Movies Like The Lives of Others

If you liked The Lives of Others (2006), a drama and thriller movie directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 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
Funeral in Berlin (1966)
★ 6.4/10Also thriller
Colonel Stok, a Soviet intelligence officer responsible for security at the Berlin Wall, appears to want to defect but the evidence is contradictory. Stok wants the British to handle his defection and asks for one of…
2
Alone in Berlin (2016)
★ 6.7/10Also thriller and drama
Berlin in June of 1940. While Nazi propaganda celebrates the regime’s victory over France, a kitchen-cum-living room in Prenzlauer Berg is filled with grief. Anna and Otto Quangel’s son has been killed at the front…
3
Balloon (2018)
★ 7.5/10Also thriller and drama
Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations…
4
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
★ 7.3/10Also drama and thriller
A CIA operation to purchase classified Russian documents is blown by a rival agent, who then shows up in the sleepy seaside village where Bourne and Marie have been living. The pair run for their lives and Bourne, who…
5
Retribution (2023)
★ 6.5/10Also thriller
When a mysterious caller plants a bomb under his car seat, a bank executive begins a high-speed chase across the city to complete a specific series of tasks — all with his kids trapped in the back seat.
6
The Social Reckoning (2026)
★ 7/10Also drama and thriller
Frances Haugen, a young Facebook engineer, enlists the help of Jeff Horwitz, a Wall Street Journal reporter, to go on a dangerous journey that ends up blowing the whistle on the social network's most guarded secrets.
7
Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin (2024)
★ 6.7/10Also drama
As the world teeters on the brink of annihilation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer joins a deadly plot to assassinate Hitler, risking his faith and fate to save millions of Jews from genocide.
8
The Quiller Memorandum (1966)
★ 5.9/10Also thriller and drama
After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate.
9
The Amateur (2025)
★ 6.9/10Also thriller
After his life is turned upside down when his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack, a brilliant but introverted CIA decoder takes matters into his own hands when his supervisors refuse to take action.
10
The House on Carroll Street (1988)
★ 5.9/10Also drama and thriller
A reporter, fired after refusing to give names to a 1951 House Un-American Activities Committee, takes a part-time job as companion to an old lady. While working she overhears a noisy argument in the neighboring house…
11
Phoenix (2014)
★ 6.8/10Also drama
In the aftermath of WWII, German-Jewish cabaret singer Nelly has to undergo facial reconstructive surgery following her survival from Auschwitz. Without recognising Nelly, her former husband Johnny asks her to help him…
12
The Tunnel (2001)
★ 7.2/10Also drama and thriller
Inspired by true events, Olympic swimmer Harry Melchior defects from East Germany in the 1960s and hatches a daring plot to help his sister and others flee East Berlin through a 145-yard underground tunnel.
13
The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)
★ 7.1/10Also drama
A mystery writer is intrigued by the tale of notorious criminal Dimitrios Makropolous, whose dead body was found washed up on the shore in Istanbul. He decides to follow the career of Dimitrios around Europe, in order…
14
A Most Wanted Man (2014)
★ 6.5/10Also thriller
A Chechen Muslim illegally immigrates to Hamburg and becomes a person of interest for a covert government team tracking the movements of potential terrorists.
15
Woman in Gold (2015)
★ 7.3/10Also drama
Maria Altmann, an octogenarian Jewish refugee, takes on the government to recover artwork she believes rightfully belongs to her family.
16
Valkyrie (2008)
★ 7/10Also drama and thriller
Wounded in Africa during World War II, Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg returns to his native Germany and joins the Resistance in a daring plan to create a shadow government and assassinate Adolf Hitler. When events…
17
Despair (1978)
★ 6.5/10Also drama and thriller
Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other…
18
The Way Back (2010)
★ 7/10Also drama
A small band of multicultural convicts stages a daring escape from a WWII-era Siberian gulag, and embarks on a treacherous journey across five countries in a desperate race for freedom and survival.
19
Munich - The Edge of War (2021)
★ 6.9/10Also drama
At the tense 1938 Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.
20
The Company You Keep (2012)
★ 6.2/10Also drama and thriller
A former Weather Underground activist goes on the run from a journalist who discovers his identity.