Movies like Affirmative Action (2016)
The best movies like Affirmative Action (2016) are Paradise Alley (1978), Accident Man (2018) and Zola (2021). If Affirmative Action hooked you, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedBoogie Nights (1997)7.6/10 from 3,774 votes
- NewestHold the Fort (2025)Released 2025
Paradise Alley (1978)
Three Italian-American brothers, living in the slums of 1940's New York City, try to help each other with one's wrestling career using one brother's promotional skills and another brother's con-artist tactics to thwart a sleazy manager.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisAccident Man (2018)
Mike Fallon, the Accident Man, is a stone cold killer. When a loved one is murdered by his own crew, Fallon is forced to avenge the one person who actually meant something to him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisZola (2021)
A waitress agrees to accompany an exotic dancer, her put-upon boyfriend, and her mysterious and domineering roommate on a road trip to Florida to seek their fortune at a high-end strip club.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJungle Fever (1991)
A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMandingo (1975)
Warren Maxwell, the owner of a run-down plantation, pressures his son, Hammond, to marry and produce an heir to inherit the plantation. Hammond settles on his own cousin, Blanche, but purchases a sex slave when he returns from the honeymoon. He also buys his father a new Mandingo slave named Mede to breed and train as a prize-fighter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOrgazmo (1998)
A devout Mormon living in L.A. becomes a pornographic actor after his martial arts moves impress a big-time director.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPink Flamingos (1972)
Notorious Baltimore criminal and underground figure Divine goes up against Connie & Raymond Marble, a sleazy married couple who make a passionate attempt to humiliate her and seize her tabloid-given title as "The Filthiest Person Alive".
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCitizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2001)
A horrific explosion creates a dimensional portal between Tromaville and its dimensional mirror image, Amortville. While the Toxie is trapped in the mirror dimension, Tromaville comes under the control of his evil doppelganger, the Noxious Offender.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisVillains (2019)
When their car breaks down, a couple on the run headed southbound for a fresh start in the Sunshine State break into a nearby house looking for a new set of wheels. What they find instead is a dark secret, and a sweet-as-pie pair of homeowners who will do anything to keep it from getting out.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHeavy Traffic (1973)
A white dropout struggles to become a cartoonist and filmmaker, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. Still sharing his rundown apartment with his middle-aged parents, an oafish slob of an Italian father and a ditzy nutcase of a Jewish mother, he's ridiculed and looked down upon by his friends, hypocrites who run with violent gangs and the Italian Mafia, and a shallow Black girl who makes her living downtown with the pimps and pushers. The cartoonist gets a chance to pitch a film idea to a movie mogul, but the story proves too outrageous: a far-future Earth, depleted by war and pollution, where a mutant antihero challenges and kills God.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBad (1977)
Hazel runs a beauty salon out of her house, but makes extra money by providing ruthless women the oppurtunity to perform hit jobs. L.T. is a parasite, and contacts Hazel looking for work after he runs out of money. She is reluctant to use him for a hit, since she prefers using women, but decides to try him on a trial basis. Meanwhile, the cop she pays off wants an arrest to make it look like he's doing his job, but Hazel doesn't want to sacrifice any of her "associates". The sleazy side of life is explored in this delightfully dark and deadpan film.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSpontaneous (2020)
When students in their high school begin inexplicably exploding (literally), seniors Mara and Dylan struggle to survive in a world where each moment may be their last.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like this68 Kill (2017)
Chip's problem is that he can't say no to beautiful women. This weakness gets him into a world of trouble when he agrees to help his girlfriend steal $68,000.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisHold the Fort (2025)
A HOA turns out to be more troublesome than usual in this wildly amusing, FX-heavy freak-out about newly minted suburbanites unexpectedly forced to take part in a struggle against monstrous forces.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCotton Comes to Harlem (1970)
Harlem's African-American population is being ripped off by the Rev. Deke O'Malley, who dishonestly claims that small donations will secure parcels of land in Africa. When New York City police officers Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson look into O'Malley's scam, they learn that the cash is being smuggled inside a bale of cotton. However, the police, O'Malley, and lots of others find themselves scrambling when the money goes missing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHell Hath No Fury (2021)
