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Movies like Detachment

Key Features:
Existentialism, Substitute teacher, High school, Student-teacher relationship, Social commentary, Dysfunctional family, Alienation, Depression, Isolation, Loss of faith, Cynicism, Nihilism, Urban decay, Disillusionment, Emotional detachment, Existential crisis
Tone:
serious, gritty, dramatic
Target Audience:
Intellectuals, Cynics, Film students, Socially conscious viewers
Emotional Arc:
Apathy → Despair → Resignation

Detachment

2011-04-24
Detachment Poster - Find Similar Movies

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

Genres
Drama
Cast
Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, James Caan, Christina Hendricks, Lucy Liu, Blythe Danner, Tim Blake Nelson, William Petersen, Bryan Cranston, Sami Gayle
Crew
Carl Lund, Tony Kaye
Rating
7.617(1882 votes)
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School's Out
6

Pierre Hoffman joins a prestigious school as a substitute teacher and soon notices, among some of his students, an unjustified hostility and a spark of violence in their eyes. Is it because the unspeakable tragedy they have just experienced? Is it because they seem to be extraordinarily gifted children? Is it because they have lost all hope for the future? From curiosity to obsession, Pierre will try to unlock their secret.



Absent
Absent(2011)
6

Sebastiano teaches high school gym classes and coaches swimming. He’s got a job, a girlfriend, and a pretty normal life. But as young Martin starts to infiltrate Sebastiano’s life, his world will get turned upside down. Eerie from the first frame, this Hitchcockian thriller portrays sexual obsession with terrifying realism.



Miss Stevens
6.496

Stuck at a crossroads in her personal life, it falls on high school English teacher Miss Stevens to chaperone three of her students — Billy, Margot and Sam — on a weekend trip to a drama competition.



The Teachers' Lounge
7.237

When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.



Jealous
Jealous(2017)
5.9

A divorced teacher suddenly becomes jealous of everyone, including her daughter, friends and neighbors.



Teachers
Teachers(1984)
5.605

A teacher reconnects with an old student who is now an attorney representing a family who is suing the school for graduating their son who still cannot read or write. Amid the daily chaos of teaching in an inner city school, Alex Jurel tries to decide if he will lie at his deposition to protect the school or tell the truth and risk throwing away his career.



Rachel, Rachel
6.538

Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.



Monsieur Lazhar
7.157

During a harsh Montréal winter, an elementary-school class is left reeling after its teacher commits suicide. Bachir Lazhar, a charismatic Algerian immigrant, steps in as the substitute teacher for the classroom of traumatized children. All the while, he must keep his personal life tucked away: the fact that he is seeking political refuge in Québec – and that he, like the children, has suffered an appalling loss.



Separation
5.692

A young girl finds solace in her artist father and the ghost of her dead mother.



A Real Job
6.317

Benjamin is a PhD student without scholarship support. Under the pressure of his parents, and in need of money, he becomes a substitute teacher in a middle school. Without training nor experience, and facing a declining public educational system, he discovers how tough this job can be. Hopefully, his supportive and committed colleagues will lead him to take a fresh look at the profession.



White Wedding
6.5

A philosophy professor has an illicit affair with one of his students, a bright yet troubled girl who lives alone.



A Teacher
A Teacher(2013)
4.495

Diana Watts, a high school teacher in Austin, Texas, is in the midst of an affair with one of her students, Eric Tull. As the reality of their situation forces itself upon them, Diana puts the relationship on hold. It’s only a matter of time before she gives in again to her desire; this time even more recklessly than before.



The Graduate
7.6

A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.



Skirt Day
Skirt Day(2008)
7.082

A teacher, driven to exasperation from insults and insubordination, takes her class hostage.



Blame
Blame(2018)
6.578

A drama teacher's taboo relationship with an unstable student strikes a nerve in her jealous classmate, sparking a vengeful chain of events within their suburban high school that draws parallels to "The Crucible".



Husbands and Wives

When their best friends announce that they're separating, a professor and his wife discover the faults in their own marriage.



The Faculty
6.6

When some very creepy things start happening around school, the kids at Herrington High make the chilling discovery that confirms their worst suspicions: their teachers really are from another planet!



Dead Poets Society
8.3

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.



