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Pan's Labyrinth poster

Movies that feel likePan's Labyrinth (2006)

In post–civil war Spain, 10-year-old Ofelia moves with her pregnant mother to live under the control of her cruel stepfather. Drawn into a mysterious labyrinth, she meets a faun who reveals that she may be a lost princess from an underground kingdom. To return to her true father, she must complete a series of surreal and perilous tasks that blur the line between reality and fantasy.

If you loved Pan's Labyrinth, the closest films we have are Ivan's Childhood (1962), The Pianist (2002) and A War (2015). All three share Pan's Labyrinth's contemplative and bleak feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is In Darkness (2011).

🍅 95% Rotten Tomatoes★ 8.2 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Guillermo del Torodreamlikecontemplativebleak
10 of 12 streaming nowNetflix · Amazon Prime Video · Criterion Channel

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See it on the Mood Map

If Pan's Labyrinth hit the spot, these will too

Ivan's Childhood poster
Ivan's Childhood
1962 · dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
🍅 100%★ 8drama · war

A child inside war's machinery, drifting between horror and dream

The difference: Stark Soviet black-and-white — the dreams offer no kingdom

In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.

The Pianist poster
The Pianist
2002 · dir. Roman Polanski
🍅 95%★ 8.5drama · war

Surviving fascism by hiding, staying small, holding one beautiful thing

The difference: Unflinching real history with nothing fantastical to escape into

The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.

A War poster
A War
2015 · dir. Tobias Lindholm
🍅 90%★ 7drama · war

War measured by impossible choices rather than battles

The difference: Procedural Danish realism — no fantasy refuge anywhere

Company commander Claus Michael Pedersen and his men are stationed in Helmand, Afghanistan. Meanwhile back in Denmark, with a husband at war and three children missing their father, everyday life is a struggle for Claus' wife Maria. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy Taliban crossfire. In order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that ultimately sees him return to Denmark accused of a war crime.

The Counterfeiters poster
The Counterfeiters
2007 · dir. Stefan Ruzowitzky
🍅 93%★ 7.5drama · war

Survival under fascism, where every compromise costs a piece of soul

The difference: A true camp story — grim history with no fairy-tale escape

The story of Jewish counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch, who was coerced into assisting the Nazi operation of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II.

Jarhead poster
Jarhead
2005 · dir. Sam Mendes
🍅 60%★ 7drama · warNetflixStarz

The quiet corrosion war works on people far from any battle

The difference: Desert monotony and dark comedy — no child's-eye wonder

Jarhead is a film about a US Marine Anthony Swofford’s experience in the Gulf War. After putting up with an arduous boot camp, Swofford and his unit are sent to the Persian Gulf where they are eager to fight, but are forced to stay back from the action. Swofford struggles with the possibility of his girlfriend cheating on him, and as his mental state deteriorates, his desire to kill increases.

In Darkness poster
In Darkness
2011 · dir. Agnieszka Holland
🍅 88%★ 7.3drama · war

Hiding from fascist cruelty in the dark, holding onto scraps of hope

The difference: True Holocaust history — sewers, not labyrinths, and no magic

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).

Unbroken poster
Unbroken
2014 · dir. Angelina Jolie
🍅 52%★ 7.2drama · warNetflix

Endurance under a sadistic captor who wants obedience above all

The difference: Straight survival biography where hope stays in the real world

A chronicle of the life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who was taken prisoner by Japanese forces during World War II.

All Quiet on the Western Front poster
All Quiet on the Western Front
2022 · dir. Edward Berger
🍅 90%★ 7.8war · dramaNetflix

Innocence marched into a machine that has no use for it

The difference: Mud-and-blood battlefield realism, without magic or a fable's shape

Paul Baumer and his friends Albert and Muller, egged on by romantic dreams of heroism, voluntarily enlist in the German army. Full of excitement and patriotic fervour, the boys enthusiastically march into a war they believe in. But once on the Western Front, they discover the soul-destroying horror of World War I.

Persian Lessons poster
Persian Lessons
2020 · dir. Vadim Perelman
🍅 80%★ 7.4war · drama

Contemplative where it counts, bleak underneath

The difference: Easier on the dream logic than Pan's Labyrinth

Occupied France, 1942. Gilles is arrested by SS soldiers alongside other Jews and sent to a camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids sudden execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but Gilles gets assigned a life-or-death mission: to teach Farsi to Head of Camp Koch, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Through an ingenious trick, Gilles manages to survive by inventing words of "Farsi" every day and teaching them to Koch.

Beanpole poster
Beanpole
2019 · dir. Kantemir Balagov
🍅 93%★ 7.2drama · warRent or buy

Both lean on stillness more than on drama

1945, Leningrad. World War II has devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its citizens in tatters, physically and mentally. Two young women, Iya and Masha, search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.

Apocalypse Now poster
Apocalypse Now
1979 · dir. Francis Ford Coppola
🍅 91%★ 8.4drama · warParamount+

A journey deeper into a nightmare where cruelty turns mythic

The difference: Hallucinatory war epic driven by men, not a child's secret world

At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.

Sobibor poster
Sobibor
2018 · dir. Konstantin Khabenskiy
🍅 73%★ 6.4war · dramaPrime Video

Bleak war, and it commits to that

The film is based on a real story that happened in 1943 in the Sobibor concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. The main character of the movie is the Soviet-Jewish soldier Alexander Pechersky, who at that time was serving in the Red Army as a lieutenant. In October 1943, he was captured by the Nazis and deported to the Sobibor concentration camp, where Jews were being exterminated in gas chambers. But, in just 3 weeks, Alexander was able to plan an international uprising of prisoners from Poland and Western Europe. This uprising resulted in being the only successful one throughout the war, which led to the largest escape of prisoners from a Nazi concentration camp.

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The best-reviewed films that share Pan's Labyrinth’s defining feeling.