Movies like The Novelist's Film (2022)
The best movies like The Novelist's Film (2022) are The Woman Who Ran (2020), On the Beach at Night Alone (2017) and Hotel by the River (2019). If The Novelist's Film hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedPoetry (2010)7.6/10 from 357 votes
- NewestOmaha (2025)Released 2025
- In KoreanThe Woman Who Ran (2020)Also in Korean
The Woman Who Ran (2020)
While her husband is on a business trip, Gamhee meets three of her friends. She visits the first two at their homes, and the third she encounters by chance at a theater. While they make friendly conversation, as always, several currents flow independently above and below the surface of the sea.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOn the Beach at Night Alone (2017)
In a foreign city, an actress wanders through a seaside town, reflecting on her relationship with a married man. How important is love in one’s life? Younghee wants to find out.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHotel by the River (2019)
An aging poet summons his estranged sons to the hotel he is staying at because he feels his death is near; meanwhile, he encounters two women staying at the hotel.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Day After (2017)
On her first day at work, Ahreum replaces a woman who broke up with the boss. The wife of the boss finds a love note, bursts into the office, and mistakes Ahreum for the other woman.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHill of Freedom (2014)
Kwon returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori, who has come back from Japan to propose to her. Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFukuoka (2020)
A bookseller from Seoul travels with a young woman to Fukuoka in Japan to meet a former friend from university. While their reunion is haunted by the conflicts of the past, his travel companion floats through the plot as if moving through a dream.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Day He Arrives (2011)
A film director who no longer makes films arrives in Seoul to meet a close friend. When the friend doesn't show up, he wanders the city aimlessly for three days, grabbing drinks and meeting women, with each day playing out like a version of the last.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisYourself and Yours (2016)
While a South Korean man wanders the city in search of the woman he just broke up with, she successively meets and flirts with two men who claim to have met her before.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRight Now, Wrong Then (2015)
By mistake, film director Ham Chunsu arrives in Suwon a day early. With time to kill before his lecture the next day, Chunsu stops by a restored, old palace and meets an artist named Yoon Heejung. Together, they go to Heejung's workshop to look at her paintings, have Sushi with Soju for dinner, and get close. Later, they go to another café and have more drinks with Heejung's acquaintances. When asked if he is married, Chunsu is forced to reveal the fact that he is, and Heejung gets deeply disappointed...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWalk Up (2022)
A series of interactions take place between an established film director, his estranged daughter interested in interior design, an interior designer, and others inside a multi-story commercial and residential building.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
In Front of Your Face (2021)
She has never lived in a high-rise apartment, and she wonders how her sister can live at this height every day. A few days ago she kind of burst in to stay with her sister, and she is now becoming re-accustomed to life in Korea. While seeming to keep a grave secret to herself, she manages life one day at a time with a sense of mindfulness. Meanwhile a certain director, some years younger than her, has asked her to join his project, and after a polite refusal, they have agreed to meet for the first time today. Downtown Seoul is filled with narrow alleys that harbor tiny old bars, and that's where they meet. As they are getting drunk, there is sudden rainfall and thunder.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLike You Know It All (2009)
A South Korean art house film director is first invited to serve on the panel of a film festival, then to guest lecture at a film school.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Introduction (2021)
Youngho is summoned by his father, who is a doctor. Finding him busy with his patients, one of whom is a famous actor, Youngho has to wait. When his girlfriend Juwon moves to Berlin for her studies, Youngho shows up in the city to surprise her. Through her mother, Juwon has found accommodation at the home of an artist whose beauty intimidates her. Some time later, Youngho goes to lunch with his mother who wants to introduce him to a colleague – it is the same man Youngho met at his father’s clinic. Youngho asks his friend Jeongsoo to accompany him, and after lunch they go to the beach. Youngho falls asleep, and dreams of Juwon. When he wakes up, he braves the considerable cold and goes swimming, while Jeongsoo watches.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
In Water (2023)
A director, a cinematographer, and an actress spend the days leading up to a movie shoot together on-location, waiting for the director to come up with an idea for what the film will be about.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Aloners (2021)
Jina is the top employee at a credit card company call center. She avoids building close relationships, choosing instead to live and work alone – until she is suddenly tasked with training a new recruit.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGrass (2018)
