Movies like Doctor Zhivago (1965)
The best movies like Doctor Zhivago (1965) are A Farewell to Arms (1957), Private Peaceful (2012) and The History of Love (2016). If Doctor Zhivago hooked you with its drama and romance, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedForrest Gump (1994)8.5/10 from 30,874 votes
- NewestIt Ends with Us (2024)Released 2024
A Farewell to Arms (1957)
An English nurse and an American soldier on the Italian front during World War I fall in love, but the horrors surrounding them test their romance to the limit.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPrivate Peaceful (2012)
Set in the fields of Devon and the WW1 battlefields of Flanders, two brothers fall for the same girl while contending with the pressures of their feudal family life, the war, and the price of courage and cowardice.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe History of Love (2016)
The story of a long-lost book that mysteriously reappears and connects an old man searching for his son with a girl seeking a cure for her mother's loneliness.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWings (1927)
Two young men, one rich, one middle class, both in love with the same woman, become US Air Corps fighter pilots and, eventually, heroic flying aces during World War I. Devoted best friends, their mutual love of the girl eventually threatens their bond. Meanwhile, a hometown girl who's the lovestruck lifelong next door neighbor of one of them pines away.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSuite Française (2015)
France, 1940. In the first days of occupation, beautiful Lucile Angellier is trapped in a stifled existence with her controlling mother-in-law as they both await news of her husband: a prisoner of war. Parisian refugees start to pour into their small town, soon followed by a regiment of German soldiers who take up residence in the villagers' own homes. Lucile initially tries to ignore Bruno von Falk, the handsome and refined German officer staying with them. But soon, a powerful love draws them together and leads them into the tragedy of war.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDear John (2010)
While Sergeant John Tyree is home on two weeks leave from Germany, he meets Savannah after he dives into the ocean to retrieve Savannah's purse that had fallen off a pier. John eventually falls in love with Savannah, who promises to write to him until he returns from overseas.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFirebird (2021)
At the height of the Cold War, a troubled soldier forms a forbidden love triangle with a daring fighter pilot and his female comrade amid the dangerous surroundings of a Soviet Air Force Base.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLove in the Time of Cholera (2007)
In Colombia just after the Great War, an old man falls from a ladder; dying, he professes great love for his wife. After the funeral, a man calls on the widow - she dismisses him angrily. Flash back more than 50 years to the day Florentino Ariza, a telegraph boy, falls in love with Fermina Daza, the daughter of a mule trader.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHell's Angels (1930)
As the Great War breaks out in Europe, English brothers Roy and Monte enlist in the Royal Flying Corps to fight for king and country, while their Oxford College friend Karl is ordered back to Germany. As a love triangle develops involving Monte, Roy, and Roy's girlfriend, Helen, the brothers' disparate personalities, and Monte's cowardice in the face of war soon threaten to compromise a top-secret bombing mission over German territory.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWomen in Love (1969)
Growing up in the sheltered confines of a 1920s English coal-mining community, free-spirited sisters Gudrun and Ursula explore erotic love with a wealthy playboy and a philosophical educator, with cataclysmic results for all four.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNever Let Me Go (2010)
As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy spend their childhood at an idyllic and secluded English boarding school. As they grow into adults, they must come to terms with the complexity and strength of their love for one another while also preparing for the haunting reality awaiting them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIt Ends with Us (2024)
When a woman's first love suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with a charming, but abusive neurosurgeon is upended, and she realizes she must learn to rely on her own strength to make an impossible choice for her future.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Born under unusual circumstances, Benjamin Button springs into being as an elderly man in a New Orleans nursing home and ages in reverse. Twelve years after his birth, he meets Daisy, a child who flits in and out of his life as she grows up to be a dancer. Though he has all sorts of unusual adventures over the course of his life, it is his relationship with Daisy, and the hope that they will come together at the right time, that drives Benjamin forward.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAnna Karenina (2012)
In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIris (2001)
True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheimer's disease.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLady Chatterley's Lover (2015)
An early-20th-century tale of love across class boundaries which tells the legendary and romantic story of Lady Chatterley’s affair with her gamekeeper. Jed Mercurio’s adaptation of DH Lawrence’s classic.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both romance & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAli and Nino (2016)
Muslim prince Ali and Georgian aristocrat Nino have grown up in the Russian province of Azerbaijan. Their tragic love story sees the outbreak of the First World War and the world’s struggle for Baku’s oil. Ultimately they must choose to fight for their country’s independence or for each other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Way We Were (1973)
Opposites attract when, during their college days, Katie Morosky, a politically active Jew, meets Hubbell Gardiner, a feckless WASP. Years later, in the wake of World War II, they meet once again and, despite their obvious differences, attempt to make their love for each other work.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNot Easily Broken (2009)
A car accident and shifting affections test the bond between a married couple.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlind (2017)
A novelist is blinded in a car crash that killed his wife and several years later rediscovers his passion for life and writing when he embarks on an affair with the neglected wife of an indicted businessman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHimeyuri (2012)
The 30-minute film centers around a group of high school students who became nurses called Himeyuri and served during the Battle of Okinawa during World War II. The Himeyuri Alumnae Incorporated Foundation, which runs the Himeyuri Peace Museum in Okinawa, produced the film with the aim to convey the experiences of those high school students, many of whom lost their lives during the battle, to children.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & war
Forrest Gump (1994)
A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisDevil on Deck (1932)
John Moore, a young sea captain has a romance with Kay Wheeler, daughter of a trusted trader, "Pop" Wheeler, on a Pacific island. He also acquire the enmity of "Shanghai" Morgan, a notorious sea captain who shanghais his crew and his women.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Revolutionary Road (2008)
A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children. Based on a novel by Richard Yates.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUnder Capricorn (1949)
A British ex-convict in colonial Australia and his fragile wife, haunted by the past crime that binds them, struggle to rebuild their lives when a young newcomer stirs long-buried passions and secrets.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAtonement (2007)
A young girl irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPride & Prejudice (2005)
A story of love and life among the landed English gentry during the Georgian era. Mr. Bennet is a gentleman living in Hertfordshire with his overbearing wife and five daughters, but if he dies their house will be inherited by a distant cousin whom they have never met, so the family's future happiness and security is dependent on the daughters making good marriages.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & romance
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBurning Rainbow Farm (TBA)
Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm, a couple in rural Michigan, build a peaceful, pot-friendly utopia called Rainbow Farm. When the two run afoul of local authorities and their young son is taken from them, a standoff ensues leading to one of the largest and most dramatic sieges America has ever seen.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Metropolis (1927)
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisVengeance of the Three Musketeers (1961)
To avenge her defeat and with the help of the Cardinal's army leader Rochefort, the treacherous Milady de Winter kidnaps both D'Artagnan and Constance, in order to spur a war between the French and the English, as per the Cardinal's wish.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Doctor Zhivago?
The closest matches to Doctor Zhivago are A Farewell to Arms (1957), Private Peaceful (2012) and The History of Love (2016). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Doctor Zhivago?
Start with A Farewell to Arms (1957), the closest match to Doctor Zhivago.
What is the highest-rated movie like Doctor Zhivago?
Forrest Gump (1994), rated 8.5/10 by 30,874 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Doctor Zhivago?
It Ends with Us (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Doctor Zhivago?
Yes: A Farewell to Arms (1957), Private Peaceful (2012) and The History of Love (2016).
How are movies similar to Doctor Zhivago chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Doctor Zhivago, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.