Movies like Summer Hours (2008)
The best movies like Summer Hours (2008) are Time to Leave (2005), Bergman Island (2021) and I've Loved You So Long (2008). If Summer Hours hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedWild Strawberries (1957)8.1/10 from 1,884 votes
- NewestSentimental Value (2025)Released 2025
- In FrenchTime to Leave (2005)Also in French
Time to Leave (2005)
Romain, 31, a fashion photographer with terminal cancer, elects to die alone, preparing others to live past him rather than prolong the inevitable with chemotherapy or be smothered in sympathy by those who know him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBergman Island (2021)
An English-German filmmaking couple retreat to Fårö for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place that inspired Ingmar Bergman. As the summer and their screenplays advance, the lines between reality and fiction start to blur against the backdrop of the Island's wild landscape.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI've Loved You So Long (2008)
A woman struggles to interact with her family and find her place in society after spending fifteen years in prison.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Few Hours of Spring (2012)
Forty-eight-year-old Alain Evrard is obliged to return home to live with his mother. This situation causes all the violence of their past relationship to rise to the surface. Alain then discovers that his mother has a fatal illness. In the last months of her life, will they finally be capable of taking a step toward each other?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMay Fools (1990)
During the events of May 1968 in France, different worldviews of conflicting relatives collide in their family estate.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Summer in Provence (2014)
In the wake of their parent's separation, three siblings spend the summer in the south of France with their estranged Grandfather. In less than 24 hours, a clash of generations has occurred between the teenagers and the old man. During this turbulent summer, both generations will be transformed by one another.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisVagabond (1985)
Mona Bergeron is dead, her frozen body found in a ditch in the French countryside. From this, the film flashes back to the weeks leading up to her death. Through these flashbacks, Mona gradually declines as she travels from place to place, taking odd jobs and staying with whomever will offer her a place to sleep. Mona is fiercely independent, craving freedom over comfort, but it is this desire to be free that will eventually lead to her demise.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThings to Come (2016)
Nathalie teaches philosophy at a high school in Paris. She is passionate about her job and particularly enjoys passing on the pleasure of thinking. Married with two children, she divides her time between her family, former students and her very possessive mother. One day, Nathalie’s husband announces he is leaving her for another woman. With freedom thrust upon her, Nathalie must reinvent her life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe 400 Blows (1959)
For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThree Colors: Blue (1993)
The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKings & Queen (2004)
Shortly before her wedding, art gallery director Nora travels from Paris to Grenoble to visit her preteen son, Elias, who is spending time with her aging professor father, Louis, recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. During her stay, she reaches out to her former lover, Ismaël, a viola player and father figure to Elias who has been committed against his will to a mental hospital. Ismaël, however, has his own problems to sort out.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Mouth Agape (1974)
Monique is dying of cancer, lying in bed in the apartment above the store her family owns. Her philandering husband carries on with life, her son remains aloof, and her daughter-in-law wonders if she is witnessing her own decline. They all struggle to express, or feel, their love for one another.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisVortex (2021)
Lui, a struggling author with a heart condition, and his wife Elle, a retired psychiatrist, find their idyllic life shattered when Elle begins to succumb to the effects of dementia.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this35 Shots of Rum (2009)
A widower and his daughter witness the retirement of a colleague of his and the closing of her department at her university.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNenette and Boni (1997)
Teenage siblings Nenette and Boni were raised apart as a result of their parents' divorce. Their mother, who doted on her son Boni, has died. He works for an interesting couple as a pizza baker, and is surprised and enraged when his younger sister, having run away from boarding school, suddenly turns up. There's a problem that they must confront.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn Praise of Love (2001)
Someone we hear talking - but whom we do not see - speaks of a project which describes the four key moments of love: meeting, physical passion, arguments/separation and making up. This project is to be told through three couples: young, adult and old. We do not know if the project is for a play, a film, a novel or an opera. The author of the project is always accompanied by a kind of servant. Meanwhile, two years earlier, an American civil servant meets with an elderly French couple who had fought in the Resistance during World War II, brokering a deal with a Hollywood director to buy the rights to tell their story. The members of the old couple's family discuss heatedly questions of nation, memory and history.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSentimental Value (2025)
Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWild Strawberries (1957)
Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisHideaway (Le refuge) (2009)
Mousse and Louis are young, beautiful, rich and in love. But drugs have invaded their lives. One day, they overdose and Louis dies. Mousse survives, but soon learns she's pregnant. Feeling lost, Mousse runs away to a house far from Paris. Several months later, Louis' brother joins her in her refuge.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCharlotte for Ever (1986)
Once a successful Hollywood screenwriter, Stan is now a depressive alcoholic who spends most of his time mooching about his house whilst pouring out his troubles to his drinking partner. The only thing that keeps him going is his love for his teenage daughter, Charlotte, but she despises him, believing him to be responsible for the accident in which her mother died.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976)
A lonely young widow lives with her son following an immutable order: while the boy is in school, she cares for their apartment, does chores, and receives clients in the afternoon.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAutumn Sonata (1978)
After a seven-year absence, Charlotte Andergast travels to Sweden to reunite with her daughter Eva. The pair have a troubled relationship: Charlotte sacrificed the responsibilities of motherhood for a career as a classical pianist. Over an emotional night, the pair reopen the wounds of the past. Charlotte gets another shock when she finds out that her mentally impaired daughter, Helena, is out of the asylum and living with Eva.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisI’m Glad My Mother Is Alive (2009)
Now a taciturn adult, an adoptee finds his biological mother and strikes up a relationship fraught with tension and emotion.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Hail Mary (1985)
A college student gets pregnant without having intercourse, affecting people close and unrelated to her in different ways.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Sunday in the Country (1984)
In France, before WWI. As every Sunday, an old painter living in the country is visited by his son Gonzague, coming with his wife and his three children. Then his daugther Irene arrives. She is always in a hurry, she lives alone and does not come so often... An intimist chronicle in which what is not shown, what is guessed, is more important than how it looks, dealing with what each character expects of life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPonette (1996)
After losing her mother in a car accident that leaves her with a broken arm, 4-year-old Ponette struggles with anguish and fear. Left by her father with a caring aunt and her children, Ponette grieves, secretly hoping her mother will somehow come back. Confused by the religious explanations provided by adults, and challenged by the cruel taunts of a few children at school, little Ponette must make her way through her emotional turmoil.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSince Otar Left (2003)
The one joy in the lives of a mother and daughter comes from the regular letters sent to them from Paris from the family's adored son, Otar. When the daughter finds out that Otar has died suddenly, she tries to conceal the truth from her mother, changing the course of their lives forever.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
A Separation (2011)
A married couple are faced with a difficult decision – to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Scapegoat (2013)
There is something strange - some would even say abnormal - about the Malaussène family. But if you take a closer look, no one could be happier than this cheerfully chaotic family, even though their mother is usually off on one romantic adventure or another. Life is never a bore for Benjamin Malaussène, professional scapegoat and the older brother responsible for this horde of kids. But when incidents happen wherever he goes, police and colleagues begin to eye him suspiciously. It soon becomes a matter of life and death to find out what is going on and who is so interested in ruining his life. Written by Pathe International
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisVincent, Francois, Paul and the Others (1974)
Three friends navigate mid-life crises: a blocked writer, a disillusioned doctor, and a charming man facing bankruptcy and divorce. As their struggles strain friendships, a younger man captures the attention of one friend's wife, complicating their lives further.
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 Summer Hours?
The closest matches to Summer Hours are Time to Leave (2005), Bergman Island (2021) and I've Loved You So Long (2008). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Summer Hours?
People who watched Summer Hours most often go on to Time to Leave (2005), Bergman Island (2021) and I've Loved You So Long (2008).
What is the highest-rated movie like Summer Hours?
Wild Strawberries (1957), rated 8.1/10 by 1,884 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Summer Hours?
Sentimental Value (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like Summer Hours?
Yes: Time to Leave (2005), I've Loved You So Long (2008) and A Few Hours of Spring (2012).
How are movies similar to Summer Hours chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Summer Hours, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.