Movies Like The Prisoner of Shark Island

If you liked The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), a drama and history movie directed by John Ford, 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
Papillon (1973)
★ 7.8/10Also drama
A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.
2
Emancipation (2022)
★ 7.7/10Also drama and history
Inspired by the gripping true story of a man who would do anything for his family—and for freedom. When Peter, an enslaved man, risks his life to escape and return to his family, he embarks on a perilous journey of…
3
The Beguiled (1971)
★ 7/10Also history and drama
Offbeat Civil War drama in which a wounded Yankee soldier, after finding refuge in an isolated girls' school in the South towards the end of the war, becomes the object of the young women's sexual fantasies. The…
4
The Professor and the Madman (2019)
★ 7.1/10Also history and drama
Professor James Murray begins work compiling words for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid 19th century, and receives over 10,000 entries from a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum…
5
Shutter Island (2010)
★ 8.2/10Also drama
World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.
6
The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)
★ 6.8/10Also drama and history
In 1971, Stanford's Professor Philip Zimbardo conducts a controversial psychology experiment in which college students pretend to be either prisoners or guards, but the proceedings soon get out of hand. Based on a true…
7
The Debt (2010)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
Rachel Singer is a former Mossad agent who tried to capture a notorious Nazi war criminal – the Surgeon of Birkenau – in a secret Israeli mission that ended with his death on the streets of East Berlin. Now, 30 years…
8
Rosewood (1997)
★ 6.5/10Also drama and history
Spurred by a white woman's lie, vigilantes destroy a black Florida town and slay inhabitants in 1923.
9
The World Will Tremble (2025)
★ 7.5/10Also drama and history
The incredible, untold true story of how a group of prisoners attempt a seemingly impossible escape from the first Nazi death camp in order to provide the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust.
10
Free State of Jones (2016)
★ 6.8/10Also drama and history
In 1863, Mississippi farmer Newt Knight serves as a medic for the Confederate Army. Opposed to slavery, Knight would rather help the wounded than fight the Union. After his nephew dies in battle, Newt returns home to…
11
The Lighthouse (2019)
★ 7.5/10Also drama
Two lighthouse keepers try to maintain their sanity while living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.
12
Mississippi Burning (1988)
★ 7.7/10Also drama
Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in…
13
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
★ 8.7/10Also drama
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden…
14
The Physician (2013)
★ 7.3/10Also drama and history
England, 1021: Born in a miserable mining town, Robert Cole swears to become a physician and vanquish disease and death. His harsh path of many years, a quest for knowledge besieged by countless challenges and…
15
Bronson (2009)
★ 6.9/10Also drama
A young man who was sentenced to 7 years in prison for robbing a post office ends up spending 30 years in solitary confinement. During this time, his own personality is supplanted by his alter ego, Charles Bronson.
16
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
★ 7.7/10Also drama
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's…
17
The Wonder (2022)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
Haunted by her past, a nurse travels from England to a remote Irish village in 1862 to investigate a young girl's supposedly miraculous fast.
18
Conspiracy (2001)
★ 7.3/10Also history and drama
At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, senior Nazi officials meet to determine the manner in which the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" can be best implemented.
19
The Wind and the Lion (1975)
★ 6.5/10Also drama and history
At the beginning of the 20th century an American woman is abducted in Morocco by Berbers, and the attempts to free her range from diplomatic pressure to military intervention.
20
Nuremberg (2025)
★ 7.6/10Also history and drama
In postwar Germany, an American psychiatrist must determine whether Nazi prisoners are fit to go on trial for war crimes, and finds himself in a complex battle of intellect and ethics with Hermann Göring, Hitler's…