Movies Like It Must Be Because I Decided to Leave

If you liked It Must Be Because I Decided to Leave (2025), a movie directed by Zhuoyun Chen, 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
Interstate 60 (2002)
★ 7.4/10
An aspiring painter meets various characters and learns valuable lessons while traveling across America.
2
Here (2024)
★ 6.5/10
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.
3
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
★ 7.2/10
A timid magazine photo manager who lives life vicariously through daydreams embarks on a true-life adventure when a negative goes missing.
4
Millennium Mambo (2001)
★ 7/10
In 2011, Vicky looks back on her life a decade earlier, recalling her turbulent relationship with her controlling boyfriend Hao Hao and her growing connection to a compassionate gangster amid the neon haze of Taipei's…
5
The Sun Also Rises (2007)
★ 7.5/10
A polyptych of interconnected stories in different time-zones, shifting between a Yunnan village, a campus, and the Gobi Desert.
6
Resurrection (2025)
★ 7.1/10
In a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream in exchange for eternal life, one creature remains entranced by the fading illusions of the dreamworld. This monster, adrift in reverie, clings to visions no one…
7
Northfork (2003)
★ 6/10
The year is 1955, and a great flood is coming to Northfork, Montana. A new hydroelectric dam is about to be installed in the mountains above the town, ready to submerge the valley in the name of progress. It is the…
8
3 Women (1977)
★ 7.1/10
Two co-workers, one a vain woman and the other an awkward teenager, share an increasingly bizarre relationship after becoming roommates.
9
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025)
★ 6.1/10
Sarah and David are single strangers who meet at a mutual friend’s wedding and soon, through a surprising twist of fate, find themselves on a funny, fantastical, sweeping adventure together where they get to re-live…
10
13 Going on 30 (2004)
★ 6.8/10
After total humiliation at her thirteenth birthday party, Jenna Rink wants to just hide until she's thirty. Thanks to some magic wishing dust, Jenna's prayer has been answered. With a knockout body, a fabulous…
11
Inception (2010)
★ 8.4/10
Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the…
12
Vanilla Sky (2001)
★ 6.8/10
David Aames has it all: wealth, good looks and gorgeous women on his arm. But just as he begins falling for the warmhearted Sofia, his face is horribly disfigured in a car accident. That's just the beginning of his…
13
The Zero Theorem (2013)
★ 6.1/10
A computer hacker's goal to discover the reason for human existence continually finds his work interrupted thanks to the Management; this time, they send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him.
14
Dream Scenario (2023)
★ 6.6/10
Hapless family man Paul Matthews finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. But when his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, Paul is forced to…
15
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
★ 6.8/10
An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.
16
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)
★ 6.8/10
Walter Mitty, a daydreaming writer with an overprotective mother, likes to imagine that he is a hero who experiences fantastic adventures. His dream becomes reality when he accidentally meets a mysterious woman who…
17
Still Breathing (1997)
★ 6.5/10
Two lost souls: she a con-artist in L.A.; he a puppeteer in San Antonio have the same dream linking each with the other. He travels to L.A. to find this woman he has become obsessed with. She resists, afraid of his…
18
Memento (2000)
★ 8.2/10
Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term…
19
Little Ashes (2008)
★ 5.8/10
About the young life and loves of artist Salvador Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico García Lorca.
20
Scarecrow (1973)
★ 7/10
Two drifters bum around, visit earthy women and discuss opening a car wash in Pittsburgh.