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Movies like Secrets & Lies

Key Features:
Adoption, Family secrets, Class differences, Racial identity, Mother-daughter relationship, Working class, Reunion, Hidden past, Emotional drama, Social commentary
Tone:
serious, restrained, dramatic
Target Audience:
Drama enthusiasts, Independent film lovers, Character-driven stories, Socially conscious viewers
Emotional Arc:
Curiosity → Revelation

Secrets & Lies

1996-05-24
Secrets & Lies Poster - Find Similar Movies

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.

Genres
Drama
Cast
Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Claire Rushbrook, Lee Ross, Lesley Manville, Elizabeth Berrington, Michele Austin, Ron Cook
Crew
Mike Leigh, Mike Leigh
Rating
7.6(694 votes)
Secrets & LiesSecrets & Lies
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Mother and Child
6.589

The lives of three women have a commonality: adoption. Karen is a physical therapist who regrets that, as a teenager, she gave up her daughter for adoption. Elizabeth was an adopted child and is now a successful lawyer, but her personal life lacks warmth. Lucy and her husband have failed to conceive and now hope to adopt a baby to make their family complete.



Separate Lies
5.76

Following a traffic accident, things take a turn when the victim's identity is revealed.



Reclaim
Reclaim(2014)
5.252

After their newly adopted daughter goes missing in a small town, Steven and Shannon will stop at nothing to uncover the truth behind her disappearance and the dangerous secret behind the adoption agency they trusted. Risking their own lives, they will discover just what being a parent means and how far they will go to get their child back.



Made in America
5.5

A young black woman discovers that her father was a sperm donor, and if that wasn't bad enough, he's white.



Orphan
Orphan(2009)
7

After losing their baby, a married couple adopt 9-year old Esther, who may not be as innocent as she seems.



Philomena
Philomena(2013)
7.3

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



Family Life
7.2

A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life and consider their daughter to be “misbehaving” whenever she’s trying to find her own way in life.



Family Is Family
5.8

Valentin D is a hot designer architect who claims to be an orphan because he is too ashamed to admit he is the son of working-class scrap metal merchants from the north of France.



Hard Truths
6.487

Pansy is a woman so full of rage that every interaction she has devolves into lashing out, whether at her utterly cowed husband and son, or random strangers who have the temerity to address her. In contrast, her younger sister Chantelle lives with her two vivacious daughters and plies a successful trade as a hairdresser, putting clients at their ease all day long. Yet beneath Pansy’s abrasive exterior are hints of a more fragile psyche, one motivated by fear and damaged by repressed pain.



Nancy
Nancy(2018)
5.845

Nancy becomes increasingly convinced she was kidnapped as a child. When she meets a couple whose daughter went missing thirty years ago, reasonable doubts give way to willful belief.



Longing
Longing(2024)
5.493

A business mogul runs into his old small town girlfriend while she is visiting the big city only to find out that they had a child together that he was unaware of.



sex, lies, and videotape

Ann, a frustrated wife, enters into counseling due to a troubled marriage. Unbeknownst to her, her husband John has begun an affair with her sister. When John’s best friend Graham arrives, his penchant for interviewing women about their sex lives forever changes John and Ann’s rocky marriage.



Every Secret Thing
6.14

One clear summer day in a Baltimore suburb, a baby goes missing from her front porch. Two young girls serve seven years for the crime and are released into a town that hasn't fully forgiven or forgotten. Soon, another child is missing, and two detectives are called in to investigate the mystery in a community where everyone seems to have a secret.



Mommie Dearest
6.3

Renowned film star Joan Crawford's abuse towards Christina, her adopted daughter, intensifies as her professional and romantic relationships turn sour.



Secret Ceremony
6

A penniless woman meets a strange girl who insists she is her long-lost mother and becomes enmeshed in a web of deception, and perhaps madness.



One True Thing
6.5

A career woman reassesses her parents' lives after she is forced to care for her cancer-stricken mother.



