Movies like The City of First Love (1971)
The best movies like The City of First Love (1971) are They Fought for Their Motherland (1975), The Dawns Here are Quiet (2015) and Dear Comrades! (2020). If The City of First Love hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedSchindler's List (1993)8.6/10 from 18,183 votes
- NewestThe Master and Margarita (2024)Released 2024
They Fought for Their Motherland (1975)
In July 1942, in the Second World War, the rearguard of the Russian army protects the bridgehead of the Don River against the German army while the retreating Russian troops cross the bridge. While they move back to the Russian territory through the countryside, the soldiers show their companionship, sentiments, fears and heroism to defend their motherland.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Dawns Here are Quiet (2015)
It is late spring of 1942, and the Great Patriotic War is in full swing. A long way off from the front-line, at some God-forgotten junction, the Germans make an air landing operation in an attempt to get through to the Kirov railway and the White Sea - the Baltic Sea Canal. These aren't just ordinary paratroopers. This is a team of seasoned and highly trained infiltrators, the elite of the Waffen-SS, superhumans. The only thing in their way is an anti-aircraft artillery unit of corporal Vaskov and five young women in training. It may seem like a fight of local significance, but the countrys main strategic transportation artery is at stake. Can the corporal and his 'petite newbies' prevent Nazi sabotage and at what cost? Television version: An extended version made out of four 45 minute episodes was released on Channel One Russia, on 9 May 2016. Available on PrimeVideo.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDear Comrades! (2020)
When the communist government raises food prices in 1962, rebellious workers from the small industrial town of Novocherkassk go on strike. The massacre that ensues is seen through the eyes of a devout party activist.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBattleship Potemkin (1925)
In the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin revolt against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHostages (2017)
Soviet Georgia, 1983. Preparations for Nika and Ana's wedding are in full swing and it's a big day for both of their elite families. For the newlyweds and their friends, however, the celebrations are in fact part of a cover-up, as they plot an audacious escape from the Soviet Union.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAdmiral (2008)
This is a story of a great love facing the greatest drama of the history of Russia. Admiral Kolchak is a true war hero and beloved husband and father. One day he meets Anna, the love of his life and the wife of his best friend. The revolution in his heart faces the revolution in his own country His destiny is to become the Supreme Ruler of Russia.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDovlatov (2018)
Dovlatov charts six days in the life of a brilliant, ironic writer who saw far beyond the rigid limits of 70s Soviet Russia. Sergei Dovlatov fought to preserve his own talent and decency with poet and writer Joseph Brodsky, while watching his artist friends got crushed by the iron-willed state machinery.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisParadise (2016)
The historical drama set during the Second World War centres on three people whose paths cross: a Russian aristocratic emigrant and member of the French resistance, a French collaborator and a high-ranking German SS officer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe White Sun of the Desert (1969)
The setting is the east shore of the Caspian Sea (today's Turkmenistan) where the Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov has been fighting the Civil War in Russian Asia for a number of years. After being hospitalised and then demobbed, he sets off home to join his wife, only to be caught up in a desert fight between a Red Army cavalry unit and Basmachi guerrillas. The cavalry unit commander, Rahimov, "convinces" Sukhov to help, temporarily, with the protection of abandoned women of the Basmachi guerrilla leader Abdullah's harem. Leaving a young Red Army soldier, Petrukha, to assist Sukhov with the task, Rahimov and his cavalry unit set out to pursue fleeing Abdullah.Sukhov and women from Abdullah's harem return to a nearby shore town. Soon, looking for a seaway across the border, Abdullah and his gang come to the same town...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKalashnikov AK-47 (2020)
A Russian military propaganda film about the tank commander Kalashnikov, severely injured in battle in 1941. The accident leaves him incapacitated and unable to return to the front line. While recovering in the hospital, he begins creating the initial sketches of what will become one of the world’s most legendary weapons. A self-taught inventor is only 29 when he develops the now iconic assault riffle — the AK-47. Shot in occupied Crimea.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBastard Out of Carolina (1996)
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUnder Fire (1983)
Three U.S. journalists get too close to one another and their work in 1979 Nicaragua.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Commissar (1967)
Klavdia Vavilova, a Red Army cavalry commissar, is waylaid by an unexpected pregnancy. She stays with a Jewish family to give birth and is softened somewhat by the experience of family life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWar and Peace, Part I: Andrei Bolkonsky (1966)
In 1805 St. Petersburg, Pierre Bezukhov, illegitimate son of a rich nobleman, is introduced to high society. His friend, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, joins the Imperial Russian Army as aide-de-camp of General Mikhail Kutuzov in the War of the Third Coalition against General Napoleon Bonaparte. Part one of the four-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Master and Margarita (2024)
