Movies like When We Were Bullies (2021)
The best movies like When We Were Bullies (2021) are Unknown Number: The High School Catfish (2025), My Mom Jayne (2025) and Come See Me in the Good Light (2025). If When We Were Bullies hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedUnknown Number: The High School Catfish (2025)6.7/10 from 259 votes
- NewestA Toxic Love Story (2026)Released 2026
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish (2025)
Vulgar, taunting texts blow up the phones of a teen and her boyfriend. Who's sending them — and why? This twisty documentary reveals the shocking answer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Mom Jayne (2025)
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies 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 thisEvil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story (2025)
Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNight Will Fall (2014)
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMaternal Instinct (2026)
Police pull over a woman who claims she just gave birth. But the baby — and the blood — aren't hers. Twisted lies unravel in this true-crime documentary.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOne Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 (2026)
An inside look at the years of effort and craft that went into the final installment of the Duffer Brothers' generation-defining series.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Toxic Love Story (2026)
A string of threatening emails escalates into a revenge plot involving a newly married US marshal and his ex-girlfriend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMemories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes (2021)
Serial killer Dennis Nilsen narrates his life and horrific crimes via a series of chilling audiotapes recorded from his jail cell.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTo Kill a Tiger (2023)
Ranjit, a farmer in India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the victim of a brutal gang rape. His decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVoyeur (2017)
Legendary journalist Gay Talese unmasks a motel owner who spied on his guests for decades. But his bombshell story soon becomes a scandal of its own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
SnoozefestMovies like thisStruggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski (2018)
Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Curse of the Dragon (1993)
A 1993 documentary film about Bruce Lee. The film includes interviews from some of his fellow students and opponents who worked alongside him in his movies.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOut of Thin Air (2017)
Set within the stark Icelandic landscape, OUT OF THIN AIR examines the 1976 police investigation into the disappearance of two men in the early 1970s.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
SnoozefestMovies like thisCrystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (2013)
Taking inspiration from Peter M. Bracke's definitive book of the same name, this seven-hour documentary dives into the making of all twelve Friday the 13th films, with all-new interviews from the cast and the crew.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGilbert (2017)
The life and career of one of comedy's most inimitable modern voices, Mr. Gilbert Gottfried.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMurder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story (2020)
After 16-year-old Cyntoia Brown is sentenced to life in prison, questions about her past, physiology and the law itself call her guilt into question.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014)
Hollywood veteran Bing Russell creates the only independent baseball team in the country—alarming the baseball establishment and sparking the meteoric rise of the 1970s Portland Mavericks.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAmerican Teen (2008)
A documentary on seniors at a high school in a small Indiana town and their various cliques.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWick Is Pain (2025)
Witness the never-before-seen footage and true story behind the John Wick phenomenon – from independent film to billion-dollar franchise.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like this2 or 3 Things I Know About Him (2005)
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story (2017)
To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story is the harrowing story of a stuntman overcoming a dehumanizing childhood filled with torment and bullying in Sparks, Nevada. After surviving a near-death burn accident, he worked his way up through Hollywood, leading to his ultimate rise as Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th series and making countless moviegoers forever terrified of hockey masks and summer camp. Featuring interviews with cinema legends, including Bruce Campbell (Ash vs. Evil Dead), Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger), and Cassandra Peterson (Elvira: Mistress of the Dark), To Hell and Back peels off the mask of Kane Hodder, cinema's most prolific killer, in a gut-wrenching, but inspiring, documentary. After decades of watching Kane Hodder on screen, get ready to meet the man behind the mask in To Hell and Back - an uniquely human story about one of cinema's most vicious monsters.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Coos and the Coke Bottle (2024)
25 years ago, when Coos, then 13, was smoking dope with his friends by the side of a canal, he passed out and came to with a Coke bottle up his ass. A joke by his friends. The incident marks his life as it haunts him for years. Why did his friends do that? Coos, now 38, wants to be able to turn this black page in his history, and he does so by confronting his friends of the time with his pain.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Bully (2011)
This year, over 5 million American kids will be bullied at school, online, on the bus, at home, through their cell phones and on the streets of their towns, making it the most common form of violence young people in this country experience. The Bully Project is the first feature documentary film to show how we've all been affected by bullying, whether we've been victims, perpetrators or stood silent witness. The world we inhabit as adults begins on the playground. The Bully Project opens on the first day of school. For the more than 5 million kids who'll be bullied this year in the United States, it's a day filled with more anxiety and foreboding than excitement. As the sun rises and school busses across the country overflow with backpacks, brass instruments and the rambunctious sounds of raging hormones, this is a ride into the unknown.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPekka. Inside the Mind of a School Shooter (2015)
On November 7 2007, eighteen year old Pekka goes to school armed in Jokela, a quiet town North of Finland’s capital, Helsinki. On that tragic day, he kills eight people. The director reconstructs Pekka’s story through conversations with his parents, classmates and teachers. The oppressive circumstances that brought on the young man’s tragic action are slowly revealed clearer and clearer and the spectator realizes that these situations are not unique to Pekka from Jokela.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Motherland (2023)
Svetlana has lost her son who was found dead while he was in the army. As she tries to shed light on the culture of violence and abuse in the Belarusian military, a group of young friends from the techno underground soon face being drafted themselves. They go to rave parties in undershirts and round sunglasses, but in a moment the party could be over – at least until huge protests break out in the streets following the recent ‘re-election’ of dictator-president and Putin sympathiser, Aleksandr Lukashenko. A glimmer of hope and a promise of change, which only causes the brutality of the authoritarian society to erupt in full force.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Beware the Slenderman (2016)
In this horrifyingly modern fairytale lurks an online Boogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. The entrance to the internet quickly leads to its darkest basement. How responsible are our children for what they find there?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOdyssey (2023)
Six California kids test their brains and talents against students in Odyssey of the Mind, a problem-solving competition requiring mechanical, creative and intellectual skills. With little money and zero adult participation, the teens build a robot to tell a story about bullying, exclusion and mental health. But how does their solution measure up?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
El silencio roto (2017)
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Telling Schoolgirl Tales: The Making of 'The Getting of Wisdom’ (2006)
First there was ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’, then ‘My Brilliant Career’, and now best of all ‘The Getting of Wisdom’. It is incomparably moving and powerful.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like When We Were Bullies?
The closest matches to When We Were Bullies are Unknown Number: The High School Catfish (2025), My Mom Jayne (2025) and Come See Me in the Good Light (2025). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after When We Were Bullies?
Start with Unknown Number: The High School Catfish (2025), the closest match to When We Were Bullies.
What is the highest-rated movie like When We Were Bullies?
Unknown Number: The High School Catfish (2025), rated 6.7/10 by 259 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like When We Were Bullies?
A Toxic Love Story (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like When We Were Bullies?
Yes: Unknown Number: The High School Catfish (2025), My Mom Jayne (2025) and Come See Me in the Good Light (2025).
How are movies similar to When We Were Bullies chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside When We Were Bullies, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.