Luce
Luce(2019)
6.372

A star athlete and top student, Luce's idealized image is challenged by one of his teachers when his unsettling views on political violence come to light, putting a strain on family bonds while igniting intense debates on race and identity.



Belle
Belle(2013)
7.107

Dido Elizabeth Bell, the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, plays an important role in the campaign to abolish slavery in England.



The Secret Life of Words

A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.



The Midwife
6.1

Claire is a midwife and has devoted her life to others. At a moment when she is preoccupied by the imminent closure of the maternity clinic where she works, her life is further turned upside down when Béatrice, her father's former mistress, turns up on the scene. Béatrice is a capricious and selfish woman, Claire's exact opposite.



Closer
Closer(2004)
6.823

The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.



Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Working-class British housewife Myra Savage reinvents herself as a medium, holding seances in the sitting room of her home with the hidden assistance of her under-employed, asthmatic husband, Billy. In an attempt to enhance her credibility as a psychic, Myra hatches an elaborate, ill-conceived plot to kidnap a wealthy couple's young daughter so that she can then help the police "find" the missing girl.



A Kind of Loving

As Vic Brown vacillates between infatuation and disinterest for his co-worker Ingrid Rothwell, she finds out that she is pregnant and Vic has to reconcile how he thought his life would go with what life actually has in store for him.



Mikey
Mikey(1992)
5.845

Mikey just needs a good stable home. He's bounced from foster home to foster home his whole life. He finally lands himself with a new loving family, but their perfect little child is not what he appears to be. His previous caretakers all died of mysterious "accidents" that weren't really accidents at all. Mikey is a cold blooded killer, and it doesn't take long for him to aim his sights on his new adoptive family and anyone else who stands in his way.



Deception
Deception(2021)
5.323

An American writer living in exile in London, Philip listens to women. His English mistress, who visits him regularly in the studio that serves as their refuge. A student he loved in another life. A former lover confined to a hospital in New York.



True Mothers
7.3

After suffering through a long and unsuccessful series of fertility treatments, Satoko and her husband Kiyokazu make the decision to adopt a child. Six years after adopting a boy they named Asato, Satoko has quit her job to concentrate fully on her husband and son. The family lives a peaceful existence until the arrival of a stranger.



The Adopted
6.8

Lisa and Marine live a life of relative companionship together, where the only man permitted into the equation is Lisa’s young son, Leo. However, their simple existence is thrown into disarray when Marie meets and falls in love with Alex, a customer at her bookshop. Lisa is left feeling excluded, and tension develop. But soon an unexpected accident forces all of those involved to reassess the situation and adopt a different position in each other’s lives.



Elisa
Elisa(1995)
6.4

Marie has had a tough childhood ever since her mother Elisa committed suicide. She has spent most of her life in an orphanage and now makes a living as a small time criminal in Paris. Now she wants to unravel her past and find her father whom she blames for her mother's death.



Starlet
Starlet(2012)
6.8

An unlikely friendship forms between 21 year-old Jane and the elderly Sadie after Jane discovers a hidden stash of money inside an object at Sadie's yard sale.



Passing
Passing(2021)
6.257

In 1920s New York City, a Black woman finds her world upended when her life becomes intertwined with a former childhood friend who's passing as white.



Two of Us
Two of Us(2020)
7

Nina and Madeleine have been sharing their lives and the landing between their two apartments for decades. After more than 20 years of loving in the shadows, Madeleine promises Nina she will tell her family the truth. It takes an unexpected event to show her the importance of living your truth.



Estranged
Estranged(2015)
5.3

Due to a near-fatal accident that has left her incapacitated and depleted of her long-term memory, a temporarily wheelchair-bound woman returns home after being abroad for six years accompanied by her bohemian boyfriend, the apparent cause of the accident. Unable to remember her family or her own childhood, she sets out, with the help of her boyfriend, to find the reason for her leaving all those years ago and quickly discovers her relatives may not be as loving as she’d thought



Inheritance
6.34

The patriarch of a wealthy and powerful family suddenly passes away, leaving his wife and daughter with a shocking secret inheritance that threatens to unravel and destroy their lives.



