Movies like Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto (2012)
The best movies like Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto (2012) are Chronos (1985), As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) and Deliver Us from Evil (2006). If Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedBaraka (1992)8.2/10 from 735 votes
- NewestBillie Eilish - Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) (2026)Released 2026
- In JapaneseHayao Miyazaki and the Heron (2024)Also in Japanese
Chronos (1985)
Carefully picked scenes of nature and civilization are viewed at high speed using time-lapse cinematography in an effort to demonstrate the history of various regions.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
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 · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDeliver Us from Evil (2006)
Documentary filmmaker Amy Berg investigates the life of 30-year pedophile Father Oliver O'Grady and exposes the corruption inside the Catholic Church that allowed him to abuse countless children. Victims' stories and a disturbing interview with O'Grady offer a view into the troubled mind of the spiritual leader who moved from parish to parish gaining trust ... all the while betraying so many.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVisions of Light (1992)
Cameramen and women discuss the craft and art of cinematography and of the "DP" (the director of photography), illustrating their points with clips from 100 films, from Birth of a Nation to Do the Right Thing. Themes: the DP tells people where to look; changes in movies (the arrival of sound, color, and wide screens) required creative responses from DPs; and, these artisans constantly invent new equipment and try new things, with wonderful results. The narration takes us through the identifiable studio styles of the 30s, the emergence of noir, the New York look, and the impact of Europeans. Citizen Kane, The Conformist, and Gordon Willis get special attention.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIn the Realms of the Unreal (2004)
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThey'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018)
As his life comes to its end, famous Hollywood director Orson Welles puts it all on the line at the chance for renewed success with the film The Other Side of the Wind.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNaqoyqatsi (2002)
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNothing Like a Dame (2018)
BBC Arena's documentary on the Dames of British Theatre and film featuring Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench and Joan Plowright on screen together for the first time as they reminisce over a long summer weekend in a house Joan once shared with Sir Laurence Olivier.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHeart of a Dog (2015)
Musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother and her beloved dog.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBillie Eilish - Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) (2026)
Captured during Billie Eilish's sold-out world tour, a concert experience from one of the most celebrated and successful artists of her generation, presented in immersive 3D.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisCameraperson (2016)
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like this42 Up (1999)
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGuillermo del Toro's Pinocchio: Handcarved Cinema (2022)
With mesmerizing footage and time lapses of animators at work, this behind-the-scenes special captures the artistry of a unique tale years in the making.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDavid Bowie: Five Years (2013)
Featuring a wealth of previously unseen archive, this film looks at how Bowie continually evolved: from Ziggy Stardust to the Soul Star of Young Americans, to the ‘Thin White Duke’. It explores his regeneration in Berlin with the critically acclaimed album Heroes, his triumph with Scary Monsters and his global success with Let’s Dance. With interviews with all his closest collaborators, David Bowie - Five Years presents a unique account of why Bowie has become an ‘icon of our times’.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHayao Miyazaki and the Heron (2024)
A documentary that chronicles the making of The Boy and the Heron, filmed with exclusive access to Studio Ghibli across an astonishing seven years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Mom Jayne (2025)
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisCome See Me in the Good Light (2025)
In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBaraka (1992)
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMarina Abramović: The Artist Is Present (2012)
Performance artist Marina Abramovic prepares for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMaria by Callas (2017)
Told through performances, TV interviews, home movies, family photographs, private letters and unpublished memoirs, the film reveals the essence of an extraordinary woman who rose from humble beginnings in New York City to become a glamorous international superstar and one of the greatest artists of all time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPurple Stain (2026)
The film follows an architecture graduate as she reflects on the meaning of home and the labor of making home. Architecture is framed beyond the physical built object: as a second skin that stretches and reconfigures itself as she, too, stretches to be in a new place. The film moves through themes of migration, womanhood, and what it means to be an architect without building, still making architecture constantly, just through different forms.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Edwin Lutyens Master Architect (1981)
Architecture critic Patrick Nuttgens narrates a documentary on the 20th century architect Edwin Lutyns, exploring the plans and buildings of the man who designed Liverpool Metropolitan Cathederal and the city of New Delhi.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Battleship Berlin (2021)
Berlin’s brutalist heritage is under fire. The city’s powerful Charité hospital wants to destroy a brutalist icon of the Cold War era: The infamous former animal research laboratory called the Mäusebunker. Meanwhile, a dedicated group of politicians, preservationists, architects, gallerists, and students fight for an adaptive reuse of these magnificent, uncompromisingly unique structures. Who will win? No matter the outcome, you’re left with the impression that preservation can be brutal.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Lee Miller: A Crazy Way of Seeing (2001)
Documentary charting the fascinating life and work of Lee Miller, a model for Vogue in 1920s New York who became the only female photojournalist to cover the Second World War. Having given up photography in later life and virtually disowned her own work, Miller's extraordinary archive of 40,000 negatives was only rediscovered after her death. George Melly, David Hare, friends, colleagues and her only son, Tony Penrose, trace the story of her unconventional life through her own remarkable pictures and photographs, as well as rarely seen archive footage.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Slums: Cities of Tomorrow (2014)
One billion people on our planet—one in six—live in shantytowns, slums or squats. Slums: Cities of Tomorrow challenges conventional thinking to propose that slums are in fact the solution, not the problem, to urban overcrowding caused by the massive migration of people to cities. (Lynne Fernie, HotDocs)
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
The Keepers of the Streak (2015)
The NFL has staged 48 Super Bowls. Four photographers have taken pictures at every one of them. In KEEPERS OF THE STREAK, director Neil Leifer tells the story of this exclusive club, made up of John Biever, Walter Iooss, Mickey Palmer and Tony Tomsic. With their cameras, they have captured football's biggest game of the year for almost five decades.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Kisho Kurokawa From Metabolism to Symbiosis (1993)
A portrait of the internationally acclaimed Japanese architect who employs Buddhist ideas and western modernism to achieve intercultural architecture.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Zaha Hadid... Who Dares Wins (2013)
Alan Yentob profiles the most successful female architect there has ever been, the late Zaha Hadid, who designed buildings around the globe from Austria to Azerbaijan.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde (1997)
Man Ray, the master of experimental and fashion photography was also a painter, a filmmaker, a poet, an essayist, a philosopher, and a leader of American modernism. Known for documenting the cultural elite living in France, Man Ray spent much of his time fighting the formal constraints of the visual arts. Ray’s life and art were always provocative, engaging, and challenging.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto?
The closest matches to Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto are Chronos (1985), As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) and Deliver Us from Evil (2006). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto?
Start with Chronos (1985), the closest match to Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto.
What is the highest-rated movie like Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto?
Baraka (1992), rated 8.2/10 by 735 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto?
Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Japanese movies like Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto?
Yes: Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron (2024).
How are movies similar to Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.