Movies Like Lingua Franca

If you liked Lingua Franca (2020), a drama movie directed by Isabel Sandoval, 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 Kid Like Jake (2018)
★ 6/10Also drama
On the eve of the admissions cycle for New York City kindergartens, Alex and Greg Wheeler have high hopes for four-year-old Jake. The director of Jake's preschool encourages them to accentuate Jake's gender expansive…
2
Just Charlie (2017)
★ 7/10Also drama
Football star Charlie has the world at her feet. With a top club desperate to sign her, her future is seemingly mapped out. But the teenager sees only a nightmare. Raised as a boy, Charlie is torn between wanting to…
3
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.
4
I Believe in Unicorns (2015)
★ 6.7/10Also drama
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
5
Lilting (2014)
★ 7/10Also drama
A young man of Chinese-Cambodian descent dies, leaving behind his isolated mother and his lover of four years. Though the two don't share a language, they grow close through their grief.
6
August Rush (2007)
★ 7.4/10Also drama
Evan, a musically gifted orphan, runs away from his orphanage and searches New York City for his birth parents. On his journey, he's taken under the wing of the Wizard, a homeless man who lives in an abandoned theater…
7
Paradise (1991)
★ 6.2/10Also drama
A 10-year-old boy spends a summer in the country with a childless couple and a precocious girl.
8
Blue Heron (2026)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
A family of six's fresh start on 1990s Vancouver Island unravels as their youngest child, Sasha, witnesses the increasingly dangerous behavior of her older brother, Jeremy.
9
The Jazz Singer (1927)
★ 6.1/10Also drama
A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the…
10
Reality (2023)
★ 6.4/10Also drama
Augusta, Georgia, United States, June 3, 2017. After running some errands, Reality Winner returns home, where she is approached by two men.
11
And the Band Played On (1993)
★ 6.4/10Also drama
The story of the discovery of the AIDS epidemic and the political infighting of the scientific community hampering the early fight with it.
12
Belle (2013)
★ 7.1/10Also drama
Dido Elizabeth Bell, the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, plays an important role in the campaign to abolish slavery in England.
13
Pretty Boy (2015)
★ 7.5/10Also drama
Sean is taken to a motel and is given a prostitute for his 18th birthday by his father. He must sleep with her to "fix" his questionable homosexuality. "Pretty Boy" is a coming of age story of a young bullied teen…
14
Here (2024)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
15
Love Is Strange (2014)
★ 6.3/10Also drama
After 39 years together, Ben and George finally tie the knot, but George loses his job as a result, and the newlyweds must sell their New York apartment and live apart, relying on friends and family to make ends meet.
16
Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980)
★ 7.3/10Also drama
Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American…
17
Rocky (1976)
★ 7.8/10Also drama
Rocky Balboa is a Philadelphia club fighter who seems to be going nowhere. But when a stroke of fate puts him in the ring with a world heavyweight champion, Rocky knows that it's his one shot at the big time — a…
18
White Frog (2013)
★ 5.9/10Also drama
When Nick, who has Asperger's syndrome, struggles to carry on after the death of his brother Chaz, Chaz's best friend Randy takes Nick under his wing.
19
Buddies (1985)
★ 8.2/10Also drama
David, a naive graduate student, has volunteered to work as a 'buddy' for people dying of AIDS. Assigned to the intensely political Robert, a lifelong activist whose friends and family have abandoned him following his…
20
5 Flights Up (2014)
★ 6/10Also drama
A long-time married couple who've spent their lives together in the same New York apartment become overwhelmed by personal and real estate-related issues when they plan to move away.