Movies like Advent Calendar (2019)
The best movies like Advent Calendar (2019) are The Way to the Heart (2024), Swallow (2020) and The Roses (2025). If Advent Calendar hooked you, these 20 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedSamsara (2011)8.1/10 from 720 votes
- NewestTony (2026)Released 2026
The Way to the Heart (2024)
Ava, an award-winning chef at a big-city restaurant, has lost her spark. Her boss sends her out to find herself to save her menu and her job. She returns home and finds little to inspire her, but when she reunites with her childhood friend Logan, Ava has to get her head out of the clouds and her foot out of her mouth to rediscover her passion for food.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisSwallow (2020)
Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife, finds herself increasingly compelled to consume dangerous objects. As her husband and his family tighten their control over her life, she must confront the dark secret behind her new obsession.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Roses (2025)
Life seems easy for picture-perfect couple Ivy and Theo: successful careers, a loving marriage, great kids. But beneath the façade of their supposed ideal life, a storm is brewing – as Theo's career nosedives while Ivy's own ambitions take off, a tinderbox of fierce competition and hidden resentment ignites.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisToast (2010)
Young Nigel Slater has big culinary aspirations, even though all his mother knows how to make is toast. When his mother dies, relations grow strained between Nigel and his father, especially when he remarries a woman who wins his heart with a lemon meringue pie. Nigel enters culinary school, starts working in a pub, and finds himself competing with his stepmother - both in the kitchen and for his father's attention.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFresh (2022)
Frustrated by scrolling dating apps only to end up on lame, tedious dates, Noa takes a chance by giving her number to the awkwardly charming Steve after a produce-section meet-cute at the grocery store.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSamsara (2011)
Filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisDuplex (2003)
When a young couple buys their dream home, they have no idea what the sweet little old lady upstairs is going to put them through!
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAnother Year (2010)
During a year, a very content couple approaching retirement are visited by friends and family less happy with their lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKinds of Kindness (2024)
A triptych fable following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCon Mum (2025)
A chef's life is upended when a jet-setting, champagne-sipping, hotel-hopping woman claims to be his long-lost mother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTony (2026)
A 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain travels to Provincetown and stumbles into the chaotic world of a restaurant kitchen, setting off a summer that will shape the course of his life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Brady Bunch Movie (1995)
The original '70s TV family is now placed in the 1990s, where they're even more square and out of place than ever.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisReal Women Have Curves (2002)
In East Los Angeles, an 18-year-old struggles between her ambitions of going to college and the desires of her domineering mother for her to get married, have children, and oversee the small, rundown family-owned textile factory.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Thousand and One (2023)
Struggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and Terry becomes a smart yet quiet teenager, but the secret that has defined their lives threatens to destroy the home they have so improbably built.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009)
After her much older husband forces a move to a suburban retirement community, Pippa Lee engages in a period of reflection and finds herself heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisLife Is Sweet (1991)
Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, Andy is a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, Natalie is a plumber and Nicola is jobless. This film is about how they interact and play out family, conflict and love.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHoly Lands (2019)
When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhat Happened to Monday (2017)
In a world where families are limited to one child due to overpopulation, a set of identical septuplets must avoid being put to a long sleep by the government and dangerous infighting while investigating the disappearance of one of their own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisXiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (1998)
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Trouble with Angels (1966)
Mary and her friend, Rachel, are new students at St. Francis Academy, a boarding school run by the iron fist of Mother Superior. The immature teens grow bored and begin playing pranks on both the unsuspecting nuns and their unpleasant classmates, becoming a constant thorn in Mother Superior's side. However, as the years pass, Mary and Rachel slowly mature and begin to see the nuns in a different light.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Advent Calendar?
The closest matches to Advent Calendar are The Way to the Heart (2024), Swallow (2020) and The Roses (2025). Below are 17 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Advent Calendar?
Start with The Way to the Heart (2024), the closest match to Advent Calendar.
What is the highest-rated movie like Advent Calendar?
Samsara (2011), rated 8.1/10 by 720 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Advent Calendar?
Tony (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Advent Calendar?
Yes: The Way to the Heart (2024), Swallow (2020) and The Roses (2025).
How are movies similar to Advent Calendar chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Advent Calendar, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.