Movies Like The Boy Who Could Fly
If you loved The Boy Who Could Fly's Drama and Family 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

Ezra
Stand-up comedian Max Bernal lives with his father Stan while struggling to co-parent his autistic son Ezra with his ex-wife. When forced to confront difficult decisions about their son's future, Max and Ezra embark on a cross-country road trip that has a transcendent impact on both their lives.

Miracle Run
Corinne is a single mother of twin 5-year-old boys, Steven and Phillip, who are diagnosed with autism. Public school officials threaten to remove them from school due to their behavior, but through therapy, the boys are able to make major strides in their capabilities. A decade later, teens Steven and Phillip seek to prove they can handle high school while still struggling with their disorder.

Jack of the Red Hearts
A teenage con artist tricks a desperate mother into hiring her as a live-in companion for her autistic daughter.

The Shepherd
On Christmas Eve, a fighter pilot on his way home becomes lost while flying over water and needs a miracle to land safely.

Test Pilot
Jim is a test pilot. His wife Ann and best friend Gunner try their best to keep him sober. But the life of a test pilot is anything but safe.

Little Man Tate
Dede is a sole parent trying to bring up her son Fred. When it is discovered that Fred is a genius, she is determined to ensure that Fred has all the opportunities that he needs, and that he is not taken advantage of by people who forget that his extremely powerful intellect is harboured in the body and emotions of a child.

Jackie & Ryan
A modern day train hopper fighting to be a successful musician and a single mom battling to maintain custody of her daughter defy their circumstances by coming together in a relationship that may change each others lives forever.

Anastasia: Once Upon a Time
Anastasia Romanov escapes through a portal when her family is threatened by Vladimir Lenin, and she finds herself in the year 1988, befriended by a young American girl.
More Movies Like The Boy Who Could Fly

Twitches Too
Reunited witch twins Camryn and Alex adjust to their new life as supernatural beings while at the same time trying to maintain a normal existence in this sequel to the magical Disney Channel original movie Twitches. But they soon find themselves going head to head with the forces of darkness that threaten to destroy their world. Luckily, their birth mother, the powerful Miranda, is on hand to help out.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Jonathan is sick and tired of the boring life in his seagull clan. He rather experiments with new, always more daring flying techniques. Since he doesn't fit in, the elders expel him from the clan. So he sets out to discover the world beyond the horizon in a quest for wisdom.

Blind
A novelist is blinded in a car crash that killed his wife and several years later rediscovers his passion for life and writing when he embarks on an affair with the neglected wife of an indicted businessman.

The Secret: Dare to Dream
A widow with three children hires a handyman to fix her house during a major storm. When not doing home repairs, he shares his philosophy of believing in the power of the universe to deliver what we want.

Peter Ibbetson
When his mother dies, young Peter Ibbetson leaves Paris and his best friend, Mary, behind to live with a severe uncle in England. Years later, Peter is an architect with little time for women, until he begins a project with the Duke and Duchess of Towers. When Peter and the duchess become great friends, she reveals that she is Mary — but the duke soon suspects his wife of infidelity and challenges Peter to a duel, threatening the pair's second chance.

The Time Traveler's Wife
Due to a genetic disorder, handsome librarian Henry DeTamble involuntarily zips through time, appearing at various moments in the life of his true love, the beautiful artist Clare Abshire.

Moonlight Mile
As he copes with the death of his fiancee along with her parents, a young man must figure out what he wants out of life.

Discovering Dinotopia
The citizens of Waterfall City flee for the tenuous safety of Earthfarm, abandoning their city to the dangerous Outsiders - who discover the key to Dinotopias future and threaten its survival.

I Am David
A 12-year-old boy manages to flee a Communist concentration camp on his own, through sheer will and determination. All he has in his possession is a loaf of bread, a letter to deliver to someone in Denmark, and a compass to help get him there.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape
Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble. Settled into a job at a grocery store and an ongoing affair with local woman Betty Carver, Gilbert finally has his life shaken up by the free-spirited Becky.

The Secret of NIMH
A widowed field mouse must move her family -- including an ailing son -- to escape a farmer's plow. Aided by a crow and a pack of superintelligent, escaped lab rats, the brave mother struggles to transplant her home to firmer ground.

Departure
An English mother and her teenage son spend a week preparing the sale of their remote holiday house in the South of France. Fifteen-year-old Elliot struggles with his dawning sexuality and an increasing alienation from his mother, Beatrice. She in turn is confronted by the realisation that her marriage to his father, Philip, has grown loveless and the life she knows is coming to an end. When an enigmatic local teenager, Clément, quietly enters their lives, both mother and son are compelled to confront their desires and, finally, each other.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with The Boy Who Could Fly (1986): Drama and Family 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 The Boy Who Could Fly.
See full details for The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)