Movies like Being a Human Person (2020)
The best movies like Being a Human Person (2020) are Heart of a Dog (2015), As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) and Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny (2016). If Being a Human Person hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- NewestRemake (2026)Released 2026
Heart 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: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies 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: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRichard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny (2016)
Highlighting one of the most innovative American directors, this film reveals the path traveled by the auteur from his small-town Texas roots to his warm reception on the awards circuit. Long before he directed Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s intense desire to create fueled his work outside the Hollywood system. Rather than leave Texas, he chose to collaborate with like-minded artists crafting modest, low-budget films in a DIY style. His ability to showcase realistic characters and tell honest stories was evident from his films, and others soon took notice of his raw talent.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Remake (2026)
The death of his son causes McElwee, an autobiographical filmmaker, to look back on his life’s work. He eventually turns to his archive of home movies. To what extent did his camera affect their relationship when Adrian was alive? To what extent does it define that relationship now that he is gone? Meanwhile, an effort to adapt McElwee’s first feature, Sherman’s March, into a work of fiction lurches along, giving the filmmaker another perspective from which to meditate on movie making and mortality.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Five Obstructions (2003)
In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSymbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies 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: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPeter and the Farm (2016)
Peter Dunning is a rugged individualist in the extreme, a hard-drinking loner and former artist who has burned bridges with his wives and children and whose only company, even on harsh winter nights, are the sheep, cows, and pigs he tends on his Vermont farm. Peter is also one of the most complicated, sympathetic documentary subjects to come along in some time, a product of the 1960s counterculture whose poetic idealism has since soured. For all his candor, he slips into drunken self-destructive habits, cursing the splendors of a pastoral landscape that he has spent decades nurturing.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Bergman Island (2006)
The desolate and mysterious island of Fårö, Sweden, Baltic Sea, 2004. Swedish master filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) looks back on his personal and artistic life; a journey through more than sixty years devoted to film, plays and television programs. (An abridged version of Ingmar Bergman Complete, 2004; a collection of three thematic documentaries: Bergman and Film; Bergman and Theater; and Bergman and Fårö Island.)
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020)
With this inventive portrait, director Kirsten Johnson seeks a way to keep her 86-year-old father alive forever. Utilizing moviemaking magic and her family’s dark humor, she celebrates Dr. Dick Johnson’s last years by staging fantasies of death and beyond. Together, dad and daughter confront the great inevitability awaiting us all.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVersus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach (2016)
A surprisingly candid behind-the-scenes account of the career of Ken Loach, one of Britain’s most celebrated and controversial filmmakers, as he prepares to release his final major film I, Daniel Blake.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1972)
At a morgue, forensic pathologists conduct autopsies of the corpses assigned. "S. Brakhage, entering, WITH HIS CAMERA, one of the forbidden, terrific locations of our culture, the autopsy room. It is a place wherein, inversely, life is cherished, for it exists to affirm that no one of us may die without our knowing exactly why. All of us, in the person of the coroner, must see that, for ourselves, with our own eyes. It is a room full of appalling particular intimacies, the last ditch of individuation. Here our vague nightmare of mortality acquires the names and faces of OTHERS. This last is a process that requires a WITNESS; and what 'idea' may finally have inserted itself into the sensible world we can still scarcely guess, for the CAMERA would seem the perfect Eidetic Witness, staring with perfect compassion where we can scarcely bear to glance." – Hollis Frampton
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAdrienne (2021)
As the muse of Hal Hartley’s indie classics and as writer/director of the critically acclaimed Waitress, Adrienne Shelly was a shining star in the indie film firmament. A devoted young mother, her life was right on track until her husband found her dead. Filmmaker Andy Ostroy has been fighting to discover the truth about his wife’s death ever since.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Two Years at Sea (2012)
Inspired by the themes of Knut Hamsun’s ‘Pan’, Ben Rivers ventures deep into the remote forests of Aberdeenshire to document the routine of Jake Williams - a man seen in all seasons, living reclusively, surviving frugally, and passing the time with strange projects.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Cow (2022)
A close-up portrait of the daily lives of a pair of cows: told by way of some narrative-free, intimate POV photography, with plenty of close shot images, we follow the daily routine of these animals as they live what can only be described as mundane, boring lives - all with an ultimate purpose within the human food chain.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLast Stop Larrimah: Murder Down Under (2023)
Nestled deep in the Australian Outback is the town of Larrimah and its 11 eccentric residents. When one of them mysteriously disappears into thin air, the remaining residents become suspects and a long history of infighting is unveiled.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Stanley Kubrick's Boxes (2008)
A few years after his death, the widow of Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) asks Jon Ronson to look through the contents of about 1,000 boxes of meticulously sorted materials Kubrick left. Ronson finds that most contain materials reflecting work Kubrick did after the release of "Barry Lyndon" in 1975, when Kubrick's film output slowed down. Ronson finds audition tapes for "Full Metal Jacket," photographs to find the right hat for "Clockwork Orange" or the right doorway for "Eyes Wide Shut" -- thousands of details that went into Kubrick's meticulous approach. Ronson believes that the boxes show "the rhythm of genius." Interviews with family, staff, and friends are included.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Terry Pratchett: Back in Black (2017)
A poignant and humorous film telling the life story of the hugely popular author of the discworld series of books, in his own words.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Walk with Me (2017)
Narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, Walk With Me is a cinematic journey into the world of a monastic community who practice the art of mindfulness with Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
SnoozefestMovies like thisKurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (2021)
A documentary 33 years in the making. A director and friend of Kurt Vonnegut seeks through his archives to create the first film featuring the revolutionary late writer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
All Light, Everywhere (2021)
Filmmaker Theo Anthony offers a far-ranging look at the biases in how people see things, focusing on the recorded image.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Evelyn (2019)
Haunted by the suicide of a brother, a director and his kin walk across the UK in an emotionally trying, visually sublime journey toward healing.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Hayao 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: Fans watch both · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (2015)
A documentary directed by Winding Refn's wife, Liv Corfixen, and it follows the Danish-born filmmaker during the making of his 2013 film Only God Forgives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Primary Instinct (2015)
Actor Stephen Tobolowsky has acted in over 200 TV shows and films over the past 40 years, possessing one of the most dazzlingly diverse filmographies on the planet. But even more compelling than the stories he's been apart of onscreen are those he tells offscreen. In 'The Primary Instinct,' Stephen plays himself and uses the art of storytelling to take the audience through a riveting and moving journey about life, love, and Hollywood. Along the way, he just may answer one of the questions that's dogged humanity since the beginning of time: Why do we tell stories in the first place?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002)
Ten Minutes Older is a 2002 film project consisting of two compilation feature films entitled The Trumpet and The Cello. The project was conceived by the producer Nicolas McClintock as a reflection on the theme of time at the turn of the Millennium. Fifteen celebrated film-makers were invited to create their own vision of what time means in ten minutes of film.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 thisA Decade Under the Influence (2003)
A documentary examining the decade of the 1970s as a turning point in American cinema. Some of today's best filmmakers interview the influential directors of that time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMcQueen (2018)
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAnna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me (2023)
From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Being a Human Person?
The closest matches to Being a Human Person are Heart of a Dog (2015), As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) and Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny (2016). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Being a Human Person?
People who watched Being a Human Person most often go on to Heart of a Dog (2015), As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) and Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny (2016).
What is the newest movie like Being a Human Person?
Remake (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Being a Human Person?
Yes: Heart of a Dog (2015), As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) and Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny (2016).
How are movies similar to Being a Human Person chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Being a Human Person, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.