Movies like War Witch (2012)
The best movies like War Witch (2012) are Beasts of No Nation (2015), Timbuktu (2014) and Outside the Law (2010). If War Witch hooked you with its drama and war, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedIncendies (2010)8.1/10 from 3,562 votes
- NewestDisco Boy (2023)Released 2023
- In FrenchTimbuktu (2014)Also in French
Beasts of No Nation (2015)
Based on the experiences of Agu, a child fighting in the civil war of a West African country. Follows Agu's journey as he's forced to join a group of soldiers. While he fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTimbuktu (2014)
Just outside of the Malian city of Timbuktu, now occupied by militant Islamic rebels who impose the Sharia on civilians and inconvenience their daily life, a cattleman kills a fisherman.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOutside the Law (2010)
After losing their family home in Algeria in the 1920s, three brothers and their mother are scattered across the globe. Messaoud joins the French army fighting in Indochina; Abdelkader becomes a leader of the Algerian independence movement in France and Saïd moves to Paris to make his fortune in the shady clubs and boxing halls of Pigalle.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Patience Stone (2013)
In a war-ridden country, a woman watches over her husband, comatose from a bullet in the neck and abandoned by Jihad companions and brothers. One day, the woman decides to say things to him she could never have done before.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like this5 Days of War (2011)
An American journalist and his cameraman are caught in the combat zone during the first Russian airstrikes against Georgia. Rescuing Tatia, a young Georgian schoolteacher separated from her family during the attack, the two reporters agree to help reunite her with her family in exchange for serving as their interpreter. As the three attempt to escape to safety, they witness--and document--the devastation from the full-scale crossfire and cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisTurtles Can Fly (2006)
Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iraq border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHotel Rwanda (2004)
Inspired by true events, this film takes place in Rwanda in the 1990s when more than a million Tutsis were killed in a genocide that went mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world. Hotel owner Paul Rusesabagina houses over a thousand refuges in his hotel in attempt to save their lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisParadise Now (2005)
Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMonsieur Lazhar (2011)
During a harsh Montréal winter, an elementary-school class is left reeling after its teacher commits suicide. Bachir Lazhar, a charismatic Algerian immigrant, steps in as the substitute teacher for the classroom of traumatized children. All the while, he must keep his personal life tucked away: the fact that he is seeking political refuge in Québec – and that he, like the children, has suffered an appalling loss.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTwice Born (2012)
Full-throttle melodrama about an ill-starred romance set against the backdrop of the siege of Sarajevo. A mother brings her teenage son to Sarajevo, where his father died in the Bosnian conflict years ago.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIncendies (2010)
A mother's last wishes send twins Jeanne and Simon on a journey to Middle East in search of their tangled roots. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's acclaimed play, Incendies tells the powerful and moving tale of two young adults' voyage to the core of deep-rooted hatred, never-ending wars and enduring love.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMr. Pip (2012)
As a war rages on in the province of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, a young girl becomes transfixed by the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations, which is being read at school by the only white man in the village.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn Darkness (2011)
A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied city of Lviv. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lviv (formerly Poland).
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSavior (1998)
A hardened mercenary in the Foreign Legion begins to find his own humanity when confronted with atrocities during the fighting in Bosnia.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKarbala (2015)
On 3 April 2004, during the holiday of Ashura, Iraqi rebels loyal to Shiite leader Muktada As-Sadr, launched an insurgency in the Polish zone. The Poles, together with Bulgarian soldiers and Iraqi police, were given the task of defending City Hall, led by Lieutenant colonel Grzegorz Kaliciak. The clash developed into the biggest Polish engagement since World War II. Not a single allied soldier died, although about 80 insurgents were killed in a counter-attack.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisSarah's Key (2010)
On the night of 16 July 1942, ten year old Sarah and her parents are being arrested and transported to the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris where thousands of other jews are being sent to get deported. Sarah however managed to lock her little brother in a closet just before the police entered their apartment. Sixty years later, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist in Paris, gets the assignment to write an article about this raid, a black page in the history of France. She starts digging archives and through Sarah's file discovers a well kept secret about her own in-laws.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTsotsi (2005)
A young South African boy from the Johannesburg ghetto named Tsotsi, meaning Gangster, leaves home as a child to get away from his helpless parents. Now a teenage thug, Tsotsi finds a baby in the back seat of a car he's just stolen. He decides that it is his responsibility to care for the infant and in the process learns that maybe the criminal life isn’t the best way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFootnote (2011)
Jerusalem, Israel. Professors Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik, father and son, have dedicated their lives to the study of the Jewish scriptures. Eliezer is a stubborn and methodical scholar who has never been recognized for his work; Uriel is a rising star, someone admired and praised by his colleagues. The fragile balance that has kept their personal relationship almost intact is broken in an unexpected way by a simple phone call.
