Movies like Unknown Pleasures (2002)
The best movies like Unknown Pleasures (2002) are Pickpocket (1997), The World (2004) and Still Life (2006). If Unknown Pleasures hooked you with its comedy and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Story of Qiu Ju (1992)7.7/10 from 209 votes
- NewestMy People, My Homeland (2020)Released 2020
- In ChinesePickpocket (1997)Also in Chinese
Pickpocket (1997)
A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe World (2004)
At Beijing World Park, a bizarre cross-pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center where visitors can interact with famous international monuments without ever leaving the city’s suburbs, a security guard betrays his dancer girlfriend by pursuing another woman.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStill Life (2006)
A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPlatform (2001)
China’s rapid changes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBeijing Bicycle (2001)
A seventeen-year-old country boy working in Beijing as a courier has his bicycle stolen, and finds it with a schoolboy his age.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHappy Times (2000)
Zhao is an ageing bachelor, who has not been fortunate in love. Believing that he has finally met the female of his dreams, Zhao makes her believe that he is opulent and consents to a lavish wedding.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Touch of Sin (2013)
Four people in different provinces are driven to violent ends: An angry miner is enraged by corruption in his village. A migrant discovers the possibilities of owning a firearm. A receptionist is pushed beyond her limits by an abusive client. A young factory worker goes from one job to the next.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy People, My Homeland (2020)
In different parts of rural China, various people explore what makes their communities unique.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDurian Durian (2000)
The first half of this film portrays the experiences of a young northern mainland Chinese woman (Fan) temporarily working as a sex worker in Hong Kong. After her 3-month visa expires, the second half of the film focuses on Yan's return to her family and her ex-fiancé in Northeast China and the ways that she invests the money that she has earned.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Story of Qiu Ju (1992)
When her husband is kicked in the groin by the village head, Qiu Ju, a peasant woman, despite her pregnancy, travels to a nearby town, and later a big city to deal with its bureaucrats and find justice.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this24 City (2008)
As a decades-old state-run aeronautics munitions factory in downtown Chengdu, China is being torn down for the construction of the titular luxury apartment complex, director Jia Zhangke interviews various people affiliated with it about their experiences.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAn Elephant Sitting Still (2018)
In the northern Chinese city of Manzhouli, they say there is an elephant that simply sits and ignores the world. Manzhouli becomes an obsession for the protagonists of this film, a longed-for escape from the downward spiral in which they find themselves.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMountains May Depart (2015)
The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (2009)
Wang is a gloomy, cunning and avaricious noodle shop owner in a desert town in China. His neglected, sharp-tongued wife is involved in a secret affair with Li, one of Wang’s employees. A timid man, Li reluctantly keeps the gun his lover has bought to kill her husband. But Wang is watching their every move. He bribes patrol officer Zhang to murder the illicit couple. It seems like a perfect plan: the affair will come to a cruel, bloody but satisfying end or so he thinks. The equally wicked Zhang has an agenda of his own. As the plot twists, more blood will flow, and ever greater violence will erupt.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisDwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (2020)
In the Chinese town of Fuyang, four brothers go about their day-to-day lives, their destinies shaped by love and challenges.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Blue Kite (1994)
A young man recalls his childhood growing up in a poor alley in Beijing during the 1950s and 1960s.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLost in Beijing (2007)
A look at modern-day life in China's capital centered on a ménage-a-quatre involving a young woman, her boss, her husband and her boss's wife.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGetting Home (2007)
A black comedy about a farmer who tries to bring home the body of his friend, who died far from their town.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSummer Palace (2007)
Yu Hong leaves her home village and starts university in Beijing, where she develops a consuming and compulsive relationship with another student. The student riots from 1989 then ensue and take a toll on their lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIn the Heat of the Sun (1994)
Beijing, 1970s. The Cultural Revolution has driven most adults to the provinces leaving 14-year-old Monkey and his pals with free rein over the city. They hang around, get up to no good, and discover that unsolvable mystery known as "girls."
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAsh Is Purest White (2018)
Set in China's underworld, this tale of love and betrayal follows a dancer who fired a gun to protect her mobster boyfriend during a fight. On release from prison 5 years later, she sets out to find him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBuddha Mountain (2011)
In Chengdu, China, a retired female opera singer named Master Chang takes in a trio of young tenants into her boarding home. The tenants include a rock singer and a college student who has run away from home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlind Mountain (2007)
Young student Bai Xuemei is cheated and sold as a wife by human traffickers to a remote village. Raped and beaten, she leads the life of a sex slave and child-bearer with no hope of escape because of the villagers apathy and selfishness.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisI Am Not Madame Bovary (2016)
Li Xuelian, a woman from the countryside is falsely accused by her husband of having an affair. To defend herself, Li moves from her small town to the big city until she reached the capital.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKeep Cool (1997)
A spurned lover seeks a rich man for revenge. A random onlooker — who witnessed the public assault committed by the rich man against the lover — seeks for monetary compensation for his smashed computer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlind Shaft (2003)
Two Chinese miners, who make money by killing fellow miners and then extorting money from the mine owner to keep quiet about the "accident", happen upon their latest victim. But one of them begins to have second thoughts.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSuzhou River (2000)
After getting out of prison, small-time crook Mardar stumbles upon a woman who looks exactly like his long-lost lover, who he attempted to kidnap 3 years ago.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSo Long, My Son (2019)
Two married couples adjust to the vast social and economic changes taking place in China from the 1980s to the present.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDead Pigs (2018)
A pig farmer, a busboy, a salon owner, an expat architect and a jaded rich girl cross paths as thousands of dead pigs float down the Yangtze River toward Shanghai.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTake Out (2008)
An illegal Chinese immigrant falls behind on payments on an enormous smuggling debt. Ming Ding has only until the end of the day to come up with the money.
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 Unknown Pleasures?
The closest matches to Unknown Pleasures are Pickpocket (1997), The World (2004) and Still Life (2006). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Unknown Pleasures?
People who watched Unknown Pleasures most often go on to Pickpocket (1997), The World (2004) and Still Life (2006).
What is the highest-rated movie like Unknown Pleasures?
The Story of Qiu Ju (1992), rated 7.7/10 by 209 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Unknown Pleasures?
My People, My Homeland (2020) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Chinese movies like Unknown Pleasures?
Yes: Pickpocket (1997), The World (2004) and Still Life (2006).
How are movies similar to Unknown Pleasures chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Unknown Pleasures, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.