Natural Selection
5.3

Tyler is a young man who is desperately seeking direction from a world that seems to have abandoned him. Searching for answers he looks to his new friend Indrid who appears to have it all figured out.



One Eight Seven
6.6

After surviving a stabbing by a student, teacher Trevor Garfield moves from New York to Los Angeles. There, he resumes teaching as a substitute teacher. The education system, where violent bullies control the classrooms and the administration is afraid of lawsuits, slowly drives Garfield mad. He then moves to California to be a sub for a predominantly Native Hispanic/Latin-American high school in Los Angeles. He is tormented by members of a Native Hispanic/Latino-American tag crew named K.O.S. (Kappin’ off Suckaz).



The United States of Leland

A withdrawn young man, Leland Fitzgerald is imprisoned for the murder of a mentally disabled boy, who also happened to be the brother of his girlfriend, Becky. As the community struggles to deal with the killing, Pearl Madison, a teacher at the prison, decides to write about Leland's case. Meanwhile, others affected by the murder, including Becky and her sister, Julie, must contend with their own problems.



White Noise
5.6

Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler studies at The-College-on-the-Hill, husband to Babette, and father to four children/stepchildren, is torn asunder by a chemical spill from a rail car that releases an "Airborne Toxic Event" forcing Jack to confront his biggest fear - his own mortality.



Norman
Norman(2010)
6.115

A teenager pretends to be dying from cancer as a way to cope with the realities of his daily existence and his father's terminal illness.



The Substitute
6.9

When an inner-city Miami schoolteacher gets her knee broken after standing up to the school's gang leader, her mercenary combat specialist boyfriend goes undercover as a substitute teacher to take down the punk. Soon he discovers a conspiracy of criminals at work, and must reassemble his team from his last jungle raid to stop them.



School Life
6.892

In one of the poorest areas of Paris, a school counselor devotes herself to working with disadvantaged students, while facing challenges of her own.



P.R.O.F.S.
6.123

A clique of four young teachers at a high school looks critically at their colleagues. To avoid falling in the same routine, they bring new ideas into the school lessons and play little games and pranks in their spare time -- sometimes get even more childish than their pupils. When they get opposition from the other teachers, they play tricks to get rid of them.



Empties
Empties(2007)
6.739

Czech literature teacher Josef Tkaloun, who is past retirement age, realises one day that he no longer understands his pupils, and so he quits… dramatically. What he does not predict is that in doing this he will lose his sense of place in society.



A Single Man
7.3

Set in Los Angeles in 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, is the story of a British college professor who dwells on the past and cannot see his future. We follow him through a single day, where a series of events and encounters ultimately lead him to decide if there is a meaning to life after the death of his long time partner, Jim.



Adoration
Adoration(2009)
5.871

For his French-class assignment, a high school student weaves his family history in a news story involving terrorism, and goes on to invite an Internet audience in on the resulting controversy.



Daydream Nation
5.747

Forced to move to a boring backwater town, a teenager embarks on affairs with a teacher and a stoner classmate.



The Class
The Class(2008)
7

Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.



The Teacher
6.547

Teacher in the most prestigious highschool in the country, François enjoys the life he’s always known, in the intellectual and bourgeois society of Paris. Trapped in a situation where he’s forced to accept a job in a school of a tough underprivileged suburb, he finds himself confronted to his own limits and to the upheaval of his values and certainties.



Storytelling
6.5

College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.



Class of 1999 II: The Substitute

In the original movie, the cyborg-teachers were all destroyed. Well that's what we thought, but there's one more rogue military robot out there determined to clean up the education system.



Playing the Victim
6.4

A young man drops out of university and goes to the police. He's done nothing wrong he just wants a job. A particular job. Playing the victim in murder reconstructions. Maybe by getting close to death he can manage to cheat on his own.



School's Out
5.827

A few days before the baccalaureate, a high school student decides to settle accounts with the most cowardly teacher in the school.



Half Nelson
6.642

Despite his dedication to the junior-high students who fill his classroom, idealistic teacher Dan Dunne leads a secret life of addiction that the majority of his students will never know. But things change when a troubled student Drey makes a startling discovery of his secret life, causing a tenuous bond between the two that could either end disastrously or provide a catalyst of hope.



The Whale
The Whale(2022)
7.794

A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption.



