Movies like The Face of AIDS (2016)
The best movies like The Face of AIDS (2016) are All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), Welcome to Chechnya (2020) and How to Survive a Plague (2012). If The Face of AIDS hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- NewestCome See Me in the Good Light (2025)Released 2025
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)
The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWelcome to Chechnya (2020)
This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHow to Survive a Plague (2012)
A story of two coalitions – ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) – whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCameraperson (2016)
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAnna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me (2023)
From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 thisFuck (2006)
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNaqoyqatsi (2002)
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll the Empty Rooms (2025)
A journalist and a photographer set out to memorialize the bedrooms left behind by children killed in school shootings.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAs I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000)
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHoward (2018)
Though legendary lyricist Howard Ashman died far too young, his impact on Broadway, movies, and the culture at large were incalculable. Told entirely through rare archival footage and interviews with Ashman’s family, friends, associates, and longtime partner Bill Lauch, Howard is an intimate tribute to a once-in-a-generation talent and a rousing celebration of musical storytelling itself.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016)
Nude men in rubber suits, close-ups of erections, objects shoved in the most intimate of places—these are photographs taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, known by many as the most controversial photographer of the twentieth century. Openly gay, Mapplethorpe took images of male sex, nudity, and fetish to extremes that resulted in his work still being labelled by some as pornography masquerading as art. But less talked about are the more serene, yet striking portraits of flowers, sculptures, and perfectly framed human forms that are equally pioneering and powerful.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAudrey (2020)
An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff (2010)
In 2001 Jack Cardiff (1914-2009) became the first director of photography in the history of the Academy Awards to win an Honorary Oscar. But the first time he clasped the famous statuette in his hand was a half-century earlier when his Technicolor camerawork was awarded for Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. Beyond John Huston's The African Queen and King Vidor's War and Peace, the films of the British-Hungarian creative duo (The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death too) guaranteed immortality for the renowned cameraman whose career spanned seventy years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Class of ‘92 (2013)
A detailing of the rise to prominence and global sporting superstardom of six supremely talented young Manchester United football players (David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil and Gary Neville). The film covers the period 1992-1999, culminating in Manchester United's European Cup triumph.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Irishman: In Conversation (2019)
Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino in conversation about The Irishman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisAquaman: Heroines of Atlantis (2019)
Amber Heard and Nicole Kidman discuss their characters Mera and Atlanna.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHeart of a Dog (2015)
Musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother and her beloved dog.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King (2020)
A tribute to Chadwick Boseman, celebrating his life and legacy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisStandard Operating Procedure (2008)
Investigating the infamous Abu Ghraib scandal, Errol Morris interviews American guards and Iraqi prisoners who were at the military jail before images of prisoner torture emerged in 2004. One female guard, who posed alongside fallen Iraqis in notorious images, tells Morris that her crimes were inspired by her love for another soldier, and another explains why she took photographs of her fellow troops. In the process, Morris suggests that the scandal resulted from systemic flaws in the military.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIrina Ionesco - Nocturnes Porte Dorée (2003)
"Nocturnes at the Golden Gate" - invites us to discover the world and work of Irina Ionesco, a unique figure of contemporary photography. Since the early 70's, she photographer has been working in her apartment near the Porte Dorée, in Paris, principally with the female body. Scraps from the past and elements of the present come together to evoke the coherence and multiple meanings of Irina's baroque universe : the solitude of her Romanian childhood ; her youthful debut in the music hall ; her relationships with her models and her way of building images. Little by little, her work is illuminated and takes on different vibrations, though we have never left the apartment : her workspace, temple and museum.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Das Gefühl des Augenblicks (1989)
Photographer and documentary film director Schadt follows in the footsteps of his role model Robert Frank. The important photographer and director traveled through the United States in the mid-1950s and recorded his photographic impressions of this trip in the photo book "The Americans". Schadt visits some of the places where Frank had photographed 30 years earlier, talks to the people living there and interviews Frank himself.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Eyes on Ukraine (2025)
This powerful documentary explores the intersection of two crises — war and the HIV epidemic. The film follows HIV-positive Ukrainian activist Yana Panfilova as she joins “Through Positive Eyes,” a global photo-storytelling project. The film looks to the resilience of a new generation, navigating survival and community through art and activism.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
AIDS: What Everyone Needs to Know (1985)
The film provides information about the course and symptoms of AIDS, the effect of AIDS viruses on the immune system, the routes of infection, the main risks of infection and the protective measures against them.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Four Faces of the Moon (2016)
Follow the animated journey of an Indigenous photographer as she travels through time. The oral and written history of her family reveals the story — we witness the impact and legacy of the railways, the slaughter of the buffalo and colonial land policies.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Lee Miller: A Crazy Way of Seeing (2001)
Documentary charting the fascinating life and work of Lee Miller, a model for Vogue in 1920s New York who became the only female photojournalist to cover the Second World War. Having given up photography in later life and virtually disowned her own work, Miller's extraordinary archive of 40,000 negatives was only rediscovered after her death. George Melly, David Hare, friends, colleagues and her only son, Tony Penrose, trace the story of her unconventional life through her own remarkable pictures and photographs, as well as rarely seen archive footage.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Lost Flowers (2021)
March 2020. Fabrizio, a photographer and filmmaker who lives in Luxembourg, returns to his family in central Italy after his father has suffered a heart attack. It’s the beginning of the pandemic, the country is in lockdown. An intimate diary and an ode to filial love in the face of the most trying circumstances a son can face. A tale of the soul and personal hardship in the context of a broader collective tragedy.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Positive Gymnastik (2025)
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Frans Lanting: The Evolution of LIFE (2015)
A dazzling journey through time via the remarkable images of National Geographic photographer Frans Lanting and his epic "LIFE" project, which presents a stunning interpretation of life on Earth, from the Big Bang through the present.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Face of AIDS?
The closest matches to The Face of AIDS are All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), Welcome to Chechnya (2020) and How to Survive a Plague (2012). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Face of AIDS?
Start with All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), the closest match to The Face of AIDS.
What is the newest movie like The Face of AIDS?
Come See Me in the Good Light (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Face of AIDS?
Yes: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), Welcome to Chechnya (2020) and How to Survive a Plague (2012).
How are movies similar to The Face of AIDS chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Face of AIDS, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.