Movies like Joy (2019)
The best movies like Joy (2019) are In the Aisles (2018), Barbara (2012) and A Regular Woman (2019). If Joy hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedSystem Crasher (2019)7.6/10 from 413 votes
- NewestSebastian (2024)Released 2024
- In GermanIn the Aisles (2018)Also in German
In the Aisles (2018)
Christian, a reclusive young man from Leipzig, gets a job working the night shift at a big-box store. He's trained to stocks goods and operate a forklift by Bruno, a wistful former truck driver, who introduces Christian to a colorful group of overnight workers, including Marion, with whom Christian develops a troubled infatuation.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBarbara (2012)
Exiled to a rural clinic in 1980s East Germany for seeking an exit visa, a disillusioned doctor maintains a guarded distance from her colleagues, unsure if the kindly head physician is a genuine ally or a Stasi informant.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Regular Woman (2019)
Hatun Aynur Sürücü, a German woman of Kurdish origin, was shot dead by her brothers at a bus stop in 2005. The story of a woman who fought for her freedom and independence despite her family's objections, and whose life ended in a horrific murder.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSystem Crasher (2019)
Wherever 9-year-old Benni ends up, she is expelled. She has become what child protection services call a “system crasher.” But she is not looking to change her ways, and has one goal: go back home to her mother. When anger management trainer Micha is hired to help, suddenly there is hope.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStopped on Track (2011)
Frank and Simone have fulfilled a dream and live with their two children in a row house in the suburbs. They are a happy couple, until the day Frank is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. The family is suddenly confronted with death.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisParadise: Love (2012)
On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as "Sugar Mamas" —European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise, moving from beach to beach.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisImport/Export (2007)
A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAntares (2004)
A deadly car crash sets off three parallel stories of women at crisis points, faltering behind the doors of the same, plain Vienna apartment block.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisStroszek (1977)
Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck and they join his neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBerlin Alexanderplatz (2020)
In 2015, thirty year old refugee Francis, the sole survivor of a boat that illegally crossed the Mediterranean, is drawn into Berlin's seedy underbelly.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Whistleblower (2010)
Nebraska cop Kathryn Bolkovac discovers a deadly sex trafficking ring while serving as a U.N. peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia. Risking her own life to save the lives of others, she uncovers an international conspiracy that is determined to stop her, no matter the cost.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEgon Schiele: Death and the Maiden (2016)
Vienna, Austria, 1910. The young painter Egon Schiele is a rising artist, provocative and free, whose work, characterized by eroticism, shocks as much as it fascinates art lovers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJoyless Street (1925)
In 1921, we follow two women - Marie and Grete - from the same poor Viennese neighborhood, as they try to better the lives of themselves and their families during the period of Austrian postwar hyperinflation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe White Masai (2005)
A girl, Carola, whose vacation in Kenya takes an interesting turn when she becomes infatuated with a Masai. Carola decides to leave her boyfriend to stay with her lover. There, she has to adapt to the Masai's way of life and get used to their food which includes milk mixed with blood. She also has to face her husband's attitude towards women and what he expects from a wife. Nonetheless, Carola is welcomed warmly into the tribe she has chosen to join.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMean Streets (1973)
A small-time hood must choose from among love, friendship and the chance to rise within the mob.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCrimes of Passion (1984)
Fashion designer Joanna Crane leads a double life. By night she is China Blue, a prostitute who's attracted the attention of a sexually frustrated private detective, and a psychopathic priest in possession of a murderous sex toy.
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 thisUncut Gems (2019)
A charismatic New York City jeweler always on the lookout for the next big score makes a series of high-stakes bets that could lead to the windfall of a lifetime. Howard must perform a precarious high-wire act, balancing business, family, and encroaching adversaries on all sides in his relentless pursuit of the ultimate win.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisChristiane F. (1981)
A teen girl in 1970s Berlin becomes addicted to heroin. Everything in her life slowly begins to distort and disappear as she befriends a small crew of junkies and falls in love with a drug-abusing male prostitute.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBound (1996)
Corky, a tough female ex-convict working on an apartment renovation in a Chicago building, meets a couple living next door, Caesar, a paranoid mobster, and Violet, his seductive girlfriend, who is immediately attracted to her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Edge of Heaven (2007)
The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLola (1981)
Germany in the autumn of 1957: Lola, a seductive cabaret singer-prostitute exults in her power as a temptress of men, but she wants out—she wants money, property, and love. Pitting a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, Lola launches an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale. Shot in childlike candy colors, Fassbinder’s homage to Josef von Sternberg’s classic The Blue Angel stands as a satiric tribute to capitalism.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004)
Young Jeremiah lives in a stable environment with loving foster parents until the day his troubled mother, Sarah, returns to claim him. Jeremiah becomes swept up in his mother's dangerous world of drugs, seedy hotels, strip joints and revolving lovers. Salvation comes in the form of the boy's ultrareligious grandparents, but soon Jeremiah's mother returns. Maternal love binds the pair together on the road until Sarah's desperate and depraved lifestyle finally consumes her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisNight Hunter (2019)
A Minnesota police officer crosses paths with a committed and tireless vigilante as he follows the trail of a ruthless predator responsible for several abductions and murders.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNightmare Alley (2021)
An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSebastian (2024)
Max is a 25-year-old freelance writer and aspiring novelist who seems well on his way to success in London’s cultural spheres. Yet by night, he finds a different kind of exhilaration as a sex worker with the pseudonym Sebastian, meeting men via an escorting platform. Max uses his experiences as Sebastian to fuel his stories and the worthy debut novel that he has been longing to write, finally seems within reach.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLilya 4-ever (2002)
In a struggling post-Soviet community, Lilya a teenage girl is abandoned when her mother moves to the United States with her boyfriend. Facing neglect and poverty, she meets Andrei, who offers her a job in Sweden, giving her hope for a better life — and a journey that will change everything.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Forester of the Silver Wood (1954)
Hubert Gerold, the new forester of the Silver Forest, fights against the deforestation of his idyllic forest with the help of the court councilor. He actually succeeds in convincing the local council to sell building land instead of the forest. When Hubert meets Liesl, the court councilor's granddaughter, at a hunters' ball, his happiness seems complete. But while he is showing her the beauties of the Silver Forest, Liesl's admirer, Max, arrives from Vienna, determined to prevent their relationship at all costs.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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: 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
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Joy?
The closest matches to Joy are In the Aisles (2018), Barbara (2012) and A Regular Woman (2019). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Joy?
People who watched Joy most often go on to In the Aisles (2018), Barbara (2012) and A Regular Woman (2019).
What is the highest-rated movie like Joy?
System Crasher (2019), rated 7.6/10 by 413 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Joy?
Sebastian (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there German movies like Joy?
Yes: In the Aisles (2018), Barbara (2012) and A Regular Woman (2019).
How are movies similar to Joy chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Joy, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.