Movies like Monsieur Lazhar (2011)
The best movies like Monsieur Lazhar (2011) are The Barbarian Invasions (2003), It's Not Me, I Swear! (2008) and Bad Seeds (2016). If Monsieur Lazhar hooked you with its drama and comedy, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Intouchables (2011)8.3/10 from 19,061 votes
- NewestMeet the Barbarians (2024)Released 2024
- In FrenchThe Barbarian Invasions (2003)Also in French
The Barbarian Invasions (2003)
In this belated sequel to 'The Decline of the American Empire', middle-aged Montreal college professor, Remy, learns that he is dying of liver cancer. His ex-wife, Louise, asks their estranged son, Sebastian, a successful businessman living in London, to come home. Sebastian makes the impossible happen, using his contacts and disrupting the Canadian healthcare system in every way possible to help his father fight his terminal illness to the bitter end, while reuniting some of Remy's old friends, including Pierre, Alain, Dominique, Diane, and Claude, who return to see their friend before he passes on.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIt's Not Me, I Swear! (2008)
During the summer of 1968, Leon, a 10-year-old boy, navigates the hardships of young love, his lunatic mother's whims, and his urges to vandalize the house of his neighbors.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBad Seeds (2016)
Jacques is an actor who runs away to the countryside to escape his gambling debts. He meets Simon, a rough and wily farmer who manipulates him into a business relationship. After a difficult start, the men help each other grow marijuana. They happen to meet Francesca, a sharp young woman who soon embraces their venture. By the time they get to the winter harvest, the three have learned to live together, but outside forces threaten the delicate balance of their little business...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Seducing Doctor Lewis (2003)
A much-needed boost, in the form of a new factory, is promised to the residents of the tiny fishing village St. Marie-La-Mauderne, provided they can lure a doctor to take up full-time residency on the island. Inspired, the villagers devise a scheme to make Dr. Christopher Lewis a local.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Intouchables (2011)
A true story of two men who should never have met – a quadriplegic aristocrat who was injured in a paragliding accident and a young man from the projects.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMy Internship in Canada (2015)
Guibord is an independent Member of Parliament who represents Prescott-Makadewà-Rapides-aux Outardes, a vast county in Northern Quebec. As the entire country watches, Guibord unwillingly finds himself in the awkward position of holding the decisive vote to determine whether Canada will go to war. Accompanied by his wife, his daughter and an idealistic intern from Haiti named Sovereign, Guibord travels across his district in order to consult his constituents. While groups of lobbyists get involved in a debate that spins out of control, the MP will have to face his own conscience. 'My Internship in Canada' is a biting political satire in which politicians, citizens and lobbyists go head-to-head tearing democracy to shreds. Film starring Suzanne Clément, Patrick Huard and Mardy Men
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Guide to the Perfect Family (2021)
A couple in Québec deals with the pitfalls, pressure and high expectations of raising kids in a society obsessed with success and social media image.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWar Witch (2012)
Somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Komona a 14-year-old girl tells her unborn child growing inside her the story of her life since she has been at war. Everything started when she was abducted by the rebel army at the age of 12.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisC.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)
A young French Canadian, one of five boys in a conservative family in the 1960s and 1970s, struggles to reconcile his emerging identity with his father's values.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe French Kissers (2009)
An awkward adolescent boy and his angst-ridden friends try their best to fit in amongst a cast of varied characters.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisMommy Is at the Hairdresser's (2008)
in the summer of 1966, in Beloeil, Québec, where a young girl named Élise is enjoying summer vacation. Summer 1966. It's time to enjoy the summer holiday, total freedom. Suddenly her mother leaves her family to pursue her journalism career in London. Her urge to leave is triggered when she coincidentally listens in on a conversation between her husband and his male lover. Her brother Coco seeks solace in the garage, building a super racing car. Her youngest brother Benoît throws himself into his own inner world. The father seems absolutely knocked out by the situation. Élise decides to take control of her family, in an eloquent attempt to save them. With the assistance of flourishing nature around her, she stands on the threshold of an incomparable summer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Hedgehog (2009)
Paloma is a serious and highly articulate but deeply bored 11-year-old who has decided to kill herself on her 12th birthday. Fascinated by art and philosophy, she questions and documents her life and immediate circle, drawing trenchant and often hilarious observations on the world around her. But as her appointment with death approaches, Paloma finally meets some kindred spirits in her building's grumpy janitor and an enigmatic, elegant neighbor, both of whom inspire Paloma to question her rather pessimistic outlook on life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Class (2008)
Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMeet the Barbarians (2024)
The municipality of a small Breton village has decided to welcome a family of Ukrainian refugees. To their surprise, they receive Fayad family – coming from Syria. They thwart all the clichés that the French expected: they are friendly, refined, educated… So much so that, in this small, humming village, it is no longer clear which side the barbarians are on…
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSchool Life (2019)
In one of the poorest areas of Paris, a school counselor devotes herself to working with disadvantaged students, while facing challenges of her own.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Teacher (2017)
