Movies Like Paternal Leave
If you loved Paternal Leave's Drama storytelling, these films deliver a similar experience — carefully selected for tone, themes, and emotional depth. Each pick includes where to watch it right now.
★ Top Picks

Small Body
A young woman in early-1900s Italy searches for a mystical sanctuary where her stillborn child can be brought back to life long enough to be baptized.

A Daughter
A middle-aged man, Pietro, becomes a widower and must take care of his daughter. He will never have the time to delve into his own pain, committing himself to raising his daughter with love and dedication, in an all-encompassing relationship in which one heals the other's wounds through his own. When, after a few years, he tries to start a new life with a new partner, not everything will go as hoped: his daughter's reaction will be exaggerated and Pietro will be put to the test. He will find himself struggling between anger and paternal instinct.

Tigertail
A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

Hungry Hearts
The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.

White as Milk, Red as Blood
Like all sixteen-year-olds, Leo prefers the company of friends, motorbike rides and music to school. None of the teachers seem to be able to arouse his interest until the arrival in his class of a young history and philosophy substitute who, with his modern methods, helps him see the world with different eyes. In love with Beatrice, the ethereal girl of his dreams, Leo divides the world by colours. Beatrice is the red of love but he is forced to confront his own beliefs and fears when he discovers that the girl is suffering from leukemia, a disease that he links to white, a symbol of emptiness and loss.

Il premio
After winning the Nobel Prize, Giovanni Passamonte decides to drive to Stockholm with his sons and assistant rather than fly.

Euphoria
Matteo is a young successful businessman, audacious, charming and energetic. Ettore instead, is a calm, righteous, second grade teacher always living in the shadows, still in the small town from where both come from. They’re brothers but with two very different personalities. A dramatic event will force them to live together in Rome for a few months, bringing up the opportunity to face their differences with sympathy and tenderness, in a climax of fear and euphoria.
More Movies Like Paternal Leave

Lady Driver
When a rebellious teen embarks on a solo summer journey to connect with her roots, she finds herself in a new world, geared up for the ride of her life, and discovers she had the drive in her all along.

Landline
A teenager living with her sister and parents in Manhattan during the 1990s discovers that her father is having an affair.

Imperial Dreams
A 21-year-old reformed gangster's devotion to his family and his future is put to the test when he is released from prison and returns to his old stomping grounds in Watts, Los Angeles.

Three Goodbyes
Follows a couple, Marta and Antonio, who split up after what seems like an trivial argument.

The Nest
Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.

Electricity
A woman leaves her seaside hometown to search for her long-lost brother, experiencing hallucinations brought on by her epilepsy during her trip.

The Butcher
Alina is a brilliant and enterprising woman who runs a successful art gallery in Palermo. Her husband Daniele, a successful orchestra conductor, cultured and intelligent, is not a regular presence. One day, while accompanying Daniele to the airport, Alina feels a sense of emptiness. She will try to fill it with a butcher who is always joking and full of erotic allusions and who arouses a strong attraction in her.

God's Pocket
A boozy lowlife tries to bury the truth about his crazy stepson's suspicious death, but a nosy newspaper columnist and the young man's mother complicate matters.

Somewhere in Queens
Leo and Angela Russo live a simple life in Queens, surrounded by their overbearing Italian-American family. When their son finds success on his high school basketball team, Leo tears the family apart trying to make it happen.

Almost Friends
A man in his mid-20s, still living at home with his mother and stepfather, puts all his eggs in one basket: the girl who works at his local coffee shop. The problem is, she has a serious boyfriend. As they become closer, the line between friendship and intimacy is blurred, and the situation forces both to examine where they are in their lives.

The Mass Is Ended
The young priest Father Giulio returns to Rome, his hometown, after a long pilgrimage. Don Giulio hopes to live peacefully with his family and his friends, but discovers that many of them are depressed or frustrated, and some suicidal.

The Good Neighbor
A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Paternal Leave (2025): Drama themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of Paternal Leave.
See full details for Paternal Leave (2025)
