Movies like The Sea Waif (1918)
The best movies like The Sea Waif (1918) are National Theatre Live: Hamlet (2015), Won't Back Down (2012) and Imagine (2012). If The Sea Waif hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
The Sea Waif
Quick picks
- Highest ratedMetropolis (1927)8.1/10 from 3,265 votes
- NewestEleanor the Great (2025)Released 2025
National Theatre Live: Hamlet (2015)
As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father's death but paralyzed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWon't Back Down (2012)
Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisImagine (2012)
A blind teacher breaks the rules to help a female student rediscover the pleasures of life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWonderstruck (2017)
The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBeggars of Life (1928)
After killing her treacherous step-father, a girl tries to escape the country with a young vagabond. She dresses as a boy, they hop freight trains, quarrel with a group of hobos, and steal a car in their attempt to escape the police, and reach Canada.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHead Full of Honey (2018)
A young girl tries to help her grandfather, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, navigate his increasing forgetfulness, and ends up going on a remarkable adventure with him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSleep, My Love (1948)
A woman wakes up in the middle of the night on board a train, but she can't remember how she got there. Danger and suspense ensue.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEleanor the Great (2025)
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Rifleman (2023)
A WWII veteran escapes his care home in Northern Ireland and embarks on an arduous but inspirational journey to France to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, finding the courage to face the ghosts of his past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisReturn (2011)
Back from a tour of duty, Kelli struggles to find her place in her family and the rust-belt town she no longer recognizes.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIce Castles (2010)
Young, beautiful, talented Alexis Winston comes from nowhere to become a figure skating superstar. But her rise to stardom isn’t easy. She has to push herself, reinvent herself, and most painfully of all, leave her hometown boyfriend behind. When a tragic fall leaves her blind, she needs someone to believe in her, to love her; someone to convince her she has the strength to skate and dream again.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLittle Lord Fauntleroy (1980)
Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAdopt a Highway (2019)
Russ Millings has just been released from prison after serving 21 years for a 3rd strike conviction for possessing an ounce of marijuana. As he tries to adapt to a world he doesn’t recognize – including trying to learn how to use the internet – he finds an abandoned baby in a dumpster behind the fast food restaurant where he works as a dishwasher. Unsure of what to do, and caught between impulses of kindness and panic, Russ soon realizes this could be his chance at redemption.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlicka (2006)
Katy McLaughlin desires to work on her family's mountainside horse ranch, although her father insists she finish boarding school. Katy finds a mustang in the hills near her ranch. The headstrong 16 year old then sets her mind to tame a mustang and prove to her father she can run the ranch. But when tragedy happens, it will take all the love and strength the family can muster to restore hope.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBrand Upon the Brain! (2007)
After returning home to his long-estranged mother upon a request from her deathbed, a man raised by his parents in an orphanage has to confront the childhood memories that have long haunted him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAnuja (2024)
When a brilliant nine-year-old working in a sweatshop gets a chance to attend school, she must make a difficult choice for her and her sister's future.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBattleground (1949)
Members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division are fighting for their country amidst the rugged terrain of Bastogne, Belgium, in December 1944. Holley and his American compatriots have already seen one of their own, Roderigues, perish under enemy fire. The men try to rebuff another series of Nazi attacks, but what they really need is a change in the weather. Without clear skies, they'll never get the air support they need.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJulia (1977)
At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll Together Now (2020)
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAvalon High (2011)
Elaine "Ellie" Harrison has just moved from Minnesota to Annapolis, Maryland while her parents take a year-long sabbatical to continue their medieval studies in nearby Washington D.C. Her new high school, Avalon High, seems like a typical high school with the stereotypical students: Lance the jock, Jennifer the cheerleader, Marco, the bad boy/desperado, and Will, the senior class president, quarterback, and all around good guy. But not everyone at Avalon High is who they appear to be, not even Ellie herself. Eventually, it becomes apparent that Avalon High is a situation where the ancient Arthurian legend is repeating itself.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFreaks (1932)
A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMetropolis (1927)
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Case of Lena Smith (1929)
A peasant girl goes to great lengths to protect her child in 19th century Vienna. The film is considered lost, and only four minutes of footage are known to remain.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Adoration (1928)
Billie Dove, as Elena, pulls out all stops as a Russian princess and a woman-of-the-streets in Paris in an exotic romance and hand-wringing drama set in two countries and the way-stations in between.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Belle of Alaska (1922)
In 1899, Kansas farmer Wade Harkin and his wife Ruth pull up stakes and head for the Alaskan gold fields to make their fortune. When they reach Seattle, Washington, Wade tells Ruth to meet him aboard their ship going north, but when she arrives, she is unable to find him because he is involved in a private poker game.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
A Broken Doll (1921)
Ranch hand Tommy Dawes has a special bond with little Rosemary, the crippled daughter of his boss Bill Nyall. When Tommy accidentally breaks Rosemary's favorite doll one day, he borrows a $20 gold piece from the foreman's mattress to go to town and buy a new doll. However, on the way there he is ambushed and robbed by an escaped convict
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Sonka the Golden Hand (1914)
A popular silent action-adventure film in 8 episodes released from 1914-1916. Directed by Aleksandr Chargonin et al., the series is only partially preserved.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The New Moon (1919)
When anarchist bombs disrupt the engagement ball of Princess Marie Pavlovna, her fiancé, Prince Michail Koloyar, helps her to escape in a carriage. Then Theo Kameneff, secretly in the pay of a foreign government, becomes dictator and, desiring the princess, issues an edict that all women between the ages of seventeen and thirty-two must register and become state property.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Sanshiro Sugata (1943)
A hotheaded youth in 1880s Meiji Japan apprentices to judo master Shōgorō Yano, trading brute jujutsu bravado for discipline and humility. As Sanshirō matures, he proves judo’s spirit against old-guard challengers—including a deadly duel—while falling for his vanquished opponent’s daughter. Based on the novel by Tsuneo Tomita, son of Tomita Tsunejirō, the earliest disciple of judo.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWar and Peace: 1918 (1918)
Ducrot and Ninette accuse Mario and Anny of owing their wealth to the murderous effects of Mario's bombs. Anny leaves for the front to care for the wounded. Third part of Maurits Binger's epic silent trilogy. Most of the film is considered lost – a single fragment remains.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Sea Waif?
The closest matches to The Sea Waif are National Theatre Live: Hamlet (2015), Won't Back Down (2012) and Imagine (2012). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Sea Waif?
Start with National Theatre Live: Hamlet (2015), the closest match to The Sea Waif.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Sea Waif?
Metropolis (1927), rated 8.1/10 by 3,265 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Sea Waif?
Eleanor the Great (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Sea Waif?
Yes: National Theatre Live: Hamlet (2015), Won't Back Down (2012) and Imagine (2012).
How are movies similar to The Sea Waif chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Sea Waif, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.