Best movies like Side by Side
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Lauren and her younger brother Harvey risk being taken into care when their grandmother, who is their legal guardian, becomes ill. Lauren accepts the offer of a scholarship to a prestigious sports academy on the understanding that she and Harvey stay together while living with Janice, her duplicitous and ambitious agent. It soon becomes clear that there are plans to split the pair up; when Harvey runs away to find their long-lost grandfather, who hasn’t been heard from for years, Lauren follows. En route the pair discover that, despite all their differences, when they are side by side they are strong enough to deal with anything. This beautifully shot British debut is part family drama, part coming of age story and a road trip that nods towards some of the greats of children’s literature. The young leads give compelling and moving performances that make for an emphatically British family film that’s refreshingly free of even the hint of a franchise. (Source: LFF programme).
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 37
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: UK
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags:
Best tv shows and movies like Side by Side (2013):
Similar in 83%
Hassan (2018)
Plot Summary:
The owner of a failing charity moves abroad to forget his troubles but still feels the call of his homeland.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 14
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Afghanistan, Canada
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: rough, bleak, suspenseful
Similar in 82%
Elvis the Pig (2022)
Plot Summary:
A young girl learns she may have to sell her beloved pet pig, Elvis, to a local farmer to save the family farm. Unbeknownst to her, the pig is in real danger, the farmer is planning a pig roast and not a forever home. After getting wind of the plan, the whole family bands together to save Elvis, uniting to reclaim their farm and prove that love is worth more than money.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 75
Genere: Family
Country: Canada
Duration: 70 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
No Worries (1993)
Plot Summary:
A family is forced off their farm due to drought, and move to Sydney.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 57
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Australia, UK
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: independent film
Similar in 81%
Gregorio (1984)
Plot Summary:
Gregorio, a boy from the impoverished countryside of Peru emigrates to Lima, the capital city. Experiencing a cultural shock due to the chaotic nature of the city, he must challenge himself to learn Spanish, since his native tongue is Quechua, and survive in this whole prejudiced new world. A hostile world for poor immigrants.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 141
Genere: Drama
Country: Peru
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
The Blind Orchestra (2014)
Plot Summary:
In the early years of the reign of Hassan II, Houcine, a fan of the new king, is the director of a popular orchestra and the proud father of Mimou. This is a very particular troupe, male musicians who are sometimes forced to pretend that they are blind in order to play at parties reserved for women in conservative Moroccan families. But then young Minou runs into Chama, the neighbor’s new maid.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 129
Genere: Drama, Family, Romance
Country: France, Morocco
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 89%
The night of the brother (2005)
Plot Summary:
The Night of the brother ("La Noche del Hermano") is a chiaroscuro tale in which the characters' not always explicit feelings cover the gamut from darkness to light through the thin line between love and fear. Because the events of life are often less astonishing than the way they are shown to us.
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 157
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 76%
Lost Birds (2015)
Plot Summary:
It is 1915 in an Armenian village in Anatolia. Bedo and Maryam return from their secret dovecote only to find an empty house and a ghost village. The children embark on a journey to search for their mother, along with their bird 'Bacik.'.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 181
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Turkey
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, thought provoking, captivating, disturbing
Similar in 88%
Wallah Be (2002)
Plot Summary:
Life is not easy when you are a Danish kid called Aksel who loves meatballs. Especially when you would much rather want to be one of the cool Muslim boys who wear those golden necklaces and say cool stuff in Arabic. To worsen things, during the holidays Aksel gets teamed up with two girls, Fatima and Annika, to perform a song to the local youth club's song contest, Melodi Grand Prix. The girls want to do a girly pop song, and the entire jury panel consist of Muslim boys! Meanwhile the kids find a stray dog who needs a home. This leads to nothing but trouble, and one of the girls, Fatima, is grounded by her parents for the entire holiday season. Now she can't perform the song, and Aksel realizes he must take action! He enters an unknown world of rituals and cultural perceptions, and fixes everything in his own unique way.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 181
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Denmark
Duration: 82 min
Plot tags: sincere, captivating
Similar in 77%
Homecoming (1996)
Plot Summary:
When their mother disappears, a group of siblings are forced to fend for themselves, and make their way on their own. They eventually meet their grandmother, a loner who is reluctant to take them in. Based on the novel by Cynthia Voigt.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: USA
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: sentimental, uplifting, touching, feel good, serious, realistic, crying
Similar in 84%
Grandmothers and Grandchildren (1969)
Plot Summary:
The Great Patriotic War is coming to an end. Six-year-old Zuriko lives with his grandmother in a small Georgian village. His mother abandoned him and his father is at the front. The boy waits for his father, but he doesn't come back from the war alone, but with a new wife, Iano. A conflict arises between the three.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 17
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
Gikor (1982)
