Movies like Maria Candelaria (1944)
The best movies like Maria Candelaria (1944) are Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), The Man from Elysian Fields (2001) and Blind (2017). If Maria Candelaria hooked you with its drama and romance, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedLife in a Year (2020)8.2/10 from 2,027 votes
- NewestThe Goldsmith's Secret (2025)Released 2025
- In SpanishEl verano que vivimos (2020)Also in Spanish
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Man from Elysian Fields (2001)
A failed novelist's inability to pay the bills strains relations with his wife and leads him to work at an escort service, where he becomes entwined with a wealthy woman whose husband is a successful writer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisBlind (2017)
A novelist is blinded in a car crash that killed his wife and several years later rediscovers his passion for life and writing when he embarks on an affair with the neglected wife of an indicted businessman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Tycoon (1976)
Monroe Stahr, a successful movie producer, pursues a beautiful and elusive young woman — all the while working himself to death.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDays of Heaven (1978)
In 1916, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNobody Has to Know (2022)
After a stroke and no memories from his past, Phil encounters Millie who inhabits a desert part of Isle of Lewis. She will shortly entrust him with his deepest secret : they were in love.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisForever First Love (2020)
Paul travels the world to capture the perfect photographic moment. Amid the colour and chaos of a crowded Filipino market, destiny intervenes when Paul’s first love, Anna appears in his lens. The travellers spend the day exploring the beauty of a 16th century town and whilst passions reignite, their principles on relationships, religion and morality clash. The night they spend together will change everything.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like this2 Hearts (2020)
When illness strikes two people who are polar opposites, life and death bring them together in surprising ways.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEl verano que vivimos (2020)
Year 1998. Isabel, a journalism student, is forced to do her internship in the newspaper of a small Galician coastal town in order to finish her degree. When she arrives, she wants to start investigating as soon as possible, to demonstrate everything she has learned in order to become a real journalist. But the position she is assigned is the last one she expected: the writing and management of the obituaries that reach the newsroom. But this, which might seem boring at first, becomes the door to an investigation that will take her through different parts of the Spanish geography in search of an impossible love story.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Secret: Dare to Dream (2020)
A widow with three children hires a handyman to fix her house during a major storm. When not doing home repairs, he shares his philosophy of believing in the power of the universe to deliver what we want.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDuel in the Sun (1946)
Beautiful half-breed Pearl Chavez becomes the ward of her dead father's first love and finds herself torn between her sons, one good and the other bad.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Longest Ride (2015)
The lives of a young couple intertwine with a much older man as he reflects back on a lost love while he's trapped in an automobile crash.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLife in a Year (2020)
A 17 year old finds out that his girlfriend is dying, so he sets out to give her an entire life, in the last year she has left.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her (2014)
Told from the woman's perspective, the story of a couple trying to reclaim the life and love they once knew and pick up the pieces of a past that may be too far gone.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Goldsmith's Secret (2025)
In 1999, a goldsmith revisits his hometown, triggering memories of his summer love affair with a seamstress 25 years prior. Despite their age gap, he vows to rewrite their story but struggles to find her upon his return.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLove Finds You in Valentine (2016)
Kennedy Blaine, a Californian girl, inherits a ranch in the small town of Valentine in Nebraska. Before she sells the property, she decides to spend the summer in her house and learn more about her family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHereafter (2010)
Three people — a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy — are touched by death in different ways.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDark Waters (2019)
A tenacious attorney uncovers a dark secret that connects a growing number of unexplained deaths to one of the world's largest corporations. In the process, he risks everything — his future, his family, and his own life — to expose the truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEO (2022)
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But not even for a moment does he lose his innocence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDhanapati (2017)
Dhanapati wants to earn more money to get his daughter to a good school.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Never Been Kissed (1999)
Josie Geller, a baby-faced junior copywriter at the Chicago Sun-Times, must pose as a student at her former high school to research contemporary teenage culture. With the help of her brother, Rob, Josie infiltrates the inner circle of the most popular clique on campus. But she hits a major snag in her investigation -- not to mention her own failed love life -- when she falls for her dreamy English teacher, Sam Coulson.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAngel (2007)
Edwardian England. A precocious girl from a poor background with aspirations to being a novelist finds herself swept to fame and fortune when her tasteless romances hit the best seller lists. Her life changes in unexpected ways when she encounters an aristocratic brother and sister, both of whom have cultural ambitions, and both of whom fall in love with her.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Last Romantic Lover (1978)
The romance between a lion tamer and a liberated girl.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance & drama
Freeway (1996)
Following the arrest of her mother, Ramona, young Vanessa Lutz decides to go in search of her estranged grandmother. On the way, she is given a ride by school counselor Bob Wolverton. During the journey, Lutz begins to realize that Bob is the notorious I-5 Killer and manages to escape by shooting him several times. Wounded but still very much alive, Bob pursues Lutz across the state in this modern retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFatherland (1994)
Fictional account of what might have happened if Hitler had won the war. It is now the 1960s and Germany's war crimes have so far been kept a secret. Hitler wants to talk peace with the US president. An American journalist and a German homicide cop stumble into a plot to destroy all evidence of the genocide.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRedacted (2007)
A fictional documentary discusses the effects the Iraq war has had on soldiers and local people through interviews with members of an American military unit, the media, and local Iraqis.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisRan (1985)
Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies 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: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFollowing (1999)
Bill, an idle, unemployed aspiring writer, walks the crowded streets of London following randomly chosen strangers, a seemingly innocent entertainment that becomes dangerous when he crosses paths with a mysterious character.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Maria Candelaria?
The closest matches to Maria Candelaria are Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), The Man from Elysian Fields (2001) and Blind (2017). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Maria Candelaria?
Start with Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), the closest match to Maria Candelaria.
What is the highest-rated movie like Maria Candelaria?
Life in a Year (2020), rated 8.2/10 by 2,027 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Maria Candelaria?
The Goldsmith's Secret (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Spanish movies like Maria Candelaria?
Yes: El verano que vivimos (2020) and The Goldsmith's Secret (2025).
How are movies similar to Maria Candelaria chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Maria Candelaria, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.