Secret Name
6

Nelie escaped a miserable existence by becoming a frontline nurse in 1914. One day, she takes the identity of Rose, a young woman from a good family, who dies in front of her. She presents herself in her place at Madame de Lengwil's house, to become the reader of this wealthy woman.



A Secret
A Secret(2007)
6.447

In 1953, a sensitive French boy finds out from a neighbor that his family's Jewish. François Grimbert becomes a physician, and gradually peels the layers of his buried family history which resulted in his difficult upbringing, raised as Catholic by his "Aryan" appearing parents. His athletic father labored to stamp out stereotypical Jewish characteristics he perceived in his son, to keep the family's many secrets, as most relatives fought in World War II, and later were hauled off to labor and death camps by the Gestapo.



Angels and Insects
6.1

In Victorian England, wealthy patriarch Sir Harald Alabaster invites an impoverished biologist, William Adamson, into his home. There, William tries to continue his work, but is distracted by Alabaster's seductive daughter, Eugenia. William and Eugenia begin a torrid romance, but as the couple become closer, the young scientist begins to realize that dark, disturbing things are happening behind the closed doors of the Alabaster manor.



Secrets of War
6.628

Tuur and Lambert are best friends. But the war is closing in and is about to change their lives forever. Tuurs dad joined the resistance and even his big brother seems so be part of it. Lamberts family on the other hand choose to obey the Germans. Then a new girls from the city shows up, befriending the boys but telling her secret to only one of them. A choice that separates the boys and ultimately gets her in trouble.



Wuthering Heights
6.6

Young orphan Heathcliff is adopted by the wealthy Earnshaw family and moves into their estate, Wuthering Heights. Soon, the new resident falls for his compassionate foster sister, Cathy. The two share a remarkable bond that seems unbreakable until Cathy, feeling the pressure of social convention, suppresses her feelings and marries Edgar Linton, a man of means who befits her stature. Heathcliff vows to win her back.



Oranges and Sunshine

The story of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham, who uncovers one of the most significant social scandals in recent times – the forced migration of children from the United Kingdom to Australia and other Commonwealth countries. Almost singlehandedly, Margaret reunited thousands of families, brought authorities to account and worldwide attention to an extraordinary miscarriage of justice.



Secret in Their Eyes

A tight-knit team of FBI investigators, along with their District Attorney supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered.



Skin
Skin(2008)
6.39

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.



Clara's Heart
5.447

David is a teenager whose parents are in a deteriorating marriage after their infant daughter dies. Clara is a chambermaid at a Jamaican resort who's hired to be a housekeeper. She and David develop a close bond, opening his eyes and heart to new experiences, and eventually leading to a disturbing secret in Clara's past.



The Strays
5.45

A Black woman's meticulously crafted life of privilege starts to unravel when two strangers show up in her quaint suburban town.



Fast Color
5.9

A woman is forced to go on the run when her superhuman abilities are discovered. Years after having abandoned her family, the only place she has left to hide is home.



Ali & Ava
Ali & Ava(2022)
6.7

Sparks fly after Ali and Ava meet through their shared affection for Sofia, the child of Ali’s tenants whom Ava teaches. Ali finds comfort in Ava’s warmth and kindness while Ava finds Ali’s complexity and humour irresistible. As the pair begin to form a deep connection they have to find a way to keep their newfound passion from being overshadowed by the stresses and struggles of their separate lives and histories.​



Ray & Liz
Ray & Liz(2018)
6.682

On the outskirts of Birmingham and the margins of society the Billingham family perform extreme rituals and break social taboos as they muddle through a life decided by factors beyond their control. At times shocking and laced with an unsettling humor, three episodes unfold as a powerful evocation of the experience of growing up in a Black Country council flat.



