Movies Like Once a Year on Blackpool Sands

If you liked Once a Year on Blackpool Sands (2021), a drama movie directed by Karlton Parris, 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
The Long Day Closes (1992)
★ 7.2/10Also drama
Bud is a lonely and quiet boy whose moments of solace occur when he sits in rapture at the local cinema, watching towering and iconic figures on the movie screen. The movies give Bud the strength to get through another…
2
Hounddog (2008)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
3
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
★ 7.3/10Also drama
Huw Morgan, the academically inclined youngest son in a proud family of Welsh coal miners, witnesses the tumultuous events of his young life during a period of rapid social change. At the dawn of the 20th-century, a…
4
The Boys in the Band (2020)
★ 6.8/10Also drama
At a birthday party in 1968 New York, a surprise guest and a drunken game leave seven gay friends reckoning with unspoken feelings and buried truths.
5
Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
★ 7/10Also drama
The story of two radically different men thrown together in a Latin American prison cell. One is Valentin, a journalist being tortured for his political beliefs. The other is Molina, a gay window-dresser who fills…
6
Train Dreams (2025)
★ 7.3/10Also drama
A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America.
7
Howl (2010)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his…
8
Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
Recently divorced career woman Alex Greville begins a romantic relationship with glamorous mod artist Bob Elkin, fully aware that he's also intimately involved with middle-aged doctor Daniel Hirsh. For both Alex and…
9
Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
A gallery of characters in Brooklyn in the 1950s are crushed by their surroundings and selves: a union strike leader discovers he is gay; a prostitute falls in love with one of her clients; a family cannot cope with…
10
Gods and Monsters (1998)
★ 6.9/10Also drama
It's 1957, and James Whale's heyday as the director of "Frankenstein," "Bride of Frankenstein" and "The Invisible Man" is long behind him. Retired and a semi-recluse, he lives his days accompanied only by images from…
11
Flow (1996)
★ 7.7/10Also drama
A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.
12
Goodbye June (2025)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.
13
Skin (2009)
★ 6.4/10Also drama
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
14
Girl in the Box (2016)
★ 6.7/10Also drama
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.
15
Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998)
★ 6.1/10Also drama
In the 1960s, British painter Francis Bacon surprises a burglar and invites him to share his bed. The burglar, a working class man named George Dyer, accepts. After the unique beginning to their love affair, the…
16
Adopt a Highway (2019)
★ 6.9/10Also drama
Russ Millings has just been released from prison after serving 21 years for a 3rd strike conviction for possessing an ounce of marijuana. As he tries to adapt to a world he doesn’t recognize – including trying to learn…
17
Living (2022)
★ 7/10Also drama
London, 1953. Mr. Williams, a veteran civil servant, is an important cog within the city's bureaucracy as it struggles to rebuild in the aftermath of World War II. Buried under paperwork at the office and lonely at…
18
Cardboard Boxer (2016)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.
19
The Beaver (2011)
★ 6.4/10Also drama
Suffering from a severe case of depression, toy company CEO Walter Black begins using a beaver hand puppet to help him open up to his family. With his father seemingly going insane, adolescent son Porter pushes for his…
20
The Nest (2020)
★ 6.1/10Also drama
Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban…