Novitiate
In the early 1960s, during the Vatican II era, a young woman training to become a nun struggles with issues of faith, sexuality and the changing church.
Movies Like Novitiate
Similar in style, tone, and themes — find your next watch.
The Magdalene Sisters
2002★ 7.4
Three young Irish women struggle to maintain their spirits while they endure dehumanizing abuse as inmates of a Magdalene Sisters Asylum.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
2018★ 6.9
Pennsylvania, 1993. After getting caught with another girl, teenager Cameron Post is sent to a conversion therapy center run by the strict Dr. Lydia Marsh and her brother, Reverend Rick, whose treatment consists in repenting for feeling “same sex attraction.” Cameron befriends fellow sinners Jane and Adam, thus creating a new family to deal with the surrounding intolerance.
Father Stu
2022★ 7.1
The true-life story of boxer-turned-priest. When an injury ends his amateur boxing career, Stuart Long moves to Los Angeles to find money and fame. While scraping by as a supermarket clerk, he meets Carmen, a Sunday school teacher who seems immune to his bad-boy charm. Determined to win her over, the longtime agnostic starts going to church to impress her. However, a motorcycle accident leaves him wondering if he can use his second chance to help others, leading to the surprising realization that he's meant to be a Catholic priest.
The Starling Girl
2023★ 6.4
17-year-old Jem Starling struggles with her place within her Christian fundamentalist community. But everything changes when her magnetic youth pastor Owen returns to their church.
Dead Man Walking
1995★ 7.3
A death row inmate turns for spiritual guidance to a local nun in the days leading up to his scheduled execution for the murders of a young couple.
The Third Miracle
1999★ 5.9
The Vatican sends a priest to verify some miracles, performed by a woman who has been nominated for sainthood...
Lolita
1997★ 7.1
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.
Cracks
2009★ 6.6
Jealousy flares after the headmistress of an elite boarding school for girls becomes obsessed with a new student.
The Baby of Mâcon
1993★ 6.9
In 17th-century Tuscany, a church play is performed for the benefit of young aristocrat Cosimo. In the play, a grotesque old woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The child's older sister is quick to exploit the situation, selling blessings from the baby, and even claiming she's the true mother by virgin birth. However, when she attempts to seduce the bishop's son, the Church exacts a terrible revenge.
Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl
1998★ 7.2
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
Pretty Baby
1978★ 7.0
In 1917 New Orleans, a 12-year-old girl is raised in a brothel by her prostitute mother.
Nymphomaniac: Vol. I
2013★ 6.9
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 hundreds of men since she was a young teenager while Seligman tells about his hobbies, such as fly fishing, reading about Fibonacci numbers or listening to organ music.
American Beauty
1999★ 8.0
Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
The Boys of St. Vincent
1994★ 7.2
The true story of boys being sexually abused at their orphanage, run by a religious community in Newfoundland.
Luckiest Girl Alive
2022★ 6.5
A successful woman in New York City finds her life upended when she is forced to confront a dark truth that threatens to unravel her meticulously crafted life.
The Crush
1993★ 6.7
A precocious and obsessive teenager develops a crush on a naive writer with harrowing consequences.
Absolution
1978★ 6.5
At a Catholic boys' school, domineering disciplinarian Father Goddard rules over his pupils with an iron hand. When one of his teenage charges confesses to murder, the dogmatic but deeply repressed Goddard finds his faith challenged and his life spiralling dangerously out of control.
A House of Dynamite
2025★ 6.4
When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.
Ken Park
2003★ 6.0
Teen skater Ken Park (nicknamed Krap Nek; his name spelled and pronounced backward) kills himself at a Visalia skate park; his death bookends the lives of four other young people who knew him: Shawn, the most conventional; Tate brims with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother; and Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.
The Babysitters
2008★ 6.0
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. Shirley has a crush on Michael, and seizes this moment to kiss him. Michael is so happy he presents Shirley with a big tip, which gives her an idea. Shirley plans to make extra money by setting up her teenage friends with other unhappy fathers.