Teacher in the most prestigious highschool in the country, François enjoys the life he’s always known, in the intellectual and bourgeois society of Paris. Trapped in a situation where he’s forced to accept a job in a school of a tough underprivileged suburb, he finds himself confronted to his own limits and to the upheaval of his values and certainties.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this1991 (2018)
Do you remember your first trip? Not the one you made at 5 years old with your parents to the East Coast of the United States. I mean the first time you traveled alone!? The great adventure. In 1991, I was a 21-years-old student. I went to Europe. Not because I wanted to visit all the great capitals, but because I wanted love... I wanted Marie-Ève Bernard.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Footnote (2011)
Jerusalem, Israel. Professors Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik, father and son, have dedicated their lives to the study of the Jewish scriptures. Eliezer is a stubborn and methodical scholar who has never been recognized for his work; Uriel is a rising star, someone admired and praised by his colleagues. The fragile balance that has kept their personal relationship almost intact is broken in an unexpected way by a simple phone call.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Best Job in the World (1996)
To be closer to his children following his divorce, Laurent Monier, a history and geography teacher in a peaceful provincial high school, accepts a position in a sensitive college in the Paris suburbs. He is assigned the hardest class, the fourth techno, and he finds an apartment in the Cité des Muriers, a particularly difficult district.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisDays of Darkness (2007)
Jean-Marc is a man without qualities living in times that are out of joint. His wife and children ignore him; he's a mid-level government functionary in Montreal doing his job without care. He has an active imagination of sexual conquest, but his only real feelings come when he visits his aged mother, whose health is failing. When his wife leaves abruptly to work in Toronto, Jean-Marc sets out to reorder things with his daughters, his social life, and at work. In a world that at best is a farce, does he stand a chance?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBye Bye Morons (2020)
When 43-year-old hairdresser Suze Trappet finds out that she's seriously ill, she decides to go looking for a child she was forced to abandon when she was only 15. On her madcap bureaucratic quest she crosses paths with JB, a 50-year-old man in the middle of a burnout, and Mr. Blin, a blind archivist prone to overenthusiasm. The unlikely trio set off on a hilarious and poignant helterskelter journey across the city in search of Suze's long-lost child.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Real Job (2023)
Benjamin is a PhD student without scholarship support. Under the pressure of his parents, and in need of money, he becomes a substitute teacher in a middle school. Without training nor experience, and facing a declining public educational system, he discovers how tough this job can be. Hopefully, his supportive and committed colleagues will lead him to take a fresh look at the profession.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLittle Miss Sunshine (2006)
A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Fall of the American Empire (2018)
A shy and insecure delivery driver arrives on the scene of a robbery-gone-wrong and picks up two bags of cash and hides them in his truck. He is interrogated by two tough police detectives and manages to evade suspicion but he is warned that whoever owns the money will be looking for it. Only the help of a prostitute and a former biker recently released from jail might get him out of trouble.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Freshmen (2018)
Antoine is about to start his first year of medical school… for the third time. Benjamin, just out of high school, will make his first try. He soon realizes it's not exactly a walk in the park. In a fiercely competitive environment, with nights dedicated to hard studying rather than hard partying, the two freshmen will have to adapt and find a middle ground between despair for the present and hope for the future.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMe and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)
Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Chorus (2004)
In 1940s France, a new teacher at a school for disruptive boys gives hope and inspiration.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKabluey (2007)
Leslie is left with few options when her husband is sent back to war in the Middle East. A modest amount of help arrives in the form of his brother, Salman, who is less than prepared to care for the couple's two preadolescent boys. When Leslie still can't make ends meet on her own, Salman is forced to find employment, but, with minimal qualifications, his only option is to become a mascot for a digital company by donning a bulbous blue costume.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStarbuck (2011)
David Wozniak is a perpetual adolescent who discovers that, as a sperm donor, he has fathered 533 children. He is advised that more than 100 of his offspring are trying to force the fertility clinic to reveal the true identity of "Starbuck," the pseudonym he used when donating his sperm. To make matters worse, his girlfriend Valérie is pregnant with his child, but doesn't feel that he is mature enough to be a father.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOnce in a Lifetime (2014)
At Léon Blum High School in Créteil, France, a history teacher decides to have her weakest 10th grade class participate in a national history competition.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Monsieur Lazhar?
The closest matches to Monsieur Lazhar are The Barbarian Invasions (2003), It's Not Me, I Swear! (2008) and Bad Seeds (2016). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Monsieur Lazhar?
People who watched Monsieur Lazhar most often go on to The Barbarian Invasions (2003), It's Not Me, I Swear! (2008) and Bad Seeds (2016).
What is the highest-rated movie like Monsieur Lazhar?
The Intouchables (2011), rated 8.3/10 by 19,061 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Monsieur Lazhar?
Meet the Barbarians (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like Monsieur Lazhar?
Yes: The Barbarian Invasions (2003), It's Not Me, I Swear! (2008) and Bad Seeds (2016).
How are movies similar to Monsieur Lazhar chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Monsieur Lazhar, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.