25 melancholic movies to cry without stopping

April 1, 2024

The cinema is also able to touch the emotional fiber through sad and melancholic films.

Using them to reflect or, simply, to bring up feelings that need to be expressed, is as healthy as it is stimulating.

The best sad and moving movies

You can find below a selection of moving movies They explore several situations in which dignity resilience resurfaces before difficult moments in life.

1. Dancing in the dark

In this film the artist Björk plays a migrant from Eastern Europe who during the 60s , he goes to live in the United States with his son. There she will try to stay positive by imagining that her misfortunes, related to lack of resources, illness and the difficulties of raising her son, are part of musicals in which she has the main role.

2. Bicycle thief

One of the great classics of cinema that is, at the same time, one of the saddest films that have been shot . It narrates the life of Antonio, a worker who lives with his family in conditions of misery in post-war Italy. A precarious job sticking posters serves to improve the living conditions of your home after meeting, but that changes when your first day you steal the bike, essential to keep the job. At that moment, Antonio and his son begin a search with the intention of recovering it.

3. Incendies

Two brothers go to the Middle East to investigate their family roots and complete their mother's last wishes. In Lebanon they will find traces of a past sunk in the war between religions but also in a series of secrets.

4. Lilya forever

This film talks about the life of a young woman who tries to escape from the misery that prevails in her city with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, tries to start a new life in Sweden. This trip will make her come into contact with white traffic and drug addiction .

5. Schindler's list

One of the most famous films of Steven Spielberg is the tragic Schindler's list, set during the Second World War. In her tells the story of a man who, gaining the trust of the Nazis, manages to save the life of a group of Jews turning his factory into a refuge.

6. 45 years

A melancholic and moving film . The story is about a couple preparing to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary. However, in this transit appears a news that changes everything: the first love of the husband, something that is already far away in time, has appeared dead frozen in the Swiss Alps.

7. I am Sam

In this moving and sad movie, Sean Penn plays a man with an intellectual disability struggling to keep custody of his daughter . Her lawyer, interpreted by Michelle Pfeiffer, will defend her case at first from the strict professionalism and keeping a clear distance, but this is changing when she sees the determination with which her client tries to avoid being separated from her daughter.

8. Far from it

A marriage that enters the age of retirement is ready to enjoy the moments of rest and privacy offered by his new life. But nevertheless, these perspectives change when the wife begins to experience the first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease .

9. The tomb of the fireflies

The animated cinema is also capable of offering very sad films, and The Tomb of the Fireflies is the paradigmatic example of this. It is about the life of a young Japanese man who, during the Second World War , he can not reach the refuge where his mother waits for him while a bombing falls. With her little sister she will try to survive in a region where food is scarce.

10. Cinema Paradiso

A tribute to both the old cinema and life in an Italy in which everyone in the neighborhood knows and meets to attend the screening of films. The protagonist evokes the memories of his childhood, when helped the cinema operator to handle the projection tapes .

Other sad movies

If you still have tears to pour, here are other sad movies that you may like a lot.

11. The rules of the house of the cider

Tobey Maguire plays a young man who, after passing through the orphanage, decides to leave him to see the world.

12. The pianist

Another of the great classics of cinema, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Adrien Brody, who plays a Jew who tries to live with dignity in Nazi-occupied Poland. Essential.

13. Toy Story 3

Interestingly, the latest film in a series aimed at children is also, one of the saddest films about growth and the step towards adolescence (although, yes, keeping a positive message).

14. The club of the dead poets

One of the films that most resembles the actor Robin Williams, who plays a teacher who changes the lives of their students through poetry.

15. Death penalty

Sean Penn plays a man waiting for the execution of capital punishment who, for a week before he kills him by lethal injection, talks to a nun (Susan Sarandon) who will try to make the young man find peace in his last moments.

16. American beauty

Kevin Spacey plays a father who is going through a severe life crisis, experiencing his marriage and his work life with monotony. The fact that he begins to feel a strong attraction for his daughter's friend shakes his life.

17. Atonement

One of the saddest movies created in the United Kingdom , Atonement talks about the stormy relationship between a young woman and the man her sister feels attracted to.

18. Hachiko

American remake of the Japanese movie that talks about the famous dog that went every day to a train station to wait for its caretaker.

19. The bridges of Madison

A well-known film that is worth revisiting from time to time. One of the few love stories starring people of mature age.

20. Hotel Rwanda

A film set in the civil war of Rwanda. The manager of a hotel decides to use the place where he works to shelter both his Hutu family and several Tutsi neighbors. Based on a true story.

21. Still Alice

The story of a woman who, around 50 years old, is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. At that moment her struggle to manage this situation begins, with a routine of questions that she must ask herself every day, and combine it with the changes she has to make in her relationship with her children.