Branded a traitor by her countrymen, French national Marie DuJardin is rescued by American soldiers on one condition: to survive, she must lead them to a cache of gold - before the Nazis return to claim it for themselves.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAl Capone (1959)
In this unusually accurate biography, small-time hood Al Capone comes to Chicago at the dawn of Prohibition to be the bodyguard of racketeer Johnny Torrio. Capone's rise in Chicago gangdom is followed through murder, extortion, and political fraud. He becomes head of Chicago's biggest "business," but moves inexorably toward his downfall and ignominious end.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRoad House (1989)
The Double Deuce is the meanest, loudest and rowdiest bar south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and Dalton has been hired to clean it up. He might not look like much, but the Ph.D.-educated bouncer proves he's more than capable – busting the heads of troublemakers and turning the roadhouse into a jumping hot spot. But Dalton's romance with the gorgeous Dr. Clay puts him on the bad side of cutthroat local big shot Brad Wesley.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJawbone (2017)
A former youth boxing champion, Jimmy McCabe is a man in search of hope but looking in all the wrong places. When he hits rock bottom he turns to his childhood boxing club and the only family he has left: gym owner Bill corner man Eddie and promoter Joe. Back in training, years after anyone thought he was a contender, he risks his life, as he tries to stand tall and regain his place in the world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn the Soup (1992)
An aspiring young filmmaker gets involved with an eccentric gangster for the financing of his first film.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBoogie Nights (1997)
In 1977, an idealistic porn producer and his promising protege try to catch up with the end of an era before their never-ending party collides with cold, hard reality.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Worth the HypeMovies 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: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTorso (1973)
A masked serial killer with psychosexual issues strangles female coeds with scarves before dismembering them. When a wealthy student identifies one of the scarves and thinks she has a lead on a suspect, she becomes the killer's next target, retreating to her family's remote cliffside villa with three of her girlfriends.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Paradise Suite (2015)
The lives of six people, who seem to have nothing more in common than their faraway homelands, become inextricably linked in Amsterdam, the city they have chosen as their new home.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Gigantic Brazilian Butts (2007)
Monster butts that shake the Earth. These asses are so big and so phat, you will love them. See Moura, with her sexy face and giant butt; Virginia, a horny freak with big phat cheese ass and Lenora, a beautiful and thick sista. Plus there's more. This video is monster butt certified.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Entreturnos (2014)
Beto is a bus conductor married to Gilda, who longs to have a child. When Beto gets closer to Leia, owner of his favorite bar, he meets Valcir, a newcomer who completes the love triangle that results in pregnancy. Amid the difficulties in dealing with this situation, the characters run through the city and find out more about themselves as they learn to confront their personal conflicts.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Art of Love (2021)
A mysterious, erotic and haunting love story between a writer/professor at Puerto Rico's leading University and an aspiring artist from the immigrant Chinese community.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Hole-in-law 2 (2020)
Sang-min's girlfriend Eun-jeong, is a nude model and takes photos with a stranger in a motel naked. Sang-min who doesn't believe in free-spirited Eun-jeong, after drinking in three groups with her close friend Jae-hoon,, comes home. Sang-min, who noticed that Eun-jeong is quietly flirting with Jae-hoon, asks if he wants to do with Jae-hoon while having sex with Eun-jeong. When Eun-jeong actively responded, he made Jae-hoon go into the room where Eun-jeong was sleeping.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Noel Clarke vs Ladyboys (2016)
Short fictionalised documentary of Noel Clarke's time in Thailand, played exclusively before Adulthood (2016)
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Emanuelle in the Country (1982)
When Selenia arrives in the small Italian village heads start turning and eyes start popping. All males in the town are falling all over themselves trying to get a look -- or a feel -- of the new doctor.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Affirmative Action?
The closest matches to Affirmative Action are Paradise Alley (1978), Accident Man (2018) and Zola (2021). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Affirmative Action?
Start with Paradise Alley (1978), the closest match to Affirmative Action.
What is the highest-rated movie like Affirmative Action?
Boogie Nights (1997), rated 7.6/10 by 3,774 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Affirmative Action?
Hold the Fort (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Affirmative Action?
Yes: Paradise Alley (1978), Accident Man (2018) and Zola (2021).
How are movies similar to Affirmative Action chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Affirmative Action, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.