Movies Like A Special Friendship

If you liked A Special Friendship (1987), a tv movie and drama movie directed by Fielder Cook, 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
Girl in the Box (2016)
★ 6.7/10Also drama and tv movie
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
2
A Bramble House Christmas (2017)
★ 6.4/10Also tv movie and drama
While settling his father’s estate, Finn Conrad becomes suspicious as to why the man left a nurse $100,000. His dad knew her for less than two months before he died. Just before Christmas, Finn wants what to reclaim…
3
Cheaters (2000)
★ 6.3/10Also drama and tv movie
In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.
4
Field of Lost Shoes (2015)
★ 6.1/10Also drama
A group of teenage cadets sheltered from war at the Virginia Military Institute must confront the horrors of an adult world when they are called upon to defend the Shenandoah Valley.
5
Mansfield Park (2007)
★ 6.1/10Also drama and tv movie
Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, the Bertrams, where she is treated poorly by most except her cousin Edmund. Her life is complicated by the arrival of the worldly Mary and Henry Crawford
6
My Dinner with Hervé (2018)
★ 6.3/10Also drama and tv movie
An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.
7
Nowhere to Run (1993)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
Escaped convict Sam Gillen single-handedly takes on ruthless developers who are determined to evict a widow with two young children.
8
I Am Elizabeth Smart (2017)
★ 6.8/10Also drama and tv movie
The story of Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping and captivity, as told from her perspective.
9
TalhotBlond (2012)
★ 6.3/10Also drama and tv movie
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
10
Rogue Agent (2022)
★ 6.3/10Also drama
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.
11
Girl in the Bunker (2018)
★ 7.1/10Also tv movie and drama
When Elizabeth is abducted by a fugitive sexual predator, she realizes she must take matters into her own hands and plot her escape. Based on a true story.
12
Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story (2003)
★ 7.3/10Also drama and tv movie
Based on a true story. Liz Murray is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted parents. Liz becomes homeless at 15 and after a tragedy comes upon her, she begins her work to finish high school.
13
40 Acres (2025)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
Hailey Freeman and her family are the last descendants of African American farmers who settled in rural Canada after the Civil War. In a famine-decimated near future, they now struggle to safeguard their farm, as they…
14
The Christmas Shoes (2002)
★ 6.8/10Also drama and tv movie
Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second…
15
The River (1984)
★ 6.4/10Also drama
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from…
16
Love, Once and Always (2018)
★ 6.3/10Also drama and tv movie
When Lucy’s childhood sweetheart plans to tear down the Gilded Age estate and replace it with a golf course, Lucy fights to preserve the historic mansion at all costs. As Lucy and Duncan set out to find a compromise…
17
The Dead Don't Hurt (2024)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
In the 1860s, fiercely independent French-Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy embarks on a journey with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen, attempting to forge a life together in the dusty town of Elk Flats, Nevada. When Holger…
18
Eleanor the Great (2025)
★ 6.8/10Also drama
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
19
The Most Hated Woman in America (2017)
★ 6.2/10Also drama
The true story of Madalyn Murray O'Hair -- iconoclast, opportunist, and outspoken atheist -- from her controversial rise to her untimely demise.
20
Rebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (1996)
★ 7.1/10Also drama and tv movie
A dramatization of the life of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (Don Cheadle), with a lot of factual based occurrences. A reformed junkie returns from prison to clean up his act and devote the rest of his life to the young…