Movies like The Great Arch (2025)

Name: The Great Arch
Released: 2025

10 films to watch after The Great Arch, ranked by how well they match its tone — not just its genre.

France, 1983. The biggest architectural competition in history is launched by the new socialist president, François Mitterrand. Coveted by all the biggest international architectural firms, the open-call competition is surprisingly won by an unknown: Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, an architecture teacher from Copenhagen. Until then, the fifty-year-old Dane had built only four buildings: his home, and three small chapels.

1

Final Portrait (2017)

Fit 68%

Shares History and Drama with The Great Arch.

Paris, 1964. The Swiss sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti, one of the most accomplished and respected artists of his generation, asks his friend, the American writer James Lord, to sit for a portrait, assuring him that it will take no longer than two or three hours, an afternoon at the most.
2

The Ideal Palace (2019)

Fit 68%

Shares History and Drama with The Great Arch.

Follows Joseph Ferdinand Chavel a French postman who built a palace in the French countryside over 33 years.
3

Colette (2018)

Fit 68%

Shares Drama and History with The Great Arch.

After marrying a successful Parisian writer known commonly as Willy, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is transplanted from her childhood home in rural France to the intellectual and artistic splendor of Paris. Soon after, Willy convinces Colette to ghostwrite for him. She pens a semi-autobiographical novel about a witty and brazen country girl named Claudine, sparking a bestseller and a cultural sensation. After its success, Colette and Willy become the talk of Paris and their adventures inspire additional Claudine novels.
4

Maria (2024)

Fit 64%

Shares History and Drama with The Great Arch.

Maria Callas, the world's greatest opera singer, lives the last days of her life in 1970s Paris, as she confronts her identity and life.
5

Memoir of War (2017)

Fit 60%

Shares Drama with The Great Arch.

In the last days of the Nazi-occupied France, writer Marguerite Duras awaits the return of her husband, Robert Antelme, arrested for being a Resistance fighter and then deported, while she maintains a tense relationship with her ambiguous lover and a dangerous game with a French collaborationist. Even when the Liberation arrives, she must still endure the unbearable pain of waiting.
6

Julia (1977)

Fit 58%

Shares Drama and History with The Great Arch.

At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.
7

Munich - The Edge of War (2021)

Fit 57%

Shares Drama and History with The Great Arch.

At the tense 1938 Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.
8

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

Fit 56%

Shares Drama and History with The Great Arch.

The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city.
9

Army of Shadows (1969)

Fit 56%

Shares Drama with The Great Arch.

Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.
10

The Passengers of the Night (2022)

Fit 43%

Shares Drama with The Great Arch.

On election night in 1981, celebrations spill out onto the street and there is an air of hope and change throughout Paris. But for Elisabeth, her marriage is coming to an end and she will now have to support herself and her two teenage children. She finds work at a late-night radio show and encounters a troubled teenager named Talulah whom she invites into her home.