Movies like Othello (1989)
The best movies like Othello (1989) are Sarafina! (1992), Hamlet (1948) and An Awfully Big Adventure (1995). If Othello hooked you, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedHamnet (2025)7.7/10 from 1,753 votes
- NewestThese Violent Delights (2026)Released 2026
Sarafina! (1992)
A Soweto schoolgirl named Sarafina is galvanized to protest apartheid after her teacher is arrested for her activism, leading her to join the student resistance movement.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHamlet (1948)
Winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor, Sir Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet continues to be the most compelling version of Shakespeare’s beloved tragedy. Olivier is at his most inspired—both as director and as the melancholy Dane himself—as he breathes new life into the words of one of the world’s greatest dramatists.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAn Awfully Big Adventure (1995)
Liverpool. 1947. Right after World War II, a star struck naive teenage girl joins a shabby theatre troupe in Liverpool. During a winter production of Peter Pan, the play quickly turns into a dark metaphor for youth as she becomes drawn into a web of sexual politics and intrigue and learns about the grown-up world of the theater.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHamnet (2025)
The powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare's timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHamlet (2009)
David Tennant stars in a film of the Royal Shakespeare Company's award-winning production of Shakespeare's great play. Director Gregory Doran's modern-dress production was hailed by the critics as thrilling, fast-moving and, in parts, very funny.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRomeo + Juliet (1996)
In this contemporary take on William Shakespeare's classic tragedy, the Montagues and Capulets have moved their ongoing feud to the sweltering suburb of Verona Beach, where Romeo and Juliet fall in love and secretly wed. Though the film is visually modern, the bard's dialogue remains.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEscape from Pretoria (2020)
South Africa, 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white political activists from the African National Congress imprisoned by the apartheid regime, put a plan in motion to escape from the infamous Pretoria Prison.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDisgrace (2008)
Disgrace is the story of a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his cherished daughter. After having an affair with a student, he moves to the Eastern Cape, where he gets caught up in a mess of post-apartheid politics.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHamlet (1996)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, returns home to find his father murdered and his mother now marrying the murderer... his uncle. Meanwhile, war is brewing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBent (1997)
Max is a handsome young man who, after a fateful tryst with a German soldier, is forced to run for his life. Eventually Max is placed in a concentration camp where he pretends to be Jewish because in the eyes of the Nazis, gays are the lowest form of human being. But it takes a relationship with an openly gay prisoner to teach Max that without the love of another, life is not worth living.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKing Lear (2018)
An aging King invites disaster, when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters, and rejects his loving and honest one.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe World Will Tremble (2025)
The incredible, untold true story of how a group of prisoners attempt a seemingly impossible escape from the first Nazi death camp in order to provide the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Walk to Remember (2002)
When the popular, restless Landon Carter is forced to participate in the school drama production, he falls in love with Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of the town's minister. Jamie has a "to-do" list for her life, as well as a very big secret she must keep from Landon.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPalestine 36 (2025)
Year 1936. As villages across Palestine rise against British colonial rule, Yusuf drifts between his rural home and the restless energy of Jerusalem, longing for a future beyond the growing unrest. But history is relentless. With rising numbers of Jewish immigrants escaping antisemitism in Europe and some arriving with nefarious Zionist-colonial ambitions, and the Palestinian population uniting in the largest and longest uprising against Britain’s 30-year dominion, all sides spiral towards inevitable collision in a decisive moment for the British Empire and the future of the entire region.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLove Gets a Room (2021)
January 1942, in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. Thousands of Jews have been confined to the Warsaw ghetto for more than a year. Outside, life goes on; inside, they struggle to survive another day. Still, on a cold winter night, a group of Jewish actors manage to stage a lively musical comedy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPeterloo (2018)
An epic portrayal of the events surrounding the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter’s Field in Manchester turned into one of the bloodiest and most notorious episodes in British history. The massacre saw British government forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathered to demand political reforms and protest against rising levels of poverty.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShepherds and Butchers (2017)
A lawyer takes on a case of a prison guard in South Africa who is traumatized by the executions he's witnessed.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBetter Nate Than Ever (2022)
13-year-old Nate Foster has big Broadway dreams but there’s only one problem — he can’t even land a part in the school play. When his parents leave town, Nate and his best friend Libby sneak off to the Big Apple for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to prove everyone wrong. A chance encounter with Nate’s long-lost Aunt Heidi turns his journey upside-down, and together they must learn that life’s greatest adventures are only as big as your dreams.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRent: Filmed Live on Broadway (2008)
Set in New York City's gritty East Village, the revolutionary rock opera RENT tells the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent. "Measuring their lives in love," these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisRent (2005)
In New York City's gritty East Village, a group of bohemians strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Hobart Shakespeareans (2005)
Rafe Esquith, 1992 American Teacher of the Year and National Medal of Arts recipient, teaches 5th-grade children whose parents don't speak English at a school in a dangerous, poor, drug-infested 100% Latino/Asian neighborhood in Los Angeles.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
These Violent Delights (2026)
Juliet awakens from a fever dream. How did we get here? The lines between hallucination and memory blur as cinema and dance collide in a kaleidoscopic journey of queer belonging, defiance, and self-discovery. A vivid retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet brought to life by Scottish Ballet.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Much Ado About Nothing (1967)
Dame Maggie Smith stars in the 1967 screen version of Franco Zeffirelli's exuberant National Theatre production of Shakespeare's romantic comedy, in which young lovers Hero and Claudio conspire to make sharp-tongued rivals Beatrice and Benedick fall in love with each other.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Huapango (2004)
In the Huasteca of Tamaulipas during the most important dance festival of the region, Julia, Huapango national champion, announces her marriage to the distinguished and wealthy rancher Otilio, while Santiago, her dance partner, driven by jealousy and spite, decides to take revenge on the newlyweds.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Othello (2023)
Frantic Assembly's famous take on Othello revived in 2023, featuring Michael Akinsulire in the title role.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Othello (1995)
The evil Iago pretends to be friend of Othello in order to manipulate him to serve his own end in the film version of this Shakespeare classic.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKing Lear (1975)
King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
King Lear (1974)
James Earl Jones delivers a riveting performance as paranoid patriarch King Lear, an aging monarch who insists that his three daughters prove their love for him, only to learn he's exalted the two who seek to destroy him. This live performance recording of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival production deftly envisions the bard's haunting tragedy with a fine supporting cast, including Raul Julia, Paul Sorvino and Rene Auberjonois.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Titus (1999)
Titus Andronicus returns from the wars and sees his sons and daughters taken from him, one by one. Shakespeare's goriest and earliest tragedy.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisO, Brawling Love! (2023)
Two rival acting students are forced to reconcile their differences and play lovers Romeo and Juliet in their final school play, vying for a life-changing prize.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Othello?
The closest matches to Othello are Sarafina! (1992), Hamlet (1948) and An Awfully Big Adventure (1995). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Othello?
Start with Sarafina! (1992), the closest match to Othello.
What is the highest-rated movie like Othello?
Hamnet (2025), rated 7.7/10 by 1,753 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Othello?
These Violent Delights (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Othello?
Yes: Sarafina! (1992), Hamlet (1948) and An Awfully Big Adventure (1995).
How are movies similar to Othello chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Othello, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.