Movies Like Joy

If you liked Joy (2019), a drama movie directed by Sudabeh Mortezai, 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
Import/Export (2007)
★ 6.8/10Also drama
A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to…
2
Antares (2004)
★ 5.9/10Also drama
A deadly car crash sets off three parallel stories of women at crisis points, faltering behind the doors of the same, plain Vienna apartment block.
3
Stroszek (1977)
★ 7.3/10Also drama
Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a…
4
Trafficked (2017)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
In this story inspired by real characters, three girls from America, Nigeria and India are trafficked through an elaborate global network and enslaved in a Texas brothel, and must together attempt a daring escape to…
5
Berlin Alexanderplatz (2020)
★ 6.9/10Also drama
In 2015, thirty year old refugee Francis, the sole survivor of a boat that illegally crossed the Mediterranean, is drawn into Berlin's seedy underbelly.
6
The Whistleblower (2010)
★ 6.7/10Also drama
Nebraska cop Kathryn Bolkovac discovers a deadly sex trafficking ring while serving as a U.N. peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia. Risking her own life to save the lives of others, she uncovers an international conspiracy…
7
Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden (2016)
★ 6.7/10Also drama
Vienna, Austria, 1910. The young painter Egon Schiele is a rising artist, provocative and free, whose work, characterized by eroticism, shocks as much as it fascinates art lovers.
8
Òlòtūré (2019)
★ 6.3/10Also drama
In Lagos, Nigeria, young, naive Nigerian journalist Òlòtūré goes undercover to expose the shady underworld of human trafficking. Unused to this brutal environment, crawling with ruthless traders and pimps, Òlòtūré…
9
Mean Streets (1973)
★ 7/10Also drama
A small-time hood must choose from among love, friendship and the chance to rise within the mob.
10
Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
★ 6.9/10Also drama
An undocumented immigrant finds a human heart in one of the toilets of the west London hotel where he works with other undocumented immigrants.
11
Uncut Gems (2019)
★ 7.2/10Also drama
A charismatic New York City jeweler always on the lookout for the next big score makes a series of high-stakes bets that could lead to the windfall of a lifetime. Howard must perform a precarious high-wire act…
12
The Edge of Heaven (2007)
★ 7.2/10Also drama
The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother…
13
Crimes of Passion (1984)
★ 6.3/10Also drama
Fashion designer Joanna Crane leads a double life. By night she is China Blue, a prostitute who's attracted the attention of a sexually frustrated private detective, and a psychopathic priest in possession of a…
14
Bound (1996)
★ 7.2/10Also drama
Corky, a tough female ex-convict working on an apartment renovation in a Chicago building, meets a couple living next door, Caesar, a paranoid mobster, and Violet, his seductive girlfriend, who is immediately attracted…
15
Christiane F. (1981)
★ 7.3/10Also drama
A teen girl in 1970s Berlin becomes addicted to heroin. Everything in her life slowly begins to distort and disappear as she befriends a small crew of junkies and falls in love with a drug-abusing male prostitute.
16
The White Masai (2005)
★ 6.3/10Also drama
A girl, Carola, whose vacation in Kenya takes an interesting turn when she becomes infatuated with a Masai. Carola decides to leave her boyfriend to stay with her lover. There, she has to adapt to the Masai's way of…
17
Nightmare Alley (2021)
★ 6.9/10Also drama
An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.
18
Night Hunter (2019)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
A Minnesota police officer crosses paths with a committed and tireless vigilante as he follows the trail of a ruthless predator responsible for several abductions and murders.
19
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1995)
★ 7/10Also drama
71 scenes revolving around multiple Viennese residents who are by chance involved with a senseless gun slaughter on Christmas Eve.
20
Welcome to the Rileys (2010)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
Years after their teenage daughter’s death, Lois and Doug Riley, an upstanding Indiana couple, are frozen by estranging grief. Doug escapes to New Orleans on a business trip. Compelled by urgencies he doesn’t…