Movies like His Name Was Vian (2011)
The best movies like His Name Was Vian (2011) are My Dinner with Hervé (2018), Tuesdays with Morrie (1999) and TalhotBlond (2012). If His Name Was Vian hooked you with its drama and tv movie, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedMy Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)7.5/10 from 1,077 votes
- NewestIn The Shadows 75 (2026)Released 2026
- In FrenchSœur Sourire: Who Killed the Voice of God? (2021)Also in French
My Dinner with Hervé (2018)
An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTuesdays with Morrie (1999)
A journalist finds himself questioning his own life when his best friend, a dying man, offers him some very powerful wisdom and advice for coping in relationships, careers and society.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTalhotBlond (2012)
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGirl in the Box (2016)
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (1996)
A dramatization of the life of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (Don Cheadle), with a lot of factual based occurrences. A reformed junkie returns from prison to clean up his act and devote the rest of his life to the young kids of Harlem. 1996 was the 25th anniversary of the first tournament named after him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCheaters (2000)
In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Christmas Shoes (2002)
Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCocaine Godmother (2017)
At the age of 17, Griselda Blanco, made her way to the U.S. with a fake passport with her first husband Carlos. Living in Queens with her three sons, Griselda became enticed by the money the drug world offered, and quickly became embroiled with local drug runners. Griselda masterminded the use of beautiful women, the elderly and children as the mules and created false-bottom suitcases to smuggle cocaine from Colombia.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Girl (2012)
Director Alfred Hitchcock is revered as one of the greatest creative minds in the history of cinema. Known for his psychological thrillers, Hitchcock’s leading ladies were cool, beautiful and preferably blonde. One such actress was Tippi Hedren, an unknown fashion model given her big break when Hitchcock’s wife saw her on a TV commercial. Brought to Universal Studios, Hedren was shocked when the director, at the peak of his career, quickly cast her to star in his next feature, 1963’s The Birds. Little did Hedren know that as ambitious and terrifying as the production would be to shoot, the most daunting aspect of the film ended up coming from behind the camera.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Audrey Hepburn Story (2000)
The film spans from Hepburn's early childhood to the 1950s which details her life as a Dutch ballerina, coming to grips with her parents' divorce, and enduring life in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II. She then settles in the U.S. where she succeeds in making it big as a movie actress, in such movies as Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIron Jawed Angels (2004)
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHello Sister, Goodbye Life (2006)
A college student must take care of her 7-year-old half sister after the death of their parents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNormal (2003)
A Midwestern husband and father announces his plan to have a sex change operation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAmerican Son (2019)
Time passes and tension mounts in a Florida police station as an estranged interracial couple awaits news of their missing teenage son.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIntroducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999)
An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHeaven (2019)
Heaven Leigh Casteel, gifted and intelligent, is the eldest of five dirt-poor children struggling to survive in a mountain shack. As she endures neglect and abuse, Heaven discovers a dark secret that changes everything she thought she knew about her family. Then tragedy tears her world apart and she must forge her own way in the cruel, unknown world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAaliyah: The Princess of R&B (2014)
The story of R&B singer and actress Aaliyah; namely, the highs and lows of her career, her romantic pursuits, and the events leading up to her death in 2001 at the age of 22.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Bramble House Christmas (2017)
While settling his father’s estate, Finn Conrad becomes suspicious as to why the man left a nurse $100,000. His dad knew her for less than two months before he died. Just before Christmas, Finn wants what to reclaim what he considers his family’s money, going undercover to investigate the bed and breakfast the nurse has recently taken over. When Finn meets Willa, he discovers she’s not a conniving gold digger at all, but a woman in need who put the money to good use. When she discovers his true identity, will it keep Willa from ever trusting him again?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Perfect Cheerleader (2019)
When college freshman Cassie earns a spot on the cheerleading squad, she is overjoyed about the new friendships, status, and access to social events that come along with being on the team. When she meets Terry, the charismatic President of the Alumni Association, at an event, Cassie finds herself falling for this older man despite their age difference. Terry even helps her out by paying part of her tuition when she falls on hard times. But all is not as it seems.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRay Donovan: The Movie (2022)
A showdown decades in the making brings the Donovan family legacy full circle. As the events that made Ray who he is today finally come to light, the Donovans find themselves drawn back to Boston to face the past. Each of them struggles to overcome their violent upbringing, but destiny dies hard, and only their fierce love for each other keeps them in the fight.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGrey Gardens (2009)
Based on the life stories of the eccentric aunt and first cousin of Jackie Onassis raised as Park Avenue débutantes but who withdrew from New York society, taking shelter at their Long Island summer home, "Grey Gardens." As their wealth and contact with the outside world dwindled, so did their grasp on reality.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
In 1429, a French teenager stood before her King with a message she claimed came from God; that she would defeat the world's greatest army and liberate her country from its political and religious turmoil. As she reclaims God's diminished kingdom, this courageous young woman has various amazing victories until her violent and untimely death.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGorillas in the Mist (1988)
The story of Dian Fossey, a scientist who came to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas, and later fought to protect them.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIn The Shadows 75 (2026)
In 1970s turbulent Libya, a weary Nigerian man and a young Cameroonian woman hide on their journey to Europe. As night falls, confessions spark connection, but a violent knock shatters fragile truths. Inspired by Dupe Okundaye's journey.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Audrey Hepburn: Remembered (1993)
Audrey Hepburn was one of the movies' best-loved stars, blessed with beauty, talent, an elegant sophistication and an enduring aura of youthful innocence. As Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, she spoke for the world's suffering children and families, earning an affection and admiration that only increased with news of her untimely death. From the star herself we learn of her career and the family and friendships that were her priority.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Sœur Sourire: Who Killed the Voice of God? (2021)
1962. A crystalline voice becomes a planetary tube. A Belgian nun jostles Elvis and the Beatles on the world charts. Her name: Sister Smile. A popstar with the trajectory of a comet who understands her success no more than the double meaning of her words… The harder the fall will be. Even God does not protect sharks' appetites or pretenses of success! Who killed the little voice of God? Here is the tragic story of an innocent voice, of an extraordinary fate, almost of a curse ...
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Bitter Years (2019)
A drama film based on the life of Mario Mieli, a leading figure in the Italian gay movement of the 1970s.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Prime Minister (1941)
A biopic of the legendary Benjamin Disraeli, his rise from a foppish young novelist to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and confidante of Queen Victoria.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Hunger (2008)
The story of Bobby Sands, the IRA member who led the 1981 hunger strike during The Troubles in which Irish Republican prisoners tried to win political status.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)
No one expects much from Christy Brown, a boy with cerebral palsy born into a working-class Irish family. Though Christy is a spastic quadriplegic and essentially paralyzed, a miraculous event occurs when, at the age of 5, he demonstrates control of his left foot by using chalk to scrawl a word on the floor. With the help of his steely mother — and no shortage of grit and determination — Christy overcomes his infirmity to become a painter, poet and author.
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 His Name Was Vian?
The closest matches to His Name Was Vian are My Dinner with Hervé (2018), Tuesdays with Morrie (1999) and TalhotBlond (2012). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after His Name Was Vian?
Start with My Dinner with Hervé (2018), the closest match to His Name Was Vian.
What is the highest-rated movie like His Name Was Vian?
My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989), rated 7.5/10 by 1,077 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like His Name Was Vian?
In The Shadows 75 (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like His Name Was Vian?
Yes: Sœur Sourire: Who Killed the Voice of God? (2021).
How are movies similar to His Name Was Vian chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside His Name Was Vian, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.