The Substitute
5.568

6th Grade gets a new substitute teacher. She wants to train the class for an international competition in Paris. But something isn't right. How is she able read kids' minds? Why is she so mean? And how does she manage to convince everyone's parents she is so great when the whole class knows she is really an alien?



Afterschool
5.5

A prep-school student accidentally films the drug-related deaths of two classmates, then is asked to put together a memorial video.



Young Adult
5.8

A divorced writer from the Midwest returns to her hometown to reconnect with an old flame, who's now married with a family.



Romance
Romance(1999)
5.451

Frustrated by the lack of intimacy in her relationship, a young schoolteacher goes through a series of intimidating and often violent sexual partners.



Intimacy
Intimacy(2001)
6.2

Failed musician Jay abandoned his family and now earns a living as head bartender in a trendy London pub. Every Wednesday afternoon, a woman comes to his house for graphic, almost wordless, sex. One day, Jay follows her and learns about her. This eventually disrupts their relationship.



Dismissed
Dismissed(2017)
6.465

A straight-edged teacher finds trouble when an honors student is willing to do anything to get an A.



After the Dark
6.041

At an international school in Jakarta, a philosophy teacher challenges his class of twenty graduating seniors to choose which ten of them would take shelter underground and reboot the human race in the event of a nuclear apocalypse.



The Slap
The Slap(1974)
6.6

A Parisian teacher loses his cool when his teenage daughter tells him she plans to drop out of school and move in with her boyfriend.



Words and Pictures
6.4

An art instructor and an English teacher form a rivalry that ends up with a competition at their school in which students decide whether words or pictures are more important.



Ken Park
Ken Park(2003)
6.012

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.



High School High
5.448

Richard Clark has just left the well-known Wellington Academy to teach at Marion Barry High School. Now, he will try to inspire the D-average students into making good grades and try to woo a fellow teacher.



Possession
7.3

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.



Shortcomings
6

When his girlfriend leaves for New York City on a 3-month-long internship, a strongly opinionated Berkeley arthouse movie theater manager begins exploring life as a bachelor.



Things to Come
6.5

Nathalie teaches philosophy at a high school in Paris. She is passionate about her job and particularly enjoys passing on the pleasure of thinking. Married with two children, she divides her time between her family, former students and her very possessive mother. One day, Nathalie’s husband announces he is leaving her for another woman. With freedom thrust upon her, Nathalie must reinvent her life.



Elephant
Elephant(2003)
7

Several ordinary high school students go through their daily routine as two others prepare for something more malevolent.



Child's Play
6

At an exclusive boys' school, a new gym teacher is drawn into a feud between two older instructors, and he discovers that everything at the school is not quite as staid, tranquil and harmless as it seems.



An Affair
An Affair(2018)
5.4

A newly appointed teacher finds herself being followed, and soon discovers that one of her own students is obsessed with her.



Liberal Arts
6.45

Newly single, 35, and uninspired by his job, Jesse Fisher worries that his best days are behind him. But no matter how much he buries his head in a book, life keeps pulling Jesse back. When his favorite college professor invites him to campus to speak at his retirement dinner, Jesse jumps at the chance.



F
F(2010)
6.106

A group of teachers must defend themselves from a gang of murderous kids when their school comes under siege after hours.



Every Day
Every Day(2010)
5.1

Ned is in the throes of a mid-life crisis. His work as a writer on an outrageous, semi-pornographic TV show is less than satisfying. His fifteen year old son has just told him he is gay and his eleven year old is afraid of, well pretty much everything. When his wife, Jeannie, moves her sick and embittered father from Detroit into their home in NY, it puts added stress on an already strained marriage. And when a sexy female co-worker puts the moves on Ned, the temptation sends him spiraling.



Tenure
Tenure(2010)
5.532

Despite his outstanding intellect, associate professor Charlie Thurber is a chronic underachiever and has never received university tenure. Aided by his nutty best friend, Charlie launches a final effort to make the grade at Gray College. But a beautiful new teacher whose ascending star threatens to eclipse him shakes up Charlie's plans.



Not My Type
6.208

Clement, a young philosophy teacher, is sent to Arras for a year. He meets Jennifer, a pretty hair stylist, and the two freely share their hearts and bodies as they try to overcome the cultural and social divide between them.



