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Moonlight poster

Movies that feel likeMoonlight (2016)

The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.

If you loved Moonlight, the closest films we have are Beautiful Boy (2018), The Second Mother (2015) and Pain and Glory (2019). All three share Moonlight's contemplative feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is Aquarius (2016).

🍅 98% Rotten Tomatoes★ 7.4 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Barry Jenkinscontemplative
8 of 12 streaming nowNetflix · Amazon Prime Video · Paramount Plus Essential

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If Moonlight hit the spot, these will too

Beautiful Boy poster
Beautiful Boy
2018 · dir. Felix van Groeningen
🍅 67%★ 7.4dramaPrime Video

Both are built on the same subject: drug addiction

The difference: The scrappier of the two with critics

After he and his first wife separate, journalist David Sheff struggles to help their teenage son, who goes from experimenting with drugs to becoming devastatingly addicted to methamphetamine.

The Second Mother poster
The Second Mother
2015 · dir. Anna Muylaert
🍅 98%★ 7.8drama

An intimate drama about family bonds strained by circumstance

The difference: Class-divide domestic drama, not sexuality or coming-of-age

After leaving her daughter Jessica in a small town in Pernambuco to be raised by relatives, Val spends the next 13 years working as a nanny to Fabinho in São Paulo. She has financial stability but has to live with the guilt of having not raised Jessica herself. As Fabinho’s university entrance exams approach, Jessica reappears in her life and seems to want to give her mother a second chance. However, Jessica has not been raised to be a servant and her very existence will turn Val’s routine on its head. With precision and humour, the subtle and powerful forces that keep rigid class structures in place and how the youth may just be the ones to shake it all up.

Pain and Glory poster
Pain and Glory
2019 · dir. Pedro Almodóvar
🍅 96%★ 7.5drama

A tender, reflective look back at identity, memory, and belonging

The difference: An aging filmmaker's reverie, not a boy's three-act coming-of-age

Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker in the twilight of his career, remembers his life: his mother, his lovers, the actors he worked with. The sixties in a small village in Valencia, the eighties in Madrid, the present, when he feels an immeasurable emptiness, facing his mortality, the incapability of continuing filming, the impossibility of separating creation from his own life. The need of narrating his past can be his salvation.

To the Bone poster
To the Bone
2017 · dir. Marti Noxon
🍅 69%★ 6.7dramaNetflix

A raw, intimate portrait of someone quietly struggling to survive

The difference: An eating-disorder recovery story, unrelated to identity or love

A young woman dealing with anorexia meets an unconventional doctor who challenges her to face her condition and embrace life.

Miracle in Cell No. 7 poster
Miracle in Cell No. 7
2019 · dir. Mehmet Ada Öztekin
★ 8.2dramaNetflix

A tender parent-child bond carrying the emotional weight of the film

The difference: A courtroom wrongful-conviction plot, nothing like Moonlight's arc

Separated from his daughter, a father with an intellectual disability must prove his innocence when he is jailed for the death of a commander's child.

Like Father, Like Son poster
Like Father, Like Son
2013 · dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
🍅 86%★ 7.8drama

One thread runs through both: parents and children

Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.

Burnt poster
Burnt
2015 · dir. John Wells
🍅 29%★ 6.6drama

A quiet character study of someone rebuilding themselves from ruin

The difference: A chef's redemption arc, not a boy's search for his own identity

Adam Jones is a Chef who destroyed his career with drugs and diva behavior. He cleans up and returns to London, determined to redeem himself by spearheading a top restaurant that can gain three Michelin stars.

Marriage Story poster
Marriage Story
2019 · dir. Noah Baumbach
🍅 95%★ 7.9dramaNetflix

An unflinching, intimate look at people trying to hold themselves together

The difference: A divorce's practical fallout, not childhood identity formation

A stage director and an actress struggle through a grueling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal extremes.

Aquarius poster
Aquarius
2016 · dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho
🍅 97%★ 7.4drama

An unhurried character study rooted entirely in one Brazilian life

The difference: A landlord standoff over an apartment, not identity or love

Clara, a vibrant former music critic and widow with flowing tresses is the only remaining apartment owner in a beautiful older building targeted for demolition by ruthless luxury high-rise developers. Clara proves to be a force to be reckoned with as she thwarts the builders plans to kick her out of the apartment.

Fences poster
Fences
2016 · dir. Denzel Washington
🍅 92%★ 7.2dramaParamount+

A family drama measuring the cost of growing up under pressure

The difference: A father's domineering pride looms over quiet self-discovery

In 1950s Pittsburgh, a frustrated African-American father struggles with the constraints of poverty, racism, and his own inner demons as he tries to raise a family.

Loveless poster
Loveless
2017 · dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev
🍅 95%★ 7.6drama

Drama built on stillness, twice over

Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.

Our Little Sister poster
Our Little Sister
2015 · dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
🍅 93%★ 7.6drama

Drama with a pulse of stillness, in both cases

After the death of their estranged father, 3 adult sisters invite their teenaged half-sister to live with them.

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The best-reviewed films that share Moonlight’s defining feeling.