A struggling writer in 1930s Soviet Moscow finds his life transformed when a mysterious professor arrives with his bizarre entourage, including a wisecracking trickster, a deadly assassin, a vampire maid, and a giant talking black cat, turning the city upside down while exposing the hypocrisy of those in power.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBat★21 (1988)
Lt. Col. Iceal "Ham" Hambleton is a weapons countermeasures expert and when his aircraft is shot over enemy territory the Air Force very much wants to get him back. Hambleton knows the area he's in is going to be carpet-bombed but a temporary shortage of helicopters causes a delay. Working with an Air Force reconnaissance pilot, Capt. Bartholomew Clark, he maps out an escape route.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisForce 10 from Navarone (1978)
World War II, 1943. Mallory and Miller, the heroes who destroyed the guns of Navarone, are sent to Yugoslavia in search of a ghost from the past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSchindler's List (1993)
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLiberation - Part 3 : Direction of the Main Blow (1971)
This five part epic war drama gives a dramatized detailed account of Soviet Union's war against Nazi Germany during world war two. Each of the five parts represents a separate major eastern front campaign.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisQuiet Flows the Don (1957)
Based on the novel of the same name by Mikhail Sholokhov, about the fate of people broken by the First World War, the October Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War in Russia (1917-1922), about the collapse of the foundations and ideals of the Don Cossacks of Russia at the beginning of the XX century, about the personal tragedy of the protagonist — Grigoriy Melekhov.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGettysburg (1993)
In the summer of 1863, General Robert E. Lee leads the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia into Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with the goal of marching through to Washington, D.C. The Union Army of the Potomac, under the command of General George G. Meade, forms a defensive position to confront the rebel forces in what will prove to be the decisive battle of the American Civil War.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCOOL (News from Belarus) (2023)
In this cinematic zine, directors scattered all over the world adapt to screen hilarious and poignant Belarusian news stories. Featuring phone thieves, TikTok storks, the tiniest castle in the world, and victims of the depression epidemic.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero (2011)
An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Beauty Parlor (1932)
Film follows the romantic exploits of two depression-era manicurists, one of whom is being woo'd by a true gentleman of means, the other of whom lets herself become a pawn of operators of a call-girl ring.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Dragonwyck (1946)
A simple Connecticut farm girl is recruited by a distant relative, an aristocratic patroon, to be governess to his young daughter in his Hudson Valley mansion.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Wreath of Sonnets (1977)
A story of two boys who obstinately, in spite of everything and everyone run to the front when the war was almost over.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Tower of Babble (2002)
Three different scenarios, intercut, all using the same words but with very different meanings. A corrupt cop is more interested in the money on the criminals he catches than justice; a young woman discovers she's pregnant, and her boyfriend is unfeeling; and a young man calls a prostitute it's the first time for both, and neither can go through with it. Ultimately, all the stories come together.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Daughters Who Pay (1925)
Immediately after the October revolution, in Russia, stir unrest and propaganda against the Government of the United States. Serge Oumansky is a Communist agent trying to organize terrorist actions against the same United States.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Garmil (1942)
Niren Lahiri directs this social-minded melodrama about the complicated relationship between a traditional Hindu family headed by Madhab Thakur (Choudhury) and their progressive next-door neighbor Mukherjee (Chhabi Biswas). Thakur's daughter, Malati (Sheila Haldar), and Mukherjee's son, Robi (Robin Majumdar), run a school teaching traditional Hindu values which they hope will become a countrywide franchise. Their planned nuptials are impeded when Malati's older sister is forced to marry a Brahmin against her will, resulting in a full-scale revolt in both households. Eventually, the rift is settled, the hero and heroine marry, and a sort of Hindu-laden modernity reigns in the two families.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Silent Wedding (2008)
In a small village of Communist-era Romania a young couple wish to marry, but Joseph Stalin dies the night prior to their wedding ceremony forcing the bride and groom to marry in silence.
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 The City of First Love?
The closest matches to The City of First Love are They Fought for Their Motherland (1975), The Dawns Here are Quiet (2015) and Dear Comrades! (2020). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The City of First Love?
Start with They Fought for Their Motherland (1975), the closest match to The City of First Love.
What is the highest-rated movie like The City of First Love?
Schindler's List (1993), rated 8.6/10 by 18,183 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The City of First Love?
The Master and Margarita (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to The City of First Love chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The City of First Love, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.