Movies Like Parallel Mothers
If you loved Parallel Mothers'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

Vera Drake
Abortionist Vera Drake finds her beliefs and practices clash with the mores of 1950s Britain – a conflict that leads to tragedy for her family.

Head in the Clouds
Gilda Bessé shares her Paris apartment with an Irish schoolteacher, Guy Malyon, and Mia, a refugee from Spain. As the world drifts toward war, Gilda defiantly pursues her hedonistic lifestyle and her burgeoning career as a photographer. But Guy and Mia feel impelled to join the fight against fascism, and the three friends are separated.

The Devil's Backbone
Spain, 1939. In the last days of the Spanish Civil War, the young Carlos arrives at the Santa Lucía orphanage, where he will make friends and enemies as he follows the quiet footsteps of a mysterious presence eager for revenge.

The Photographer of Mauthausen
Spanish photographer Francesc Boix, imprisoned in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, works in the SS Photographic Service. Between 1943 and 1945, he hides, with the help of other prisoners, thousands of negatives, with the purpose of showing the freed world the atrocities committed by the Nazis, exhaustively documented. He will be a key witness during the Nuremberg Trials.

A Walk in the Clouds
World War II vet Paul Sutton falls for a pregnant and unwed woman who persuades him -- during their first encounter -- to pose as her husband so she can face her family.

Wish You Were Here
In a staid English seaside town after the Second World War, young Lynda grows up with her widowed father and younger sister. Rebellious Lynda has been swearing constantly from an early age. At sixteen, she becomes more exhibitionist and seeks out sexual encounters challenging the prevailing lower-middle class attitudes to sex.


Lion's Den
Julia, a 25 year-old university student, two weeks pregnant, with no criminal record, is sent to prison. Julia murdered the father of her child. This story addresses maternity, jail and Justice; confinement, guilt and solitude; but above all it deals with Julia and her son, Tomas, born inside an Argentinean prison.
More Movies Like Parallel Mothers

If These Walls Could Talk
A powerful, intimate portrait of three women living in the same house during different eras who all face unplanned pregnancies. The vignettes follow a recently widowed nurse struggling to take control of her life in the early 50s, a mother of four balancing raising a family and maintaining a career in the 70s, and a student making a difficult decision with the help of one woman that will change the course of both their lives in the 90s.

Lullaby
Amaia has just become a mother, and the challenge is even more significant than she imagined. So when her partner has to leave for several weeks because of his job, she decides to spend time with her parents in a lovely coastal village in the Basque Country and hopefully share the responsibility of looking after her baby. However, she forgot that even when one becomes a parent, one never stops being a daughter.

Julieta
The film spans 30 years in Julieta’s life from a nostalgic 1985 where everything seems hopeful, to 2015 where her life appears to be beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness.

Joy
A young nurse, a visionary scientist and an innovative surgeon face opposition from the church, state, media and medical establishment, in their pursuit of the world’s first ‘test tube baby’, Louise Joy Brown.

Goodbye
Seville, Spain. Juan Santos, a convicted petty criminal, gets out of jail for a day to celebrate with Triana, his wife, the first communion of their daughter Estrella.

Hot Milk
Rose and her daughter Sofia travel to the Spanish seaside town of Almería to consult with the shamanic Dr. Gomez, a physician who could possibly hold the cure to Rose’s mystery illness, which has left her bound to a wheelchair. But in the sultry atmosphere of this sun-bleached town Sofia, who has been trapped by her mother’s illness all her life, finally starts to shed her inhibitions, enticed by the persuasive charms of enigmatic traveller Ingrid.

The Official Story
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1983. In the last and turbulent days of the military dictatorship, Alicia, a high school history teacher, begins to ask uncomfortable questions about the dark origins of Gaby, her adopted daughter.

Mirage
During a mysterious thunderstorm, Vera, a young mother, manages to save a life in danger, but her good deed causes a disturbing chain of unexpected consequences.

Sister Death
Spain, 1949. Narcisa, a novice, arrives at an old convent, converted into a girls' school, to work as a teacher.

Butterfly
The film centres on Moncho and his coming-of-age experience in Galicia in 1936. Moncho develops a close relationship with his teacher Don Gregorio who introduces the boy to different things in the world. While the story centres on Moncho's ordinary coming-of-age experiences, tensions related to the looming Spanish Civil War periodically interrupt Moncho's personal growth and daily life.

Philomena
A woman searches for her adult son, who was taken away from her decades ago when she was forced to live in a convent.

Hope and Glory
A middle-aged man recalls his childhood growing up in and around London during World War II.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Parallel Mothers (2021): 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 Parallel Mothers.
See full details for Parallel Mothers (2021)