Movies Like When Father Was Away on Business
If you liked When Father Was Away on Business (1985), a drama movie directed by Emir Kusturica, 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
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)
★ 6.5/10Also dramaDito Montiel, a successful author, receives a call from his long-suffering mother, asking him to return home and visit his ailing father. Dito recalls his childhood growing up in a violent neighborhood in Queens, N.Y…
- 2
Sight (2023)
★ 6.4/10Also dramaMing Wang is an impoverished Chinese prodigy who flees Communist China to become a pioneering eye surgeon in America. When tasked with restoring the sight of an orphan in India, who was blinded by her stepmother, Wang…
- 3
Skin (2009)
★ 6.4/10Also dramaBased on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
- 4
Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (1998)
★ 7.2/10Also dramaYoung teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even…
- 5
The Thing with Feathers (2025)
★ 6.5/10Also dramaFollowing the death of his wife, a young father's hold on reality crumbles, and a strange presence begins to stalk him from the shadowy recesses of the apartment he shares with his two young sons.
- 6
All Day and a Night (2020)
★ 6.3/10Also dramaWhile serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.
- 7
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
★ 7.5/10Also dramaAfter moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a…
- 8
20th Century Women (2016)
★ 7.3/10Also dramaIn 1979 Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the…
- 9
Siberian Education (2013)
★ 6.8/10Also dramaThe story of a gang of children growing up in a community of banished criminals, in a forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union. This community rejects the world outside. The only law it obeys… is its own. Against…
- 10
Holy Lands (2019)
★ 6.1/10Also dramaWhen lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife…
- 11
Father Mother Sister Brother (2025)
★ 6.4/10Also dramaEstranged siblings reunite after years apart, forced to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.
- 12
The Song of Names (2019)
★ 6.7/10Also dramaA man searches for his childhood best friend, a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust, who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.
- 13
Nocturnal Animals (2016)
★ 7.4/10Also dramaSusan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics…
- 14
Bastard Out of Carolina (1996)
★ 7.1/10Also dramaA poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as…
- 15
Tommy (1975)
★ 6.5/10Also dramaAfter a series of traumatic childhood events, a psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.
- 16
Anniversary (2025)
★ 6.9/10Also dramaA close-knit family is caught in the turmoil of a controversial rising movement known as "The Change.” Ellen and Paul witness their lives fall apart when Ellen's former student Liz reappears and starts dating their…
- 17
Disgrace (2008)
★ 6.2/10Also dramaDisgrace is the story of a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect…
- 18
Trumbo (2015)
★ 7.2/10Also dramaThe career of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo is halted by a witch hunt in the late 1940s when he defies the anti-communist HUAC committee and is blacklisted.
- 19
A Dry White Season (1989)
★ 6.7/10Also dramaDuring the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
- 20
The Music Never Stopped (2011)
★ 7.2/10Also dramaHenry struggles to bond with his estranged son, Gabriel, who suffers from a brain tumor that prevents him from forming new memories. With Gabriel unable to shed the beliefs and interests that caused their physical and…