arloGet the appMovies like Capernaum
2018 · Movie · R · your starting pointIf Capernaum is the itch, these scratch it — some louder, some quieter. Free ones first.
Movies like Capernaum, ranked
1. Desert Son (2018)
This Sudanese-Lebanese co-production mirrors Capernaum's unflinching portrayal of childhood survival in extreme poverty, where young protagonists navigate moral compromise and systemic abandonment through a series of escalating transgressions that ultimately demand reckoning.
2. One Battle After Another (2025)
Nadine Labaki's unflinching portrait of childhood survival under systemic neglect finds its echo in this film's examination of how parental chaos and political upheaval force young people into premature moral reckoning.
3. 23 000 Lives (2026)
The film channels the same unflinching moral reckoning as Capernaum—ordinary people forced to confront systemic injustice and their own complicity through direct, personal responsibility for vulnerable lives.
4. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)
This British New Wave drama shares Capernaum's unflinching portrait of a marginalized youth whose alienation from society crystallizes through a pivotal act of defiance, using his individual struggle as an indictment of systemic neglect.
5. This Boy's Life (1993)
Robert De Niro's volatile patriarch mirrors the negligent guardianship that drives Capernaum's protagonist toward survival on the streets, both films using a child's perspective to indict the adults who fail them most catastrophically.
6. Problem Child (1990)
The courtroom finale's exploration of a child's legal agency against parental failure mirrors this film's central question of who truly bears responsibility for a young person's welfare.
8. Run (2020)
Nadine Labaki's unflinching examination of childhood agency and institutional failure finds parallel urgency in this claustrophobic portrait of a young person fighting for autonomy against a caregiver's suffocating control.
Tell me what kind of night it is — I'll pick the one for you.