Plot Summary:
A village boy meets his tragic fate when he is sent to the city to work for a rich trader.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 106
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Soviet Union
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 80%
Alternate Weeks (2009)
Plot Summary:
A 12 year old girl and her 8 year old brother live one week with their mother and the next week with their father. The girl blamers her mother, a super businesswoman for the divorce and turns all her anger on her. She prefers the weeks with her father who is flat broke after leaving his bank job to give people free hugs on street corners. Her brother channels his sense of injustice into the battle to save the planet. As the school year progresses and her parents struggle to mend their lives and as the girl approaches her 13th birthday, she learns to see the world in a new way.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 296
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: France
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 81%
Back Home (TV Movie) (1989)
Plot Summary:
During World War II, young Rusty was sent to America for safety. It's now five years later and the spunky redhead returns to her native England. From the family she hardly remembers to snobby classmates and rule-filled boarding schools, Rusty must adapt to a whole new way of life.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 147
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: crying
Similar in 80%
Fandry (2013)
Plot Summary:
Nagraj Manjule’s film is a scorching indictment of the caste system that persists in modern India despite legislation introduced since independence. It is depicted through the eyes of an intelligent Dalit (untouchable) teenager, Jabya, who has a deeply rooted inferiority complex about his looks, caste and his family’s staggering poverty. These feelings prevent him from expressing his affection for his fellow classmate and cherished love, the fair-skinned Shalu, who is the daughter of a higher-caste family. His father is against him going to school and aspiring too highly and fellow villagers expect him to do menial work like the rest of his clan.
IMDB Rating: 8.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: India
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: realistic, sincere, emotional, touching, captivating, inspirational, offbeat, intellectual, experimental, mind blowing
Similar in 88%
Heidi (1965)
Plot Summary:
After her mother's death, the five year old orphan Heidi is brought by her aunt to her grumpy grandfather Alp, who leads a hermit life in the beautiful Swiss mountains. Heidi's natural cheerfulness quickly brings renewed joy in grandfather Alps life. Heidi becomes friends with the goatherd Peter who is about the same age as her and spent two beautiful years in the pasture. But then she is sent by her aunt to Frankfurt in the house of Consul Sesemann where Heidi should get a proper education and upbringing. After some initial difficulties Heidi eventually adjusts to her new situation and makes friends with Clara, the paralyzed daughter of the consul. Only with the strict governess Miss Rottingmeier she keeps getting in trouble. Miss Rottingmeier clearly can not cope with the free and outdoors spirit of Heidi. But Heidi lets a fresh wind blow through the Sesemann house and even causes Clara to overcome her illness.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 179
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Austria
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 82%
The Glass-blower's Children (1998)
Plot Summary:
Based on the novel by Maria Gripe, this is the story of two children, Klas and Klara, growing up in the poor Swedish countryside of the mid-19th century. Their father Albert is a glass-blower, famous for his beautiful vases, but still unable to earn enough money for his wife Sofia and the children. At a spring fair a distinguished gentleman arrives and buys all of Albert's glassware. After this nothing will be the same again. Klas and Klara are kidnapped and taken to a strange castle.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Sweden, Norway, Denmark
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: offbeat, serious, stylized
Similar in 89%
Youth (2012)
Plot Summary:
Juliette, twenty, falls in love. At the same time her father is diagnosed with a fatal disease.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 40
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: France
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, emotional, realistic, crying
Similar in 81%
Christmas in Canaan (2009)
Plot Summary:
Set in the 1960s, Christmas in Canaan is a drama about a black family and a white family that learn to love each other out of their Christian beliefs.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 629
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: USA
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: light, atmospheric, sentimental, captivating
Similar in 76%
Little Zizou (2008)
Plot Summary:
The story of a Pasie boy's view of his community in modern day Mumbai.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 383
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: India
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: realistic, captivating, sentimental, emotional, serious
Similar in 84%
The War with Grandpa (2020)
Plot Summary:
Sixth-grader Peter is pretty much your average kid—he likes gaming, hanging with his friends and his beloved pair of Air Jordans. But when his recently widowed grandfather Ed moves in with Peter’s family, the boy is forced to give up his most prized possession of all, his bedroom. Unwilling to let such an injustice stand, Peter devises a series of increasingly elaborate pranks to drive out the interloper, but Grandpa Ed won’t go without a fight.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 24000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Family
Country: USA, UK, Canada
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: light, funny, feel good, humorous, captivating, entertaining, family comedy
Similar in 89%
Sylvester (1985)
Plot Summary:
Charlie is a 16-year-old orphan struggling to raise her two younger brothers when she endeavors to train a wild horse she names Sylvester and turn him into an Olympic jumping champion.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 491
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: USA
