Movies Like Present Tense

If you liked Present Tense (2012), a drama movie directed by Belmin Söylemez, 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
About Dry Grasses (2023)
★ 7.6/10Also drama
A young art teacher hopes to be transferred to Istanbul after completing his mandatory duty in a remote village school in Anatolia. After accusations of inappropriate contact with a student surface, his hopes of escape…
2
Fate (2001)
★ 7.2/10Also drama
Musa, a customs clerk, sees life as absurd. He drifts with events; his mother's death, though loved, brings him strange joy.
3
Something Useful (2017)
★ 7.4/10Also drama
A chance meeting on a train in the Turkish countryside leads two women to a journey that shows them the importance of setting a path for one's life.
4
Paper Lives (2021)
★ 8/10Also drama
In the streets of Istanbul, ailing waste warehouse worker Mehmet takes a small boy under his wing and must soon confront his own traumatic childhood.
5
Innocence (1997)
★ 7.6/10Also drama
Yusuf is released from prison after serving a ten year sentence. Because of unexpected problems at his sister’s house, he finds himself in a cheap hotel where he meets a man, a woman, and a child who will change his…
6
Scarecrow (1973)
★ 7/10Also drama
Two drifters bum around, visit earthy women and discuss opening a car wash in Pittsburgh.
7
Milk (2009)
★ 5.9/10Also drama
A high school graduate, Yusuf could not pass the university entrance exam. Writing poetry is his greatest passion and some of his poems are being printed in various obscure literary journals. But neither these poems…
8
Sibel (2019)
★ 6.7/10Also drama
25-year-old Sibel lives with her father and sister in a secluded village in the mountains of Turkey’s Black Sea region. Sibel is a mute, but she communicates by using the ancestral whistled language of the area.
9
Advantageous (2015)
★ 6/10Also drama
In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy, despite the instability surfacing in their world.
10
Autumn (2008)
★ 7.3/10Also drama
Arrested while a student in university, Yusuf is released from prison after ten years. He returns home and is welcomed by his sick and elderly mother. Soon he will meet Eka, a beautiful Georgian girl who is a sex…
11
Lucky Them (2013)
★ 6/10Also drama
More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what…
12
Adopt a Highway (2019)
★ 6.9/10Also drama
Russ Millings has just been released from prison after serving 21 years for a 3rd strike conviction for possessing an ounce of marijuana. As he tries to adapt to a world he doesn’t recognize – including trying to learn…
13
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972)
★ 7.3/10Also drama
Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal…
14
Tuesday (2024)
★ 6.8/10Also drama
A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.
15
Inside (2012)
★ 6.8/10Also drama
Muharrem faces his life, thoughts, and inner darkness at a party he does not want to attend.
16
The Third Page (1999)
★ 7/10Also drama
Isa is blamed for a robbery. He is badly beaten and given twenty four hours to return the money. Instead of finding the money, Isa finds a gun.
17
Won't Back Down (2012)
★ 6.2/10Also drama
Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for…
18
Richard Jewell (2019)
★ 7.4/10Also drama
Richard Jewell thinks quick, works fast, and saves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives after a domestic terrorist plants several pipe bombs and they explode during a concert, only to be falsely suspected of the crime…
19
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…
20
Salomé (2013)
★ 6.1/10Also drama
After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé…