everyday sport and breaking taboos can be a means of personal emancipation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Big Picture (1989)
Hollywood beckons for recent film school grad Nick Chapman, who is out to capitalize on the momentum from his national award-winning student film. Studio executive Allen Habel seduces Nick with a dream deal to make his first feature, but once production gets rolling, corporate reality begins to intervene: Nick is unable to control a series of compromises to his high-minded vision, and it's all he can do to maintain his integrity in the midst of filmmaking chaos.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisModern Times (1936)
A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisSeptembers of Shiraz (2015)
In this adaptation of the critically acclaimed debut novel by Iranian American author Dalia Sofer, a secular Jewish family is caught up in the maelstrom of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisNo Bears (2022)
Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been barred from leaving the country, arrives at a village on the Iran-Turkey border to supervise a film based on a real-life couple seeking passports to Europe being shot in Turkey, but both his stay and the production run into trouble.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKahlil Gibran's The Prophet (2014)
Exiled artist and poet Mustafa embarks on a journey home with his housekeeper and her daughter; together the trio must evade the authorities who fear that the truth in Mustafa's words will incite rebellion.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSon of Rambow (2007)
Will is looking for an escape from his family when he encounters Lee, the school bully. Armed with a video camera and a copy of Rambo, Lee plans to make his own action-packed video epic.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRiot in Cell Block 11 (1954)
A prisoner leads his counterparts in a protest for better living conditions which turns violent and ugly.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Operative (2019)
A young Western woman is recruited by the Mossad to go undercover in Tehran where she becomes entangled in a complex triangle with her handler and her subject.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Trial?
The closest matches to Trial are Close-Up (1990), Midnight Express (1978) and And Life Goes On (1992). Below are 17 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Trial?
Start with Close-Up (1990), the closest match to Trial.
What is the highest-rated movie like Trial?
Modern Times (1936), rated 8.3/10 by 4,256 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Trial?
Reading Lolita in Tehran (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to Trial chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Trial, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.