Ahreum sits in a small café, typing on her laptop. Around her, customers enact various dramas from their lives. Is she writing what she hears or is she hearing what's been written?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMoving On (2020)
During a summer vacation, Ok-ju and Dong-ju move into their grandpa's house. While Dong-ju adapts to his new home, Ok-ju feels awkward about this new environment. Once their soon-to-be-divorced aunt also moves in, and as Ok-ju spends time with her family, the house and her grandpa start to grow on her.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Our Sunhi (2013)
Sunhi, a film major graduate, visits her school to ask her Professor Choi for a recommendation letter to study in U.S. Knowing the professor favors her, she expects a good recommendation from him. Out from her shell after a long time, Sunhi also ends up meeting two men from her past: Munsu, her ex-boy friend, and Jaehak, a director who graduated from the same film school. Through the encounters between Sunhi and the three men, they give each other an 'advice on life' with good intentions. The three men who all have strong interests in her are led to guess and define her, unable to tell how she really feels inside. Strangely, the mentioned advices and traits of her are similar and seem to pass from one person to the next. The words of 'advice on life' seem doubtable and slip away as the three men's thoughts on Sunhi become more and more irrelevant.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLittle Forest (2018)
A young woman leaves the city to return to her hometown in the countryside. Seeking to escape the hustle and bustle of the city, she becomes self-sufficient in a bid to reconnect with nature.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Traveler's Needs (2024)
Iris, a woman abroad in Seoul, teaches French and English in an idiosyncratic fashion that allows her to pursue her own philosophical and personal interests. Through four encounters over a single day, Iris probes students and strangers for information about poetry, their own histories, and their relationship to their egos.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Poetry (2010)
A South Korean woman in her sixties enrolls in a poetry class as she grapples with her faltering memory and her grandson's appalling wrongdoing.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIn Another Country (2012)
A young woman and her mother run away to the seaside town of Mohang to escape their mounting debt. The young woman begins writing a script for a short film in order to calm her nerves: There are three women named Anne, and each woman consecutively visits the seaside town of Mohang. A young woman tends to the small hotel by the Mohang foreshore owned by her parents. A certain lifeguard can be seen restlessly wandering up and down the beach that lies nearby. Each Anne stays at this small hotel, receives some assistance from the owner's daughter, and ventures onto the beach where they meet the lifeguard.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRough Play (2013)
Young is a nameless actor who dreams of becoming a big movie star. Then one day, he makes his breakthrough with a film and becomes a star overnight.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Night and Day (2008)
Kim Seong-nam travels to Paris to escape an arrest, leaving his wife behind in Korea. After he arrives, he meets an ex-girlfriend and is introduced to a small community of Korean artists.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBad Class (2015)
Ji-eun has a bad impression of men due to bad experiences with her father but her mom Hyeon-ah convinces her into getting tuition from an art student. Jeong-woo is surprised at how cold she is towards him but at the same time, there's tension between the two. Meanwhile, Hyeon-ah, who is afraid something might happen between the two, calls Jeong-woo in and suggests something but he confesses his love for Hyeon-ah instead. They have fallen into an unappropriate relationship and Ji-eun decides to give her mom a surprise.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Girl in the Book (2015)
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972)
Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHome Run (2013)
A pro ball player with a substance abuse problem is forced into rehab in his hometown, finding new hope when he gets honest about his checkered past, and takes on coaching duties for a misfit Little League team
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFast Girls (2012)
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOmaha (2025)
A young girl and her brother are awoken by their father and loaded into the car on an early morning in 2008. As they road trip across the American West, she discovers the truth about their seemingly spontaneous journey.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
Like The Novelist's Film and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Novelist's Film?
The closest matches to The Novelist's Film are The Woman Who Ran (2020), On the Beach at Night Alone (2017) and Hotel by the River (2019). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Novelist's Film?
People who watched The Novelist's Film most often go on to The Woman Who Ran (2020), On the Beach at Night Alone (2017) and Hotel by the River (2019).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Novelist's Film?
Poetry (2010), rated 7.6/10 by 357 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Novelist's Film?
Omaha (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Korean movies like The Novelist's Film?
Yes: The Woman Who Ran (2020), On the Beach at Night Alone (2017) and Hotel by the River (2019).
How are movies similar to The Novelist's Film chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Novelist's Film, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.