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: fairy tale, uplifting, touching, feel good, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 89%
Baduk (1992)
Plot Summary:
A boy and his sister are abducted from the streets of Tehran and sold into slavery.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 383
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Iran
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: crying
Similar in 88%
Storm Boy (2019)
Plot Summary:
When a highly successful retired businessman, Michael Kingley, starts to see things he at first can't explain, his life takes a dramatic turn. And when his grand-daughter rebels against her father, he is forced to re-evaluate his life and to act to prevent her going down a similar path to one he took years before. He tells her his story, when as a boy he lived a lonely existence with his father, Hideaway Tom, on an isolated coastline and how a bond with an orphaned pelican, Mr. Percival, changed his life forever.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Australia
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, touching, captivating, disturbing, motivational, extraordinary
Similar in 87%
Carrie's War (2004)
Plot Summary:
Carrie's War is an adaptation of a 1973 children's novel by Nina Bawden, set during the Second World War and following two evacuees, Carrie and her younger brother Nick.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 494
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, bleak
Similar in 82%
Hard Goodbyes: My Father (2002)
Plot Summary:
Elias is a 10 year old boy living in Athens with his family in 1969 and has an interest in Jules Verne's stories and in astronomy. His father, with whom Elias has a strong relationship, is a travelling salesman and his absence affects the whole family. On the eve of his departure for a long business trip he promises his son that he'll be back in time to watch the moon landing on TV together, but he is killed in a car accident. While Elias' mother and his elder brother deal with the loss in their own way, Elias refuses to accept his father's death. He creates an imaginary world, in which his father is alive. He shares fictitious stories with his friends, he sends letters to his grandmother on behalf of his father and he dreams of places like he did with him. Elias' mother and his godfather, who do everything to bring him back to reality, take him to a summer house. On the night of the moon landing Elias meets his father in his own way and comes to terms with his loss.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 479
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Greece, Germany
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sincere, touching, serious, captivating, entertaining
Similar in 89%
My Sweet Orange Tree (2012)
Plot Summary:
Zezé is an 8 year old boy who, although a naughty boy, has a good heart. He leads a very modest life, due to the fact that his father has been unemployed for a long time, and has the habit of having long conversations with a sweet orange tree which is in his backyard. Until one day he meets Portuga, a man who begins to help him and soon becomes his best friend.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Brazil
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, atmospheric, captivating, serious, realistic
Similar in 77%
Bridge to Terabithia (1985)
Plot Summary:
Jess Aarons and new girl Leslie Burke create a world of their own and call it Terabithia and pretend to be the king and queen. They return to their magical kingdom every day after school.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 730
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: Canada
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: crying, independent film
Similar in 84%
Owd Bob (1998)
Plot Summary:
Recently orphaned David must move to the Isle of Man to live with his grandfather, Adam, who's a sheep farmer. Both long for the end of the summer, having nothing in common but their love for dogs, notably Adam's precious champion sheepdog Bob. David strikes a friendship with Maggie, the sassy daughter of friendly neighbor Keith Moore, but Adam hates that family on account of an old canine competition-related tragedy. Other neighbors suspect Bob and the Moore's dog of the recent series of nocturnal sheep-kills.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 418
Genere: Family, Drama
Country: UK, Canada
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, independent film
Similar in 77%
Summer of the Colt (1989)
Plot Summary:
This award-winning film by André Melançon -- set on a ranch on the pampas of Argentina -- tells the story of three children spending a summer with their grandfather. The youngest, Felipe, makes friends with a puppy; his older brother, Daniel, breaks and train his first horse; their 13-year-old sister, Laura, struggles with the transition between childhood and growing up. The kids find it difficult to adapt to their proud and stubborn grandfather, and he learns that he has to change his ways and try to understand them as they all experience the joys and sorrows of growing up and growing old. ~ Alice Duncan, Rovi.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 130
Genere: Family, Drama
Country: Argentina, Canada
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: touching, feel good, serious, realistic
Similar in 78%
Pollyanna (2003)
Plot Summary:
Pollyanna Whittier goes to live with her wealthy but bitter aunt after the tragic death of her father. Pollyanna shares a game her father taught her -- the 'Glad Game' -- in which everyone can find a silver lining in even the darkest cloud, and her sunny nature, good humor and determination to look on the bright side of life prove to have an astonishing effect on those around her. With the help of her orphaned friend, Jimmy Bean, she casts her spell on the grumpiest townsfolk of Beldingsville -- including the cynical shut-in Mrs. Snow, the morose millionaire Mr. Pendleton and the enigmatic Dr. Chilton. And Pollyanna masterminds the romance between her Aunt's maid, Nancy, and the handyman, Tim. It is only Aunt Polly, who cannot bring herself to embrace Pollyanna's innocence and joy. But all is not straightforward in Pollyanna's war against pessimism, since she must overcome a personal tragedy that threatens to banish "glad" from her vocabulary forever.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Family
Country: UK
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: touching, feel good, uplifting, sentimental, realistic, semi serious, humorous, tear jerker, period drama, tearjerker