Movies Like The Magdalene Sisters

If you liked The Magdalene Sisters (2002), a drama and history movie directed by Peter Mullan, 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
Sleepers (1996)
★ 7.6/10Also drama
Two gangsters seek revenge on the state jail worker who during their stay at a youth prison sexually abused them. A sensational court hearing takes place to charge him for the crimes.
2
Cracks (2009)
★ 6.6/10Also drama
Jealousy flares after the headmistress of an elite boarding school for girls becomes obsessed with a new student.
3
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
★ 8.4/10Also drama
A petty criminal fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.
4
Novitiate (2017)
★ 6.5/10Also drama
In the early 1960s, during the Vatican II era, a young woman training to become a nun struggles with issues of faith, sexuality and the changing church.
5
In the Name of the Father (1993)
★ 7.9/10Also drama
A small-time Belfast thief, Gerry Conlon, is wrongly convicted of an IRA bombing in London, along with his father and friends, and spends 15 years in prison fighting to prove his innocence.
6
Dead Man Walking (1995)
★ 7.3/10Also drama
A death row inmate turns for spiritual guidance to a local nun in the days leading up to his scheduled execution for the murders of a young couple.
7
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…
8
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.
9
Hunger (2008)
★ 7.2/10Also drama and history
The story of Bobby Sands, the IRA member who led the 1981 hunger strike during The Troubles in which Irish Republican prisoners tried to win political status.
10
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…
11
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
★ 7.6/10Also drama
Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the…
12
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.
13
Room (2015)
★ 8/10Also drama
Held captive for 7 years in an enclosed space, a woman and her young son finally gain their freedom, allowing the boy to experience the outside world for the first time.
14
Manic (2002)
★ 6.8/10Also drama
In lieu of prison, Lyle, a violent adolescent, is placed in a juvenile mental institution where he encounters a group of equally troubled teens. This motley crew—abused, sexually confused, violent, and yet hanging on…
15
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
★ 8.3/10Also drama
Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for…
16
The Mustang (2019)
★ 6.9/10Also drama
While participating in a rehabilitation program training wild mustangs, a convict at first struggles to connect with the horses and his fellow inmates, but he learns to confront his violent past as he soothes an…
17
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…
18
The Railway Man (2013)
★ 6.8/10Also drama and history
A victim from World War II's "Death Railway" sets out to find those responsible for his torture. A true story.
19
Primal Fear (1996)
★ 7.7/10Also drama
Defense attorney Martin Vail takes on jobs for money and prestige rather than any sense of the greater good. His latest case involves an altar boy, accused of brutally murdering the archbishop of Chicago. Vail finds…
20
Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007)
★ 7.4/10Also drama
Story about the remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer and illustrator and a chaotic homeless man, whom he gets to know during a campaign to release two charity workers from prison.