Movies Like Mother Says

If you liked Mother Says (2023), a drama and family movie directed by Jessica Sofía Chang, 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
Skater Girl (2021)
★ 7.2/10Also drama and family
Prerna, a teenager growing up in rural India, comes of age when she’s introduced to the sport of skateboarding. As a result, she has to fight the odds to follow her dreams and compete in the national championship.
2
Karate Kid: Legends (2025)
★ 7/10Also drama
After a family tragedy, kung fu prodigy Li Fong is uprooted from his home in Beijing and forced to move to New York City with his mother. When a new friend needs his help, Li enters a karate competition – but his…
3
Buddha Mountain (2011)
★ 6.7/10Also drama
In Chengdu, China, a retired female opera singer named Master Chang takes in a trio of young tenants into her boarding home. The tenants include a rock singer and a college student who has run away from home.
4
Heidi (2005)
★ 7.8/10Also drama and family
Swiss girl Adelheid 'Heidi' is orphaned young. Aunt Detie brings her to grandpa Alp and his wife, who live isolated in the Alps since his murder charge. Heidi soon takes to the wild country, especially accompanying…
5
I Believe in Unicorns (2015)
★ 6.7/10Also drama
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
6
Where the Red Fern Grows (2003)
★ 6.6/10Also drama and family
Set in the Ozark Mountains during the Great Depression, Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for 2 years to achieve his dream of buying two coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in God as he faces…
7
Whale Rider (2003)
★ 7/10Also drama and family
A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Māori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.
8
Canvas (2020)
★ 6.3/10Also family and drama
After a heartbreaking loss, a grandfather struggling to reclaim his passion for painting finds the inspiration to create again.
9
Good Day, Ramon (2013)
★ 7.9/10Also drama
After five failed attempts to go to the United States, 18-year-old Ramón decides to look for a friend’s aunt in Germany, but never finds her. With no papers or money, and without knowing the language, he barely…
10
Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980)
★ 7.3/10Also family and drama
Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American…
11
Father Mother Sister Brother (2025)
★ 6.4/10Also drama
Estranged siblings reunite after years apart, forced to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.
12
Here (2024)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
13
The Jazz Singer (1927)
★ 6.1/10Also drama
A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the…
14
Aftersun (2022)
★ 7.7/10Also drama
Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories fill the gaps between camcorder footages as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with…
15
Blue Heron (2026)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
A family of six's fresh start on 1990s Vancouver Island unravels as their youngest child, Sasha, witnesses the increasingly dangerous behavior of her older brother, Jeremy.
16
Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (2019)
★ 6.3/10Also family
Nancy Drew, a smart high schooler with a penchant for keen observation and deduction, stumbles upon the haunting of a local home. A bit of an outsider struggling to fit into her new surroundings, Nancy and her pals set…
17
Riceboy Sleeps (2023)
★ 7.2/10Also drama
In the 1990s, an immigrant single mother raises her teenage son in the Canadian suburbs, determined to provide a better life for him than the one she left behind in South Korea.
18
The Book of Life (2014)
★ 7.5/10Also family
The journey of Manolo, a young man who is torn between fulfilling the expectations of his family and following his heart. Before choosing which path to follow, he embarks on an incredible adventure that spans…
19
Mildred Pierce (1945)
★ 7.6/10Also drama
A hard-working mother inches towards disaster as she divorces her husband and starts a successful restaurant business to support her spoiled daughter.
20
Still Alice (2014)
★ 7.5/10Also drama
Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, is a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words. When she receives a devastating diagnosis, Alice and her family find their bonds tested.