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Movies that feel like The English Patient (1996)

If you loved The English Patient, the closest films we have are Battle for Sevastopol (2015), Never Let Me Go (2010) and Mediterraneo (1991). All three share The English Patient's romantic and tender feel, which is what we rank on before quality. 5 of the 12 picks below are included with a subscription right now on HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video and Criterion Channel and others, checked against today's data.

In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.

🍅 86% Rotten Tomatoes7.4 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Anthony Minghellacontemplativeromantictenderbleakcerebral
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If The English Patient hit the spot, these will too

Battle for Sevastopol poster
Battle for Sevastopol
2015 · dir. Sergey Mokritsky
7war · drama · romance

Common ground: world war ii

The difference: Not nearly as cerebral as The English Patient

The story of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the most successful female sniper in history.

Never Let Me Go poster
Never Let Me Go
2010 · dir. Mark Romanek
🍅 71%7.1drama · romance · science fiction

Contemplative and romantic in the same breath

The difference: Sits closer to science fiction than The English Patient does

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy spend their childhood at an idyllic and secluded English boarding school. As they grow into adults, they must come to terms with the complexity and strength of their love for one another while also preparing for the haunting reality awaiting them.

Mediterraneo poster
Mediterraneo
1991 · dir. Gabriele Salvatores
🍅 80%7.4comedy · romance · war

The same preoccupation in both: world war ii

The difference: None of the stillness The English Patient is built on

Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn't a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there.

The Bridges of Madison County poster
The Bridges of Madison County
1995 · dir. Clint Eastwood
🍅 90%7.6drama · romance

Both keep coming back to the same thing: secret love

Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.

Truly Madly Deeply poster
Truly Madly Deeply
1991 · dir. Anthony Minghella
🍅 76%7.2fantasy · drama · comedy

The same hand behind both of them: Anthony Minghella

Nina is totally heartbroken at the death of her boyfriend Jamie, but is even more unprepared for his return as a ghost. At first it's almost as good as it used to be – hey, even the rats that infested her house have disappeared. But Jamie starts bringing ghostly friends home and behaving more and more oddly.

Sense and Sensibility poster
Sense and Sensibility
1995 · dir. Ang Lee
🍅 97%7.7drama · romance

Both are built on the same subject: secret love

The Dashwood sisters, sensible Elinor and passionate Marianne, learn that their prospects of marriage seem doomed by their family's sudden loss of fortune. After Henry Dashwood dies unexpectedly, his estate must pass on by law to his son. These circumstances leave Mr. Dashwood's wife and daughters without a home and with barely enough money to live on. As Elinor and Marianne struggle to find romantic fulfillment in a society obsessed with financial and social status, they must learn to mix sense with sensibility in their dealings with both money and men.

Ashes and Diamonds poster
Ashes and Diamonds
1958 · dir. Andrzej Wajda
🍅 96%7.7drama · war · romance

Both land tenderness and bleakness at once

The difference: Made in the 1950s, in a different era of the craft

A young academy soldier, Maciek Chelmicki, is ordered to shoot the secretary of the KW PPR. A coincidence causes him to kill someone else. Meeting face to face with his victim, he gets a shock. He faces the necessity of repeating the assassination. He meets Krystyna, a girl working as a barmaid in the restaurant of the "Monopol" hotel. His affection for her makes him even more aware of the senselessness of killing at the end of the war. Loyalty to the oath he took, and thus the obligation to obey the order, tips the scales.

Legends of the Fall poster
Legends of the Fall
1994 · dir. Edward Zwick
7.5drama · western · romance

Drama built on stillness, twice over

In early 20th-century Montana, Col. William Ludlow lives on a ranch in the wilderness with his sons, Alfred, Tristan, and Samuel. Eventually, the unconventional but close-knit family are bound by loyalty, tested by war, and torn apart by love, as told over the course of several decades in this epic saga.

La Jetée poster
La Jetée
1962 · dir. Chris Marker
🍅 90%8.2drama · romance · science fiction

Cerebral romance in both cases

A man confronts his past during an experiment that attempts to find a solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world caused by a world war.

To Live poster
To Live
1994 · dir. Zhang Yimou
🍅 87%8.3drama · romance · war

Romantic war, and it commits to that

Married couple Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in mid-20th century mainland China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry.

Mrs. Miniver poster
Mrs. Miniver
1942 · dir. William Wyler
🍅 93%7.6drama · romance · war

Drama with a pulse of tenderness, in both cases

Middle-class housewife Kay Miniver deals with petty problems. She and her husband Clem watch her Oxford-educated son Vin court Carol Beldon, the charming granddaughter of the local nobility as represented by Lady Beldon. Then the war comes and Vin joins the RAF.

From Here to Eternity poster
From Here to Eternity
1953 · dir. Fred Zinnemann
🍅 88%7.6war · romance · drama

Both lean on bleakness more than on romance

In 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second in command are falling in love.

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