Movies Like The Normal Heart

If you liked The Normal Heart (2021), a movie directed by Paris Barclay, here are 20 movies with a similar feel, based on TMDB's recommendations. Each one links to its cast, trailer and where it's streaming.

1
Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway (2008)
★ 7.9/10
Set in New York City's gritty East Village, the revolutionary rock opera RENT tells the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent. "Measuring their lives in love," these starving artists…
2
NYAD (2023)
★ 7.1/10
Athlete Diana Nyad sets out at 60 to achieve a nearly impossible lifelong dream: to swim from Cuba to Florida across more than 100 miles of open ocean.
3
Rent (2019)
★ 6.7/10
The story of several friends in New York City facing financial poverty, homophobia, AIDS, and, of course, rent.
4
Rent (2005)
★ 6.8/10
In New York City's gritty East Village, a group of bohemians strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.
5
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
★ 7.9/10
From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash Jr. experiences it all. As a brilliant but socially awkward mathematician, he made a groundbreaking discovery early in his career and stands on…
6
Jeffrey (1995)
★ 6.3/10
Jeffrey, a gay man living in New York City with an overwhelming fear of contracting AIDS, concludes that being celibate is the only option to protect himself. As fate would have it, shortly after his declaration of a…
7
23 Blast (2014)
★ 6.8/10
When a high school football star is suddenly stricken with irreversible total blindness, he must decide whether to live a safe handicapped life or bravely return to the life he once knew and the sport he still loves.
8
The Normal Heart (2014)
★ 7.7/10
The story of the onset of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1980s, taking an unflinching look at the nation's sexual politics as gay activists and their allies in the medical community fight to expose…
9
Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
★ 7.9/10
Loosely based on the true-life tale of Ron Woodroof, a drug-taking, women-loving, homophobic man who in 1986 was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and given thirty days to live.
10
The Dink (2026)
★ 6.4/10
Desperate to save a struggling country club and earn his father's respect, a washed-up tennis pro is compelled to break a sacred vow and do the unthinkable: play pickleball.
11
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
★ 8.2/10
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The…
12
Something the Lord Made (2004)
★ 8/10
A dramatization of the relationship between heart surgery pioneers Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.
13
Apt Pupil (1998)
★ 6.5/10
One day in 1984, Todd Bowden, a brilliant high school boy fascinated by the history of Nazism, stumbles across an old man whose appearance resembles that of Kurt Dussander, a wanted Nazi war criminal. A month later…
14
Better Nate Than Ever (2022)
★ 6.5/10
13-year-old Nate Foster has big Broadway dreams but there’s only one problem — he can’t even land a part in the school play. When his parents leave town, Nate and his best friend Libby sneak off to the Big Apple for a…
15
The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005)
★ 7.3/10
A biopic of 20-year-old Francis Ouimet who defeated his golfing idol and 1900 US Open Champion, Harry Vardon.
16
Nickel Boys (2024)
★ 6.6/10
Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.
17
Bugsy Malone (1976)
★ 6.6/10
New York, 1929, a war rages between two rival gangsters, Fat Sam and Dandy Dan. Dan is in possession of a new and deadly weapon, the dreaded "splurge gun". As the custard pies fly, Bugsy Malone, an all-round nice guy…
18
Causeway (2022)
★ 6.5/10
A US soldier suffers a traumatic brain injury while fighting in Afghanistan and struggles to adjust to life back home in New Orleans. When she meets local mechanic James, the pair begin to forge an unexpected bond.
19
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
★ 7.5/10
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to…
20
Motherless Brooklyn (2019)
★ 6.7/10
New York City, 1957. Lionel Essrog, a private detective living with Tourette syndrome, tries to solve the murder of his mentor and best friend, armed only with vague clues and the strength of his obsessive mind.