Queer
Queer(2024)
6.6

In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.



Spinning Man
5.593

Evan Birch is a family man and esteemed professor at a distinguished university. When a female student goes missing, police Detective Malloy has reason to be suspicious when crucial evidence makes Evan the prime suspect in her disappearance.



Anesthesia
5.712

Multiple lives intersect in the aftermath of the violent mugging of a Columbia University philosophy professor.



Irrational Man
6.527

On a small town college campus, a philosophy professor in existential crisis gives his life new purpose when he enters into a relationship with his student.



Soul
Soul(2020)
8.1

Joe Gardner is a middle school teacher with a love for jazz music. After a successful audition at the Half Note Club, he suddenly gets into an accident that separates his soul from his body and is transported to the You Seminar, a center in which souls develop and gain passions before being transported to a newborn child. Joe must enlist help from the other souls-in-training, like 22, a soul who has spent eons in the You Seminar, in order to get back to Earth.



Kicking and Screaming

After college graduation, Grover's girlfriend Jane tells him she's moving to Prague to study writing. Grover declines to accompany her, deciding instead to move in with several friends, all of whom can't quite work up the inertia to escape their university's pull. Nobody wants to make any big decisions that would radically alter his life, yet none of them wants to end up like Chet, the professional student who tends bar and is in his tenth year of university studies.



Imagine
Imagine(2012)
7.221

A blind teacher breaks the rules to help a female student rediscover the pleasures of life.



The School Teacher
6.021

After having lost his job for having saved a child accused of shop lifting, Frédéric Barbier decides to become a school teacher with some funny results.The great comedy actor Coluche is excellent as a simple school teacher.



Teaching Mrs. Tingle

A bright high-school senior has her impending status as valedictorian jeopardized when her bitter history teacher, Mrs. Tingle, gives her a poor grade on a project. When an attempt to get ahead in Mrs. Tingle's class goes awry, mayhem ensues and friendships, loyalties and trust are tested by the teacher's intricate mind-games.



L'ennui
L'ennui(1998)
5.2

A philosophy teacher restless with the need to do something with his life meets a young woman suspected of driving an artist to his death. He finds the very simple Cecilia irritating but develops a sexual rapport with her. Obsessed with the need to own and tormented by her inability to respond to him, he becomes increasingly violent in a quest he can't name - a quest that slowly begins to undermine his certainties.



Greenberg
Greenberg(2010)
5.869

Roger Greenberg, a failed musician now making a living as a carpenter in New York, returns to Los Angeles to house-sit for his brother. He's stranded there—since he doesn't drive—until his brother's assistant, Florence, comes to his rescue. She's as much a lost soul as he is, and the pair form a significant connection—giving Roger a much-needed reason to be happy.



Class
Class(1983)
6

Naive Midwestern prep student Jonathan bonds with his more worldly roommate, Skip, who takes the small-town boy under his wing. At Skip's urging, the inexperienced Jonathan is emboldened to seek out older women in the cocktail lounges of nearby Chicago, where he meets and beds the alluring Ellen, who unfortunately turns out to be Skip's mother. The division between the friends is further deepened when a cheating scandal engulfs the school.



Chronic
Chronic(2015)
5.732

David is a nurse who works with terminally ill patients. Dedicated to his profession, he develops strong relationships with the people he cares for. But outside of work, it's a different story altogether.



Dirty Teacher
5.809

When a high school senior discovers her teacher is seducing her boyfriend, events turn deadly after the teacher tries to cover it up.



Disconnect
7.058

A hard-working lawyer, attached to his cell phone, can't find the time to communicate with his family. An estranged couple uses the internet as a means to escape from their lifeless marriage. A widowed ex-cop struggles to raise a mischievous son who cyber-bullies a classmate. An ambitious journalist sees a career-making story in a teen that performs on an adult-only site. They are strangers, neighbors and colleagues and their stories collide as ordinary people struggling to connect in today's wired world.



Bad Education
7.4

An examination on the effect of Franco-era religious schooling and sexual abuse on the lives of two longtime friends.



Asteroid City
6.444

In an American desert town circa 1955, the itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.



Eighth Grade
7.2

Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.



