Movies like Once There Was a Sea… (2022)
The best movies like Once There Was a Sea… (2022) are Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis (2021), Indie Game: The Movie (2012) and The 11th Hour (2007). If Once There Was a Sea… hooked you with its animation and documentary, these 18 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Rescue (2021)8.0/10 from 287 votes
- NewestTitan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster (2025)Released 2025
Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis (2021)
Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis, is a documentary short featuring animation that focuses on the story of a top secret POW camp that was classified for over 5 decades. In the midst of WWII, a group of young Jewish refugees are assigned to guard a top secret POW camp near Washington D.C. The Jewish soldiers soon discover that their prisoners are no other than Hitler's top scientists - What starts out as an intelligence mission to gather information from the Nazis, soon gets a shocking twist when the Jewish soldiers are tasked with a very different mission altogether. A mission that would question their moral values - exposing a dark secret from America's past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & animation
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIndie Game: The Movie (2012)
Follows the dramatic journeys of video game developers as they create and release their games to the world. It's about making video games, but at its core, it's about the creative process, and exposing yourself through your work.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe 11th Hour (2007)
A look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems. Featuring ongoing dialogues of experts from all over the world, including former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, former head of the CIA R. James Woolse
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFraming John DeLorean (2019)
A documentary interspersed with acted scenes, this portrait of John DeLorean covers the brilliant but tragically flawed automaker's rise to stardom and shocking down fall.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari (2022)
A close examination of the Whakaari / White Island volcanic eruption of 2019 in which 22 lives were lost, the film viscerally recounts a day when ordinary people were called upon to do extraordinary things, placing this tragic event within the larger context of nature, resilience, and the power of our shared humanity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this#AnneFrank. Parallel Stories (2019)
One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows-Primo Levi. The Oscar®-winning Helen Mirren will introduce audiences to Anne Frank's story through the words in her diary. The set will be her room in the secret refuge in Amsterdam, reconstructed in every detail by set designers from the Piccolo Theatre in Milan. Anne Frank this year would have been 90 years old. Anne's story is intertwined with that of five Holocaust survivors, teenage girls just like her, with the same ideals, the same desire to live: Arianna Szörenyi, Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard, Helga Weiss and sisters Andra and Tatiana Bucci. Their testimonies alternate with those of their children and grandchildren.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBobby Fischer Against the World (2011)
The first documentary feature to explore the tragic and bizarre life of the late chess master Bobby Fischer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLead Me Home (2021)
Poignant stories of homelessness on the West Coast of the US frame this cinematic portrait of a surging humanitarian crisis.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDreams of a Life (2011)
A filmmaker sets out to discover the life of Joyce Vincent, who died in her bedsit in North London in 2003. Her body wasn't discovered for three years, and newspaper reports offered few details of her life - not even a photograph.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKilling Lincoln (2013)
April 14, 1865. One gunshot. One assassin hell-bent on killing a tyrant, as he charged the 16th President of the United States. And in one moment, our nation was forever changed. This is the most dramatic and resonant crime in American history—the true story of the killing of Abraham Lincoln.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOperation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal (2021)
An examination that goes beyond the celebrity-driven headlines and dives into the methods used by Rick Singer, the man at the center of the shocking 2019 college admissions scandal, to persuade his wealthy clients to cheat an educational system already designed to benefit the privileged.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Rescue (2021)
The enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of twelve boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Northern Thailand.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBully (2011)
This year, over 5 million American kids will be bullied at school, online, on the bus, at home, through their cell phones and on the streets of their towns, making it the most common form of violence young people in this country experience. The Bully Project is the first feature documentary film to show how we've all been affected by bullying, whether we've been victims, perpetrators or stood silent witness. The world we inhabit as adults begins on the playground. The Bully Project opens on the first day of school. For the more than 5 million kids who'll be bullied this year in the United States, it's a day filled with more anxiety and foreboding than excitement. As the sun rises and school busses across the country overflow with backpacks, brass instruments and the rambunctious sounds of raging hormones, this is a ride into the unknown.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBowling for Columbine (2002)
This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of Oscar-winning NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with The Anarchist's Cookbook to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old. Bowling for Columbine is a journey through the US, through our past, hoping to discover why our pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTitan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster (2025)
OceanGate's Titan tourist submersible imploded in 2023 on a deep-sea dive to the Titanic. This documentary details how a bold vision ended in tragedy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSoaked in Bleach (2015)
Twenty years ago, Kurt Cobain was found dead of an apparent gunshot wound to the head. The world was told it was a suicide, but evidence would lead many people to believe it might be otherwise. The film investigates the possibilities that exist that Kurt Cobain's death might not have been a suicide, that the Seattle Police Department rushed their verdict, and the global media perpetuated lies and misinformation fed to them by Courtney Love that created the belief in many that Cobain killed himself—but when revealed to be lies—lead many to now question what happened.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Social Dilemma (2020)
This documentary-drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Overnighters (2014)
Desperate, broken men chase their dreams and run from their demons in the North Dakota oil fields. A local Pastor's decision to help them has extraordinary and unexpected consequences.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Once There Was a Sea…?
The closest matches to Once There Was a Sea… are Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis (2021), Indie Game: The Movie (2012) and The 11th Hour (2007). Below are 15 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Once There Was a Sea…?
Start with Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis (2021), the closest match to Once There Was a Sea….
What is the highest-rated movie like Once There Was a Sea…?
The Rescue (2021), rated 8.0/10 by 287 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Once There Was a Sea…?
Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to Once There Was a Sea… chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Once There Was a Sea…, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.