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The Help poster

Movies that feel likeThe Help (2011)

Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.

If you loved The Help, the closest films we have are A Separation (2011), Ida (2013) and Roma (2018). All three share The Help's contemplative feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is Fences (2016).

🍅 75% Rotten Tomatoes★ 8.1 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Tate Taylorcontemplative
11 of 12 streaming nowNetflix · Amazon Prime Video · Hulu

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If The Help hit the spot, these will too

A Separation poster
A Separation
2011 · dir. Asghar Farhadi
🍅 99%★ 8.3dramaHulu

Household employment exposing the fault lines of class and conscience

The difference: Morally knotty and unresolved — no warm uplift waiting at the end

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.

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

A 1960s woman uncovering truths her world was built to bury

The difference: Austere Polish minimalism — 80 stark minutes, no comfort

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.

Roma poster
Roma
2018 · dir. Alfonso Cuarón
🍅 96%★ 7.6dramaNetflix

A domestic worker's quiet life made the emotional center of the film

The difference: Slow, wordless observation in black and white — no crowd-pleasing arc

In 1970s Mexico City, two domestic workers help a mother of four while her husband is away for an extended period of time.

The Butler poster
The Butler
2013 · dir. Lee Daniels
🍅 72%★ 7.2drama

Decades of American racism witnessed from inside white households

The difference: Sprawls across presidencies — history tour over intimate ensemble

Cecil Gaines was a sharecropper's son who grew up in the 1920s as a domestic servant for the white family who casually destroyed his. Eventually striking out on his own, Cecil becomes a hotel valet of such efficiency and discreteness in the 1950s that he becomes a butler in the White House itself. There, Cecil would serve numerous US Presidents over the decades as a passive witness of history with the American Civil Rights Movement gaining momentum even as his family has troubles of its own. As his wife, Gloria, struggles with alcoholism and his defiant eldest son, Louis, strives for a just world, Cecil must decide whether he should take action in his own way.

The Book Thief poster
The Book Thief
2013 · dir. Brian Percival
🍅 50%★ 7.5drama

Ordinary decency practiced quietly under an oppressive order

The difference: Sanitized wartime sentiment — softer even than The Help

While subjected to the horrors of WWII Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. Under the stairs in her home, a Jewish refugee is being sheltered by her adoptive parents.

Crash poster
Crash
2005 · dir. Paul Haggis
🍅 73%★ 7.7drama

Prejudice traced through interlocking lives across one city

The difference: Blunt and contrived — its collisions feel engineered for lessons

In post-Sept. 11 Los Angeles, tensions erupt when the lives of a Brentwood housewife, her district attorney husband, a Persian shopkeeper, two cops, a pair of carjackers and a Korean couple converge during a 36-hour period.

There Will Be Blood poster
There Will Be Blood
2007 · dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
🍅 91%★ 8.2dramaPrime VideoParamount+

Contemplative drama in both cases

Ruthless silver miner, turned oil prospector, Daniel Plainview, moves to oil-rich California. Using his son to project a trustworthy, family-man image, Plainview cons local landowners into selling him their valuable properties for a pittance. However, local preacher Eli Sunday suspects Plainview's motives and intentions, starting a slow-burning feud that threatens both their lives.

Big Eyes poster
Big Eyes
2014 · dir. Tim Burton
🍅 72%★ 6.9dramaStarz

A '60s woman whose work is claimed by someone with all the power

The difference: One marriage's con, not a community — and race never enters it

In the late 1950s and early '60s, artist Walter Keane achieves unbelievable fame and success with portraits of saucer-eyed waifs. However, no one realizes that his wife, Margaret, is the real painter behind the brush. Although Margaret is horrified to learn that Walter is passing off her work as his own, she is too meek to protest too loudly. It isn't until the Keanes' marriage comes to an end and a lawsuit follows that the truth finally comes to light.

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

A community turning on someone with the town's full self-righteousness

The difference: Inverts the sympathy — the mob's target is innocent, and it hurts

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.

Lion poster
Lion
2016 · dir. Garth Davis
🍅 84%★ 8dramaNetflix

A tearjerker about belonging, memory and finding your people

The difference: A lost-child odyssey — nothing about race in America here

A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.

The Fighter poster
The Fighter
2010 · dir. David O. Russell
🍅 91%★ 7.8dramaParamount+

Drama built on stillness, twice over

Boxer "Irish" Micky Ward's unlikely road to the world light welterweight title. His Rocky-like rise was shepherded by half-brother Dicky, a boxer-turned-trainer who rebounded in life after nearly being KO'd by drugs and crime.

Fences poster
Fences
2016 · dir. Denzel Washington
🍅 92%★ 7.2dramaParamount+

The daily weight of racism on Black lives, rendered with force

The difference: A filmed play — talk-heavy, harsher, and without the uplift

In 1950s Pittsburgh, a frustrated African-American father struggles with the constraints of poverty, racism, and his own inner demons as he tries to raise a family.

In the mood for more contemplative?

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