50 Movies Like Les Misérables (2012) You Need to Watch Next
Updated August 2026
View Les Misérables details →Tom Hooper's 2012 film brings the hit stage musical, drawn from Victor Hugo's novel, to the screen with its songs performed live on set. Set in nineteenth-century France, it follows Jean Valjean, imprisoned for stealing bread, as he tries to build a new life while the dogged policeman Javert refuses to let him go. Their long pursuit eventually crosses paths with the student uprisings in Paris. This is grand, emotional period drama sung almost throughout, so your enjoyment hinges on embracing the sung-through musical form. Best suited to viewers who love sweeping stories of guilt, mercy and revolution, and don't mind a long, heartfelt runtime.
If you loved Les Misérables (2012) by Tom Hooper, here are 50 movies that share its content DNA. iRankMovies measures real similarity using cosine similarity across eight weighted dimensions — genre (50%), tone (12%), pace (10%), structure (8%), era (7%), theme (6%), audience (4%) and narrative perspective (3%) — not just the rating. The closest matches according to our analysis are The Ten Commandments, Sully, Only the Brave. Every title is ranked by how closely it matches and backed by the iRank Score, a composite of IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and TMDb across 12,000+ analysed titles.
The Best Movies Similar to Les Misérables
Selected for their real similarity in content, these are the movies that share the most with Les Misérables in terms of theme, narrative tone, and cinematic style. Every recommendation goes beyond genre — we evaluate the type of conflict, pacing, dramatic context, and the experience they create for viewers.
The Ten Commandments
1956 · Cecil B. DeMille
Escaping death, a Hebrew infant is raised in a royal household to become a prince. Upon discovery of his true heritage, Moses embarks on a personal quest to reclaim his destiny as the leader and liber
In common: Drama · History
Sully
2016 · Clint Eastwood
On 15 January 2009, the world witnessed the 'Miracle on the Hudson' when Captain 'Sully' Sullenberger glided his disabled plane onto the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 souls aboard. However
In common: Drama · History
Only the Brave
2017 · Joseph Kosinski
Members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots battle deadly wildfires to save an Arizona town.
In common: Drama · History
Silence
2016 · Martin Scorsese
In the 17th century, two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to Japan in an attempt to locate their mentor, who is rumored to have committed apostasy, and to propagate Catholicism.
In common: Drama · History
Lincoln
2012 · Steven Spielberg
The revealing story of the 16th US President's tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war,
In common: Drama · History
Mary Queen of Scots
2018 · Josie Rourke
In 1561, Mary Stuart, widow of the King of France, returns to Scotland, reclaims her rightful throne and menaces the future of Queen Elizabeth I as ruler of England, because she has a legitimate claim
In common: Drama · History
Elizabeth
1998 · Shekhar Kapur
The story of the ascension to the throne and the early reign of Queen Elizabeth the First, the endless attempts by her council to marry her off, the Catholic hatred of her and her romance with Lord Ro
In common: Drama · History
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
2019 · Chiwetel Ejiofor
Against all the odds, a thirteen year old boy in Malawi invents an unconventional way to save his family and village from famine.
In common: Drama · History
Young & Beautiful
2013 · François Ozon
Isabelle, a 17-year-old student, loses her virginity during a quick holiday romance. When she returns home, she begins a secret life as a prostitute for a year.
In common: Drama
Train Dreams
2025 · Clint Bentley
A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America.
In common: Drama
Pleasure
2021 · Ninja Thyberg
19 year old Linnéa leaves her small town in Sweden and heads for Los Angeles with the aim of becoming the world's next big porn star, but the road to her goal turns out to be bumpier than she imagined
In common: Drama
Scent of a Woman
1992 · Martin Brest
Charlie Simms is a student at a private preparatory school who comes from a poor family. To earn the money for his flight home to Gresham, Oregon for Christmas, Charlie takes a job over Thanksgiving l
In common: Drama
The Whale
2022 · Darren Aronofsky
A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption.
In common: Drama
Ferrari
2023 · Michael Mann
Set during the summer of 1957. Ex-racecar driver, Enzo Ferrari, is in crisis. Bankruptcy stalks the company he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their tempestuous marriage str
In common: Drama · History
The Hunt
2012 · Thomas Vinterberg
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 brutal
In common: Drama
Magnolia
1999 · Paul Thomas Anderson
On one random day in the San Fernando Valley, a dying father, a young wife, a male caretaker, a famous lost son, a police officer in love, a boy genius, an ex-boy genius, a game show host and an estra
In common: Drama
Moonlight
2016 · Barry Jenkins
The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while gra
In common: Drama
Detachment
2011 · Tony Kaye
A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting
In common: Drama
I Am Sam
2001 · Jessie Nelson
Sam, a neurodivergent man, has a daughter with a homeless woman who abandons them when they leave the hospital, leaving Sam to raise Lucy on his own. But as Lucy grows up, Sam's limitations as a paren
In common: Drama
Still Alice
2014 · Richard Glatzer
Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, is a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words. When she receives a devastating diagnosis, Alice and her family find their bon
In common: Drama
The Founder
2016 · John Lee Hancock
The true story of how Ray Kroc, a salesman from Illinois, met Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California. Kroc was impressed by the brothers’ speedy system
In common: Drama · History
Flight
2012 · Robert Zemeckis
Commercial airline pilot Whip Whitaker has a problem with drugs and alcohol, though so far he's managed to complete his flights safely. His luck runs out when a disastrous mechanical malfunction sends
In common: Drama
Showgirls
1995 · Paul Verhoeven
Fresh to Las Vegas with no connections, Nomi Malone takes a job as an exotic dancer. Her talents are quickly noticed by Cristal, a headlining dancer who senses an opportunity to bolster her own act. B
In common: Drama
Radical
2023 · Christopher Zalla
In a Mexican border town plagued by neglect, corruption, and violence, a frustrated teacher tries an unorthodox new method to break through his students’ apathy and unlock their curiosity, their poten
In common: Drama
Rocky Balboa
2006 · Sylvester Stallone
When he loses a highly publicized virtual boxing match to ex-champ Rocky Balboa, reigning heavyweight titleholder Mason Dixon retaliates by challenging the Italian Stallion to a 10-round exhibition bo
In common: Drama
Silenced
2011 · Hwang Dong-hyuk
Based on actual events that took place at Gwangju Inhwa School for the hearing-impaired, where young deaf students were the victims of repeated sexual assaults by faculty members over a period of five
In common: Drama
Lion
2016 · Garth Davis
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 o
In common: Drama
Close
2022 · Lukas Dhont
Two 13-year-old boys spend an idyllic summer together, but their connection is put to the test when they become the subject of speculation at school.
