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Movies that feel like Lilya 4-ever (2002)

If you loved Lilya 4-ever, the closest films we have are Frozen River (2008), 7 Prisoners (2021) and Pixote (1980). All three share Lilya 4-ever's contemplative and gritty feel, which is what we rank on before quality. 9 of the 12 picks below are included with a subscription right now on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Criterion Channel and others, checked against today's data.

In a struggling post-Soviet community, Lilya a teenage girl is abandoned when her mother moves to the United States with her boyfriend. Facing neglect and poverty, she meets Andrei, who offers her a job in Sweden, giving her hope for a better life — and a journey that will change everything.

🍅 84% Rotten Tomatoes7.8 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Lukas Moodyssoncontemplativegritty
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If Lilya 4-ever hit the spot, these will too

Frozen River poster
Frozen River
2008 · dir. Courtney Hunt
🍅 88%7.1drama · crime

Common ground: human trafficking

A financially strapped mother joins a Mohawk woman to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States.

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7 Prisoners poster
7 Prisoners
2021 · dir. Alexandre Moratto
🍅 98%7.1drama · crime

Both keep coming back to the same thing: human trafficking

An impoverished teen seeking to escape the clutches of a human trafficker must weigh living up to his moral code against his struggle to survive.

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Pixote poster
Pixote
1980 · dir. Héctor Babenco
🍅 94%7.9crime · drama

Both are built on the same subject: prostitution

The difference: Made in the 1980s, in a different era of the craft

10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

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A Touch of Sin poster
A Touch of Sin
2013 · dir. Jia Zhangke
🍅 95%7.1crime · drama

The same preoccupation in both: a true story

Four people in different provinces are driven to violent ends: An angry miner is enraged by corruption in his village. A migrant discovers the possibilities of owning a firearm. A receptionist is pushed beyond her limits by an abusive client. A young factory worker goes from one job to the next.

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My Name Ain't Johnny poster
My Name Ain't Johnny
2008 · dir. Mauro Lima
7.2crime · drama

The same mix in both: stillness, then grit

The true story of João Guilherme Estrella ("Johnny"), a young middle-class bon vivant who became a big-time cocaine dealer in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1990s.

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R poster
R
2010 · dir. Tobias Lindholm
🍅 91%7.1crime · drama

Contemplative drama, and it commits to that

Imprisoned for violent assault, Rune is placed in the hardcore ward, where his survival depends on quickly learning the prison's parallel world of rules, honor, and obligations.

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Close-Up poster
Close-Up
1990 · dir. Abbas Kiarostami
🍅 89%8.2crime · drama

Crime with a pulse of grit, in both cases

This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.

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Black Souls poster
Black Souls
2014 · dir. Francesco Munzi
🍅 89%6.8crime · drama

Both lean on stillness more than on drama

A former narcotics smuggler, now living peaceably in the Calabrian hills, is drawn back into his family’s drug-trade dynasty by his impetuous teenage son.

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Leviathan poster
Leviathan
2014 · dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev
🍅 97%7.6drama · crime

Crime built on grit, twice over

In a Russian coastal town, Kolya is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits a lawyer friend to help, but the man's arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.

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Loving Pablo poster
Loving Pablo
2017 · dir. Fernando León de Aranoa
🍅 33%6.4crime · drama

One thread runs through both: a true story

The difference: Reviewed a good deal more coolly

The film chronicles the rise and fall of the world's most feared drug lord Pablo Escobar and his volatile love affair with Colombia's most famous journalist Virginia Vallejo throughout a reign of terror that tore a country apart.

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Midnight Express poster
Midnight Express
1978 · dir. Alan Parker
🍅 90%7.5drama · crime

Both keep coming back to the same thing: escape

Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".

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Gomorrah poster
Gomorrah
2008 · dir. Matteo Garrone
🍅 90%7drama · crime

Both play drama straight

An inside look at Italy's modern-day crime families, the Camorra in Naples and Caserta. Based on a book by Roberto Saviano. Power, money and blood: these are the "values" that the residents of the Province of Naples and Caserta have to face every day. They hardly ever have a choice and are forced to obey the rules of the Camorra. Only a lucky few can even think of leading a normal life.

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The best-reviewed films that share Lilya 4-ever’s defining feeling.