The Browning Version
6.439

Andrew Crocker-Harris is an embittered and disliked teacher of Greek and Latin at a British prep school. After nearly 20 years of service, he is being forced to retire for 'health reasons', and perhaps may not even be given a pension. The boys regard him as a Hitler, with some justification. His unfaithful wife Laura tries to hurt him in any way she can. Andrew must come to terms with his failed life and at least regain his own self-esteem.



The Substitute 2: School's Out

When teacher Randall Thomasson is killed during a carjacking, an unexpected visitor shows up at his funeral - his estranged brother, Karl Thomasson. An ex-Green Beret turned mercenary, Karl signs on as a new substitute teacher in order to investigate Randall's murder.



Jamie Marks Is Dead

No one seemed to care about Jamie Marks until after his death. Hoping to find the love and friendship he never had in life, Jamie’s ghost visits former classmate Adam McCormick, drawing him into the bleak world between the living and the dead.



Demolition
6.8

An emotionally desperate investment banker finds hope through a woman he meets.



The Stranger
6.7

Meursault is a man who feels utterly isolated from everyone and everything around him. This alienation results in sudden, inexplicable bursts of violence, culminating in murder.



Skhizein
Skhizein(2008)
7.6

Having been struck by a 150-ton meteorite, Henry has to adapt to living precisely ninety-one centimeters from himself.



About Dry Grasses
7.605

A young art teacher hopes to be transferred to Istanbul after completing his mandatory duty in a remote village school in Anatolia. After accusations of inappropriate contact with a student surface, his hopes of escape fade and he descends further into an existential crisis.



Reality Bites
6.564

A small circle of friends suffering from post-collegiate blues must confront the hard truth about life, love and the pursuit of gainful employment. As they struggle to map out survival guides for the future, the Gen-X quartet soon begins to realize that reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.



Larry Crowne
6

When he suddenly finds himself without his long-standing blue-collar job, Larry Crowne enrolls at his local college to start over. There, he becomes part of an eclectic community of students and develops a crush on his teacher.



Permanent Vacation
5.9

In downtown Manhattan, twentysomething Allie, whose father is not around and whose mother is institutionalized, is a big Charlie Parker fan. He almost subconsciously searches for meaning in his life and meets some idiosyncratic characters along the way.



Lesson Plan
6.025

After a teacher dies, his best friend — a former cop — takes a job at the school where he worked to confront the gang he thinks was responsible.



The Teacher
6.8

The principal of an elementary school calls a special parents meeting after it’s alleged that the seemingly empathetic and kindly-looking teacher Mrs. Drazděchová uses her students to manipulate their parents.



The Hunt
The Hunt(2012)
8.095

A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son’s custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.



Elegy
Elegy(2008)
6.3

Cultural critic David Kepesh finds his life -- which he indicates is a state of "emancipated manhood" -- thrown into tragic disarray by Consuela Castillo, a well-mannered student who awakens a sense of sexual possessiveness in her teacher.



The Education of Charlie Banks

College student Charlie Banks has to face old problems when the bully he had an unpleasant encounter with back in high school shows up on his campus.



The Rules of Attraction

The incredibly spoiled and overprivileged students of Camden College are a backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate.



Goodbye to Language

The idea is simple / A married woman and a single man meet / They love, they argue, fists fly / A dog strays between town and country / The seasons pass / The man and woman meet again / The dog finds itself between them / The other is in one, / the one is in the other / and they are three / The former husband shatters everything / A second film begins: / the same as the first, / and yet not / From the human race we pass to metaphor / This ends in barking / and a baby's cries / In the meantime, we will have seen people talking of the demise of the dollar, of truth in mathematics and of the death of a robin." - JLG



Munchausen
6.732

A mother, unable to confront the heartbreak of her son leaving for college, delays his departure by making him sick. Unfortunately, she goes too far.



Bad Teacher
5.6

A lazy, incompetent middle school teacher who hates her job and her students is forced to return to her job to make enough money for a boob job after her rich fiancé dumps her.



The Opposite of Sex

A 16-year-old girl visits her gay half-brother and ends up seducing his boyfriend, thus wreaking havoc on all of their lives.



Hurlyburly
5.476

A group of actors and their casting agents try to find a direction in their lives whilst coming to terms with their personal problems and relationship conflicts.

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