In common: Drama
Mud
2013 · Jeff Nichols
Two teenage boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and help him reunite with his lover and escape an avenging family and their armed posse.
In common: Drama
Awakenings
1990 · Penny Marshall
Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a shy research physician, uses an experimental drug to "awaken" the catatonic victims of a rare disease. Leonard is the first patient to receive the controversial treatment. His awa
In common: Drama
Marriage Story
2019 · Noah Baumbach
A stage director and an actress struggle through a grueling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal extremes.
In common: Drama
The Fabelmans
2022 · Steven Spielberg
Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of f
In common: Drama
Darkest Hour
2017 · Joe Wright
In May 1940, the fate of World War II hangs on Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Adolf Hitler or fight on knowing that it could mean the end of the British Empire.
In common: Drama · History
Erin Brockovich
2000 · Steven Soderbergh
A twice-divorced mother of three who sees an injustice, takes on the bad guy and wins -- with a little help from her push-up bra. Erin goes to work for an attorney and comes across medical records des
In common: Drama
A River Runs Through It
1992 · Robert Redford
The Maclean brothers, Paul and Norman, live a relatively idyllic life in rural Montana, spending much of their time fly fishing. The sons of a minister, the boys eventually part company when Norman mo
In common: Drama
Capernaum
2018 · Nadine Labaki
After running away from his negligent parents, committing a violent crime and being sentenced to five years in jail, a hardened, streetwise 12-year-old Lebanese boy sues his parents in protest of the
In common: Drama
The Father
2020 · Florian Zeller
A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages and, as he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reali
In common: Drama
Dallas Buyers Club
2013 · Jean-Marc Vallée
Loosely based on the true-life tale of Ron Woodroof, a drug-taking, women-loving, homophobic man who in 1986 was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and given thirty days to live.
In common: Drama · History
Dogtooth
2009 · Yorgos Lanthimos
Three teenagers are confined to an isolated country estate that could very well be on another planet. The trio spend their days listening to endless homemade tapes that teach them a whole new vocabula
In common: Drama
The Florida Project
2017 · Sean Baker
The story of a precocious six year-old and her ragtag group of friends whose summer break is filled with childhood wonder, possibility and a sense of adventure while the adults around them struggle wi
In common: Drama
The 33
2015 · Patricia Riggen
Based on the true story of the collapse of a mine in San Jose, Chile—that left 33 miners isolated underground for 69 days.
In common: Drama · History
Oppenheimer
2023 · Christopher Nolan
The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.
In common: Drama · History
Nuremberg
2025 · James Vanderbilt
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 Gör
In common: Drama · History
Caligula
1979 · Tinto Brass
After the death of the paranoid emperor Tiberius, Caligula, his heir, seizes power and plunges the empire into a bloody spiral of madness and depravity.
In common: Drama · History
Hidden Figures
2016 · Theodore Melfi
The untold story of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson – brilliant African-American women working at NASA and serving as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history
In common: Drama · History
How to Have Sex
2023 · Molly Manning Walker
Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday—drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives.
In common: Drama
The Babysitters
2008 · David Ross
Seventeen-year-old Shirley is a good student who works as a babysitter in order to make money for college. One night Michael, a father Shirley works for, confesses he's unhappy with married life. Shir
In common: Drama
Malena
2000 · Giuseppe Tornatore
12-year-old Renato experiences three significant events on the same day: the beginning of the Second World War, getting a bike, and witnessing the arrival of the gorgeous Malèna. Through his eyes, we
In common: Drama
Nymphomaniac: Vol. I
2013 · Lars von Trier
A man named Seligman finds a fainted wounded woman in an alley and he brings her home. She tells him that her name is Joe and that she is nymphomaniac. Joe tells her life and sexual experiences with h
In common: Drama
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1975 · Miloš Forman
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
In common: Drama
Popular Drama series
Breaking Bad
2008 · Michelle MacLaren
Walter White, a New Mexico chemistry teacher, is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given a prognosis of only two years left to live. He becomes filled with a sense of fearlessness and an unrelenting
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
2023 · Kazutaka Yamanaka
After the party of heroes defeated the Demon King, they restored peace to the land and returned to lives of solitude. Generations pass, and the elven mage Frieren comes face to face with humanity’s m
The Chosen
2019 · Tyler Thompson
The life of Christ through the eyes of those who encountered him.
When Life Gives You Tangerines
2025 · Park Sang-hyun
In Jeju, a spirited girl and a steadfast boy's island story blossoms into a lifelong tale of setbacks and triumphs — proving love endures across time.
