Movies like To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
The best movies like To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) are The Help (2011), Inherit the Wind (1960) and Places in the Heart (1984). If To Kill a Mockingbird hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest rated12 Angry Men (1957)8.6/10 from 10,578 votes
- NewestMudbound (2017)Released 2017
The Help (2011)
Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisInherit the Wind (1960)
Schoolteacher Bertram Cates is arrested for teaching his students Darwin's theory of evolution. The case receives national attention and one of the newspaper reporters, E.K. Hornbeck, arranges to bring in renowned defense attorney and atheist Henry Drummond to defend Cates. The prosecutor, Matthew Brady is a former presidential candidate, famous evangelist, and old adversary of Drummond.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPlaces in the Heart (1984)
In 1935 rural Texas, recently widowed Edna Spaulding struggles to survive with two small children, a farm to run, and very little money in the bank - not to mention a deadly tornado and the unwelcome presence of the Ku Klux Klan. Edna is aided by her beautician sister, Margaret; a blind boarder, Mr. Will; and a would-be thief, Moze, who decides to teach Edna how to plant and harvest cotton.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this12 Angry Men (1957)
The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisA Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
A disturbed, aging Southern belle moves in with her sister for solace — but being face-to-face with her brutish brother-in-law accelerates her downward spiral.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFences (2016)
In 1950s Pittsburgh, a frustrated African-American father struggles with the constraints of poverty, racism, and his own inner demons as he tries to raise a family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm due to foreclosure. He catches up with them on his Uncle’s farm, and joins them the next day as they head for California and a new life... Hopefully.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Raisin in the Sun (1961)
Walter Lee Younger is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with his wife, son, sister and mother, he seems like an imprisoned man. Until, that is, the family gets an unexpected financial windfall.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Defiant Ones (1958)
Two convicts—one white, one black—escape while chained to each other.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Southerner (1945)
Sam Tucker, a cotton picker, in search of a better future for his family, decides to grow his own cotton crop. In the first year, the Tuckers battle disease, a flood, and a jealous neighbor. Can they make it as farmers?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSounder (1972)
The oldest son of a loving and strong family of black sharecroppers comes of age in the Depression-era South after his father is imprisoned for stealing food.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974)
In February, 1962, as the civil rights movement reaches Bayonne, Louisiana, a New York journalist arrives to interview Jane Pittman, who has just turned 110. She tells him her story dating back to her earliest memories before slavery ended. In between the chapters of her life, the present-day struggles of Blacks in Bayonne, urged on by Jimmy, are dramatized.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)
In Brooklyn circa 1900, the Nolans manage to enjoy life on pennies despite great poverty and Papa's alcoholism. We come to know these people well through big and little troubles: Aunt Sissy's scandalous succession of "husbands"; the removal of the one tree visible from their tenement; and young Francie's desire to transfer to a better school...if irresponsible Papa can get his act together.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAnatomy of a Murder (1959)
Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Time to Kill (1996)
A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the KKK.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Verdict (1982)
Frank Galvin is a down-on-his-luck lawyer and reduced to drinking and ambulance chasing, when a former associate reminds him of his obligations in a medical malpractice suit by serving it to Galvin on a silver platter—all parties are willing to settle out of court. Blundering his way through the preliminaries, Galvin suddenly realizes that the case should actually go to court—to punish the guilty, to get a decent settlement for his clients... and to restore his standing as a lawyer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIn the Heat of the Night (1967)
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe River (1984)
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Intruder (1962)
A man in a gleaming white suit comes to a small Southern town on the eve of integration. He calls himself a social reformer. But what he does is stir up trouble--trouble he soon finds he can't control.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisYoung Mr. Lincoln (1939)
In this dramatized account of his early law career in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln is born into a modest log cabin, where he is encouraged by his first love, Ann Rutledge, to pursue law. Following her tragic death, Lincoln establishes a law practice in Springfield, where he meets a young Mary Todd. Lincoln's law skills are put to the test when he takes on the difficult task of defending two brothers who have been accused of murder.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Life of Emile Zola (1937)
A fictionalized account of famous French writer Émile Zola and his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair. After struggling to establish himself, Zola wins success documenting the unsavory side of Paris and settles into a comfortable upper-class life. However, his complacency is shaken when Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus is imprisoned for espionage. Realizing that Dreyfus is an innocent victim of anti-Semitism, Zola boldly pens an exposé, only to be charged with libel and now he must defend himself in a dramatic courtroom testimony.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Patch of Blue (1965)
A blind, uneducated white girl is befriended by a black man, who becomes determined to help her escape her impoverished and abusive home life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMudbound (2017)
In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMarshall (2017)
Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, battles through one of his career-defining cases.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Few Good Men (1992)
When cocky military lawyer Lt. Daniel Kaffee and his co-counsel, Lt. Cmdr. JoAnne Galloway, are assigned to a murder case, they uncover a hazing ritual that could implicate high-ranking officials such as shady Col. Nathan Jessep.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCitizen Kane (1941)
Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Long, Hot Summer (1958)
Accused barn burner and conman Ben Quick arrives in a small Mississippi town and quickly ingratiates himself with its richest family, the Varners.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHow Green Was My Valley (1941)
Huw Morgan, the academically inclined youngest son in a proud family of Welsh coal miners, witnesses the tumultuous events of his young life during a period of rapid social change. At the dawn of the 20th-century, a miners' strike divides the Morgans: the sons demand improvements, and the father doesn't want to rock the boat.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGentleman's Agreement (1947)
A magazine writer poses as a Jew to expose anti-Semitism.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMississippi Burning (1988)
Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like To Kill a Mockingbird?
The closest matches to To Kill a Mockingbird are The Help (2011), Inherit the Wind (1960) and Places in the Heart (1984). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after To Kill a Mockingbird?
People who watched To Kill a Mockingbird most often go on to The Help (2011), Inherit the Wind (1960) and Places in the Heart (1984).
What is the highest-rated movie like To Kill a Mockingbird?
12 Angry Men (1957), rated 8.6/10 by 10,578 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like To Kill a Mockingbird?
Mudbound (2017) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like To Kill a Mockingbird?
Yes: The Help (2011), Inherit the Wind (1960) and Places in the Heart (1984).
How are movies similar to To Kill a Mockingbird chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside To Kill a Mockingbird, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.