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A Separation poster

Movies that feel likeA Separation (2011)

A married couple are faced with a difficult decision – to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.

If you loved A Separation, the closest films we have are About Elly (2009), A Hero (2021) and Loveless (2017). All three share A Separation's contemplative feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is Treeless Mountain (2009).

🍅 99% Rotten Tomatoes★ 8.3 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Asghar Farhadicontemplative
8 of 12 streaming nowNetflix · Amazon Prime Video · MUBI

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If A Separation hit the spot, these will too

About Elly poster
About Elly
2009 · dir. Asghar Farhadi
🍅 99%★ 7.9drama

The same hand behind both of them: Asghar Farhadi

The mysterious disappearance of a kindergarten teacher during a picnic in the north of Iran is followed by a series of misadventures for her fellow travelers.

A Hero poster
A Hero
2021 · dir. Asghar Farhadi
🍅 97%★ 7.5dramaPrime Video

Asghar Farhadi working the same nerve twice

Rahim is in prison because of a debt he was unable to repay. During a two-day leave, he tries to convince his creditor to withdraw his complaint against the payment of part of the sum. But things don't go as planned. Is he truly a hero?

Loveless poster
Loveless
2017 · dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev
🍅 95%★ 7.6drama

Both are built on the same subject: divorce

Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.

Like Father, Like Son poster
Like Father, Like Son
2013 · dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
🍅 86%★ 7.8drama

Drama with a pulse of stillness, in both cases

Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.

Chak De! India poster
Chak De! India
2007 · dir. Shimit Amin
🍅 90%★ 8.1dramaNetflix

Contemplative drama, and it commits to that

A team of rag-tag girls with their own agenda form Team India competing for international fame in field hockey. Their coach, the ex-men's Indian National team captain, returns from a life of shame after being unjustly accused of match fixing in his last match. Can he give the girls the motivation required to win, while dealing with the shadows of his own past?

The Second Mother poster
The Second Mother
2015 · dir. Anna Muylaert
🍅 98%★ 7.8drama

Contemplative drama in both cases

After leaving her daughter Jessica in a small town in Pernambuco to be raised by relatives, Val spends the next 13 years working as a nanny to Fabinho in São Paulo. She has financial stability but has to live with the guilt of having not raised Jessica herself. As Fabinho’s university entrance exams approach, Jessica reappears in her life and seems to want to give her mother a second chance. However, Jessica has not been raised to be a servant and her very existence will turn Val’s routine on its head. With precision and humour, the subtle and powerful forces that keep rigid class structures in place and how the youth may just be the ones to shake it all up.

Ida poster
Ida
2013 · dir. Paweł Pawlikowski
🍅 95%★ 7.4dramaPrime Video

Drama approached the same way

In 1960s Poland, young novitiate Anna is on the verge of taking her vows when she discovers a family secret dating back to the years of the German occupation.

Our Little Sister poster
Our Little Sister
2015 · dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
🍅 93%★ 7.6drama

Both play drama straight

After the death of their estranged father, 3 adult sisters invite their teenaged half-sister to live with them.

Il Divo poster
Il Divo
2008 · dir. Paolo Sorrentino
🍅 92%★ 7.2drama

The same drama instincts

Italy, early '90s. Calm, clever and inscrutable, politician Giulio Andreotti has been synonymous with power for decades. He has survived everything: electoral battles, terrorist massacres, loss of friends, slanderous accusations; but now certain repentant mobsters implicate him in the crimes of Cosa Nostra.

Treeless Mountain poster
Treeless Mountain
2009 · dir. So Yong Kim
🍅 86%★ 7drama

Cut from the same drama cloth

A Korean woman leaves her two young daughters with her sister-in-law to search for their estranged father.

The Hunt poster
The Hunt
2012 · dir. Thomas Vinterberg
🍅 92%★ 8.3dramaPrime Video

Common ground: divorce

A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son’s custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.

Summer Hours poster
Summer Hours
2008 · dir. Olivier Assayas
🍅 94%★ 7.1drama

Both working the same drama territory

After the death of a septuagenarian woman, her three children deliberate over what to do with her estate.

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The best-reviewed films that share A Separation’s defining feeling.