Why it matches: Fans watch both
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShooting Dogs (2006)
Two westerners, a priest and a teacher find themselves in the middle of the Rwandan genocide and face a moral dilemna. Do they place themselves in danger and protect the refugees, or escape the country with their lives? Based on a true story.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDays of Glory (2006)
1943. They have never stepped foot on French soil but because France was at war, Said, Abdelkader, Messaoud and Yassir enlist in the French Army, along with 130,000 other “indigenous” soldiers, to liberate the “fatherland” from the Nazi enemy. Heroes that history has forgotten...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTangerines (2013)
War in Abkhazia, 1992. An Estonian man Ivo has stayed behind to harvest his crops of tangerines. In a bloody conflict at his door, a wounded man is left behind, and Ivo is forced to take him in.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJohnny Mad Dog (2008)
A cast of unknown performers are used in this drama about child soldiers fighting a war in an unnamed African country.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisQuo Vadis, Aida? (2021)
Bosnia, July 1995. Aida is a translator for the UN in the small town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among the thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp. As an insider to the negotiations Aida has access to crucial information that she needs to interpret. What is at the horizon for her family and people – rescue or death? Which move should she take?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Perfect Day (2015)
Somewhere in the Balkans, 1995. A team of aid workers must solve an apparently simple problem in an almost completely pacified territory that has been devastated by a cruel war, but some of the local inhabitants, the retreating combatants, the UN forces, many cows and an absurd bureaucracy will not cease to put obstacles in their way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLore (2012)
After being abandoned by their Nazi parents at the end of World War II, five German siblings embark on a harrowing journey across their war-torn country. Led by the eldest, 14 year-old Lore, the children are forced to confront their parents’ actions and the reality of a new world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlackboards (2000)
Itinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Said falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes as his wife Halaleh, the clan's lone woman, a widow with a young son. Reeboir attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border; they're mules, always on the move. Said and Reeboir try to teach as their potential students keep walking. Danger is close; armed soldiers patrol the skies, the roads, and the border. Is there a role for a teacher? Is there hope?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDisco Boy (2023)
After a painful journey through Europe, Aleksei, a Belarusian, joins the Foreign Legion in France and clings to a confused hope of a European identity. Jomo, a Nigerian, fights for the survival and durability of his people in the Niger Delta and is ready to die to defend his ideas. These two young people who are sacrificed and smashed together will, against all odds, meet and their destinies will merge to continue across borders, bodies, life and death...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLebanon (2009)
During the First Lebanon War in 1982, a lone tank and a paratroopers platoon are dispatched to search a hostile town.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBeaufort (2007)
BEAUFORT tells the story of LIRAZ LIBERTI, the 22 year-old outpost commander, and his troops in the months before Israel pulled out of Lebanon. This is not a story of war, but of retreat. This is a story with no enemy, only an amorphous entity that drops bombs from the skies while terrified young soldiers must find a way to carry out their mission until their very last minutes on that mountaintop.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Innocents (2016)
Poland, 1945. Mathilde, a young French Red Cross doctor, is on a mission to help the war survivors. When a nun seeks for her help, she is brought to a convent where several pregnant sisters are hiding, unable to reconcile their faith with their pregnancy. Mathilde becomes their only hope.
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 War Witch?
The closest matches to War Witch are Beasts of No Nation (2015), Timbuktu (2014) and Outside the Law (2010). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after War Witch?
People who watched War Witch most often go on to Beasts of No Nation (2015), Timbuktu (2014) and Outside the Law (2010).
What is the highest-rated movie like War Witch?
Incendies (2010), rated 8.1/10 by 3,562 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like War Witch?
Disco Boy (2023) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like War Witch?
Yes: Timbuktu (2014), Outside the Law (2010) and The Patience Stone (2013).
How are movies similar to War Witch chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside War Witch, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.