American Pastoral
Set in postwar America, a man watches his seemingly perfect life fall apart as his daughter's new political affiliation threatens to destroy their family.
Movies Like American Pastoral
Similar in style, tone, and themes — find your next watch.
The Hate U Give
2018★ 8.1
Raised in a poverty-stricken slum, a 16-year-old girl named Starr now attends a suburban prep school. After she witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend, she's torn between her two very different worlds as she tries to speak her truth.
Disgrace
2008★ 6.2
Disgrace is the story of a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his cherished daughter. After having an affair with a student, he moves to the Eastern Cape, where he gets caught up in a mess of post-apartheid politics.
The Ice Storm
1997★ 6.9
In the weekend after thanksgiving 1973 the Hood family is skidding out of control. Then an ice storm hits, the worst in a century.
Speak
2004★ 7.1
Freshman high-school student Melinda has refused to speak ever since she called the cops on a popular summer party. With her old friends snubbing her for being a rat, and her parents too busy to notice her troubles, she folds into herself, trying to hide her secret: that star senior Andy raped her at the party. But Melinda does manage to find solace in her art class headed by Mr. Freeman.
She Rides Shotgun
2025★ 7.0
Newly released from prison and marked for death by unrelenting enemies, Nate must now protect his estranged 11-year-old daughter, Polly, at all costs. With scant resources and no one to trust, Nate and Polly forge a bond under fire as he shows her how to fight and survive—and she teaches him the true meaning of unconditional love.
The Marsh King's Daughter
2023★ 6.4
Helena, a woman living a seemingly ordinary life, hides a dark secret—her father is the infamous 'Marsh King', the man who kept her and her mother captive in the wilderness for years. After a lifetime of trying to escape her past, Helena is forced to face her demons when her father unexpectedly escapes from prison.
Winged Creatures
2009★ 5.9
A psychotic man opens fire in a diner, murdering numerous people before killing himself. The survivors struggle in different ways following this horrendous event: a doctor doubts his own instincts and elects to use an experimental medical procedure on his wife, while a gambler believes he's on a lucky streak. A waitress begins engaging in promiscuous sex, and a young girl whose father is among the dead gains unexpected fame.
Nocturnal Animals
2016★ 7.4
Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.
Last Exit to Brooklyn
1989★ 6.4
A gallery of characters in Brooklyn in the 1950s are crushed by their surroundings and selves: a union strike leader discovers he is gay; a prostitute falls in love with one of her clients; a family cannot cope with the fact that their daughter is illegitimately pregnant.
20th Century Women
2016★ 7.3
In 1979 Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbour – to help with Jamie's upbringing.
This Boy's Life
1993★ 7.1
When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.
Escape from Pretoria
2020★ 7.2
South Africa, 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white political activists from the African National Congress imprisoned by the apartheid regime, put a plan in motion to escape from the infamous Pretoria Prison.
Freedom Writers
2007★ 7.9
A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.
The Many Saints of Newark
2021★ 6.3
Young Anthony Soprano is growing up in one of the most tumultuous eras in Newark, N.J., history, becoming a man just as rival gangsters start to rise up and challenge the all-powerful DiMeo crime family. Caught up in the changing times is the uncle he idolizes, Dickie Moltisanti, whose influence over his nephew will help shape the impressionable teenager into the all-powerful mob boss, Tony Soprano.
Seberg
2019★ 5.9
An ambitious young FBI agent is assigned to investigate iconic actress Jean Seberg when she becomes embroiled in the tumultuous civil rights movement in late 1960s Los Angeles.
Georgetown
2019★ 5.9
Ulrich Mott is an eccentric and versatile social climber with grandiose plans to affect United States foreign policy. Encouraged in his attempts by his strategically chosen (and much older) wife, the well-connected journalist Elsa Brecht, Mott has a knack for making himself indispensable and impossible to ignore. The only one seemingly immune to his charms is Elsa's daughter Amanda, who might simply disapprove of her mother marrying a much younger man - or perhaps she senses something more sinister beneath the smooth-talking surface?
Embattled
2020★ 6.8
The eldest son of a ruthlessly tough MMA champion must fight his way out of the abusive cycle his father has continued.
Fast Charlie
2023★ 6.2
When his aging mob boss is whacked, Charlie Swift, a loyal friend and hired gun, will stop at nothing to destroy the upcoming crew that took him out.
Derailed
2005★ 6.4
When two married business executives having an affair are blackmailed by a violent criminal, they are forced to turn the tables on him to save their families.
Straw Dogs
2011★ 5.9
A young couple moves to a quaint southern town. Soon their perfect getaway turns out to become a living hell when dark secrets and lethal passions spiral out of control.