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Movies that feel like Parallel Mothers (2021)

If you loved Parallel Mothers, the closest films we have are Julieta (2016), Little Joe (2019) and LFO (2013). All three share Parallel Mothers' contemplative and cerebral feel, which is what we rank on before quality. 8 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.

Two unmarried women who have become pregnant by accident and are about to give birth meet in a hospital room: Janis, in her late-thirties, unrepentant and happy; Ana, a teenager, remorseful and frightened.

🍅 96% Rotten Tomatoes7.1 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Pedro Almodóvarcontemplativecerebral

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If Parallel Mothers hit the spot, these will too

Julieta poster
Julieta
2016 · dir. Pedro Almodóvar
🍅 84%7.1drama · romance

Pedro Almodóvar directing both, with the same fingerprints on each

The difference: Leans harder into romance than Parallel Mothers does

The film spans 30 years in Julieta’s life from a nostalgic 1985 where everything seems hopeful, to 2015 where her life appears to be beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness.

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Little Joe poster
Little Joe
2019 · dir. Jessica Hausner
🍅 66%5.8drama · science fiction

Contemplative and cerebral in the same breath

The difference: Critics were much harder on this one

Alice, a single mother who is more dedicated to her work as a genetic engineer than to her teenage son Joe, develops a new variety of flower that is supposed to have the ability to make its owner happy thanks to its special chemical properties.

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LFO poster
LFO
2013 · dir. Antonio Tublén
🍅 100%6.6drama · science fiction

Drama with a pulse of stillness, in both cases

LFO is a dark comedy/drama/Sci-Fi about a man who realizes that he can hypnotise with sound. He starts experimenting on his neighbors, where the abuse of power takes over and, eventually, severe consequences for mankind are at stake.

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The Trip to Bountiful poster
The Trip to Bountiful
1985 · dir. Peter Masterson
🍅 100%7.4drama

Both keep coming back to the same thing: memory

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

Carrie Watts is living the twilight of her life trapped in an apartment in 1940s Houston, Texas with a controlling daughter-in-law and a hen-pecked son. Her fondest wish – just once before she dies – is to revisit Bountiful, the small Texas town of her youth which she still refers to as "home."

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The Congress poster
The Congress
2013 · dir. Ari Folman
🍅 71%6.4drama · science fiction · animation

Cerebral drama in both cases

An aging, out-of-work actress accepts one last job, though the consequences of her decision affect her in ways she didn't consider.

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Another Earth poster
Another Earth
2011 · dir. Mike Cahill
🍅 66%6.9drama · science fiction

Drama built on stillness, twice over

On the night a duplicate Earth is discovered in the solar system, the lives of a young woman and an accomplished composer become tragically connected after a fatal accident.

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

Pedro Almodóvar working the same nerve twice

The difference: None of the ideas Parallel Mothers is built on

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.

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I Origins poster
I Origins
2014 · dir. Mike Cahill
🍅 51%7.3science fiction · drama

The shared currency is ideas

A molecular biologist's study of the human eye has far-reaching implications about humanity's scientific and spiritual beliefs.

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The Man from Earth poster
The Man from Earth
2007 · dir. Richard Schenkman
🍅 100%7.8science fiction · drama

Drama in the same key

A departing professor gathers his closest colleagues for an intimate farewell, but the night takes an unexpected turn when he shares a stunning secret about his past. As the conversation unfolds, skepticism and curiosity collide, challenging everything they thought they knew about history, science, and belief.

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Born in Flames poster
Born in Flames
1983 · dir. Lizzie Borden
🍅 89%6.5drama · science fiction

Cut from the same drama cloth

In near-future New York, ten years after the “social-democratic war of liberation,” diverse groups of women organize a feminist uprising as equality remains unfulfilled.

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Warriors of Future poster
Warriors of Future
2022 · dir. Ng Yuen-Fai
🍅 88%5.6drama · action · science fiction

Both play drama straight

When a meteor carrying a destructive plant strikes the world, a suicide squad is given hours to save their post-apocalyptic city from total collapse.

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The Face of Another poster
The Face of Another
1966 · dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara
🍅 86%7.9drama · science fiction

Both are drama through and through

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his new doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality and causing him to question his identity.

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In the mood for more contemplative?

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The best-reviewed films that share Parallel Mothers’ defining feeling.