Movies like The First Fallen (2021)
The best movies like The First Fallen (2021) are The Normal Heart (2014), An Englishman in New York (2009) and Mysterious Skin (2005). If The First Fallen hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedCity of God (2002)8.4/10 from 8,609 votes
- NewestProm Party Massacre (2025)Released 2025
The Normal Heart (2014)
The story of the onset of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1980s, taking an unflinching look at the nation's sexual politics as gay activists and their allies in the medical community fight to expose the truth about the burgeoning epidemic to a city and nation in denial.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAn Englishman in New York (2009)
Biographical drama based on the last 20 years of Crisp's life. The literary figure and gay iconoclast emigrated to New York in 1981 and lived there until his death. The film observes Crisp in both his public and private lives, from his seemingly cavalier response to the outbreak of AIDS to his tender relationship with his friend Patrick Angus and his own response to growing old.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMysterious Skin (2005)
A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Tender Bar (2021)
JR is a fatherless boy growing up in the glow of a bar where the bartender, his Uncle Charlie, is the sharpest and most colorful of an assortment of quirky and demonstrative father figures. As the boy’s determined mother struggles to provide her son with opportunities denied to her — and leave the dilapidated home of her outrageous if begrudgingly supportive father — JR begins to gamely, if not always gracefully, pursue his romantic and professional dreams, with one foot persistently placed in Uncle Charlie’s bar.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMars One (2022)
A middle-class Black family in Brazil copes with the election of a far-right extremist president. The mother believes that she's cursed after an unexpected encounter, while her husband puts all of his hopes into their son's soccer career.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIt's My Party (1996)
Nick, a gay, HIV-positive architect, begins to display severe symptoms of AIDS and makes preparations to kill himself before he is unable to function normally. He arranges a party to reconnect and say goodbye to his closest friends and his confused parents. But when his ex-partner, Brandon, a television director who left Nick when he was diagnosed with HIV, shows up, what was supposed to be a celebratory event becomes much more difficult for everyone.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMidnight Cowboy (1969)
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMoonlight (2016)
The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this1985 (2018)
Having been gone for three years, closeted advertising executive Adrian returns to his Texas hometown and struggles to reveal his dire circumstances to his conservative family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisUncle Frank (2020)
In 1973, when Frank Bledsoe and his 18-year-old niece Beth take a road trip from Manhattan to Creekville, South Carolina for the family patriarch's funeral, they're unexpectedly joined by Frank's lover Walid.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCity of God (2002)
In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLove Strange Love (1982)
A man remembers forty-eight crucial hours in his life when, as a child, he visited his mother, the favorite woman of an important politician, in a bordello owned by him, right before some important political changes in 1937 Brazil. In those hours, he discovers his own sexuality.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Boys in the Band (2020)
At a birthday party in 1968 New York, a surprise guest and a drunken game leave seven gay friends reckoning with unspoken feelings and buried truths.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Apprentice (2024)
A young Donald Trump, eager to make his name as a hungry scion of a wealthy family in 1970s New York, comes under the spell of Roy Cohn, the cutthroat attorney who would help create the Donald Trump we know today. Cohn sees in Trump the perfect protégé—someone with raw ambition, a hunger for success, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to win.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKids (1995)
A group of bored, disaffected New York City teenagers spend a day skating, smoking, drinking, partying, deflowering virgins, and getting into fights.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCity of Men (2007)
Best buddies Acerola and Laranjinha, about to turn 18, discover things about their missing fathers' pasts which will shatter their solid friendship, in the middle of a war between rival drug gangs from Rio's favelas.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Boys in the Band (1970)
Harold is celebrating a birthday, and his friend Michael has drafted some other friends to help commemorate the event. As the evening progresses, an unexpected guest shows up, the alcohol flows, the knives come out, and dormant and unspoken emotions are unleashed.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBully (2001)
A group of teenagers in South Florida enact a murder plot against their mutual bully, Bobby, who has emotionally, physically, and sexually abused them for years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNaked Lunch (1991)
Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill's pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work -- which he doesn't remember writing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009)
A rich man's daughter is held captive in an abandoned apartment by two former convicts who abducted her and hold her ransom in exchange for her father's money.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFine Dead Girls (2002)
Iva and Marija, a young lesbian couple, rent an apartment in Zagreb, in a building that seems to provide a quiet and safe environment for their love, but over time the atmosphere in the building becomes more and more threatening. The elder landlady Olga dominates the building. Other tenants include her calm husband, her grown-up son Daniel who has a crush on Iva, the prostitute Lidija, an abused housewife, a widower keeping the corpse of his newly deceased wife, a gynecologist performing abortions in one flat of the house, and an ex-soldier who regularly plays martial music at night. After Olga finds out that Iva and Marija are lesbians, the situation escalates .
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Nuovo Olimpo (2023)
In 1970s Rome, a casual encounter between Enea and Pietro at a movie theater turns into an unforgettable romance — until destiny pulls them apart.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWild Awakening (2016)
Toni and Emma are brother and sister who owns a stable farm. Ramon and his son, Aaron works for them. Toni is openly gay and loves to party, Emma has a crush on Aaron who is a closeted gay who is afraid that his father might find out, but his father also has a secret.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Card Zero (2023)
Before disappearing in the Mojave Desert, Robbie Zagorac captured love, life and heartbreak in a video diary.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Phone Call (1989)
A married man calls the wrong number for phone-sex and winds up being stalked by a psychotic man.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Kissing Drew (2013)
Inside a drab middle school in 1992, a sexually-confused eighth-grader attempts to regain his dignity after being bullied by a sex-obsessed 'cool kid' whom he privately fantasizes about.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Prom Party Massacre (2025)
A gay high school student throws a swinging prom party in the hopes of finally wooing the football captain - but when popular kids start turning up dead, the partygoers discover a slasher killer amongst the student body!
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Memories of a Teenager (2019)
After the suicide of his best friend and the fire of a local dance called Cromañón, including recitals, illegal parties in an abandoned warehouse and high school, a year passes by in the life of Zabo who writes everything he feels and lives in his blog, "Memories of a teenager".
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisVincent Before Noon (2019)
A father pays his son a visit after years of conflict and turns up in the middle of his house move. The son, Vincent, reacts violently to that intrusion. Emotionally weakened, the father involuntarily reveals the true reason of his visit, which revives the tension between them. Within a few minutes, the anger, the memories and the crossed looks move the two men deeply.
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
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The First Fallen?
The closest matches to The First Fallen are The Normal Heart (2014), An Englishman in New York (2009) and Mysterious Skin (2005). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The First Fallen?
Start with The Normal Heart (2014), the closest match to The First Fallen.
What is the highest-rated movie like The First Fallen?
City of God (2002), rated 8.4/10 by 8,609 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The First Fallen?
Prom Party Massacre (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to The First Fallen chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The First Fallen, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.