The Second Mother
8.031

After leaving her daughter Jessica in a small town in Pernambuco to be raised by relatives, Val spends the next 13 years working as a nanny to Fabinho in São Paulo. She has financial stability but has to live with the guilt of having not raised Jessica herself. As Fabinho’s university entrance exams approach, Jessica reappears in her life and seems to want to give her mother a second chance. However, Jessica has not been raised to be a servant and her very existence will turn Val’s routine on its head. With precision and humour, the subtle and powerful forces that keep rigid class structures in place and how the youth may just be the ones to shake it all up.



Hide and Seek
4.704

Four fragile young people flee London to start an unconventional utopia, creating a world of fantasy that overwhelms them.



Our Children
6.7

Young and full of life, Murielle has a promising future ahead of her when she meets and falls head over heels for Mounir. A wedding soon follows, and the happy couple quickly set about preparing to make a family. However, with family come ties, and none come as tight as that between Mounir and his adoptive father. As Murielle continues to bring new life into the family, frictions between Mounir and Doctor Pinget reach boiling point. Helpless to extract her husband and children from the wealthy nest that Doctor Pinget has provided for them, Murielle is drawn into an unhealthy family dynamic. There is only one way out of this nightmare, and for Murielle all sense of reasoning begins to abandon her.



Great Expectations
6.4

Orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.



Royalteen
Royalteen(2022)
5.827

A teenager struggles to keep her scandal-ridden past and a big secret from getting out when she strikes up an unlikely romance with the crown prince.



High Society
6.22

Two girls from very different social backgrounds discover, at the age of 25, that they had been switched at birth.



Career Girls
6.553

A young college student in London moves into a flat and becomes best friends with a flatmate; the former moves into her own flat 4 years later but 6 years after their parting, the former returns to London to pay the latter a visit.



In Safe Hands
7.4

Théo is given up for adoption by his biological mother on the very day he is born. After this anonymous birth, the mother has two months to change her mind… Or not. The child welfare services and adoption service spring into action… The former have to take care of the baby and support it during this limbo-like time, this period of uncertainty, while the latter must find a woman to become his adoptive mother. She is called Alice, and she has spent the last ten years fighting to have a child.



Black and White
5.331

Racial integration is Elena's profession and passion, not only filling her working day as a cultural mediator assisting immigrants, but spilling over into her home life as well. All too often her husband Carlo must attend charity events where he feels distinctly out of place. During one of these evenings, Carlo meets Nadine, a beautiful black woman.



June
June(2015)
4

June is different from all other nine-year old girls. She is an orphan hiding a secret. Bad things happen when she gets upset, supernatural things. June has been in many foster homes usually leaving them destroyed. But this time it will be different. June has a new foster home and she really likes her new parents. She will have to face the force within her to protect her new parents and to save herself.



Daddy Long Legs
6.364

Wealthy American, Jervis Pendleton has a chance encounter at a French orphanage with a cheerful 18-year-old resident, and anonymously pays for her education at a New England college. She writes letters to her mysterious benefactor regularly, but he never writes back. Several years later, he visits her at school, while still concealing his identity, and—despite their large age difference—they soon fall in love.



Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham

Years after his father disowns his adopted brother for marrying a woman of lower social standing, a young man goes on a mission to reunite his family.



Bring Her Back
7.4

Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are sent to live with a foster mother, only to learn that she is hiding a terrifying secret.



Woman of Straw
6.2

Anthony Richmond schemes to get the fortune of his tyrannical, wheelchair-using tycoon uncle Charles Richmond by persuading Maria, a nurse he employs, to marry him.



The World Unseen
7.077

A drama centered on two women who engage in a dangerous relationship during South Africa's apartheid era.



Private Life
6.9

Richard and Rachel, a couple in the throes of infertility, try to maintain their marriage as they descend deeper and deeper into the insular world of assisted reproduction and domestic adoption.



Una
Una(2017)
6.058

When a young woman unexpectedly arrives at an older man's workplace, looking for answers, the secrets of the past threaten to unravel his new life.



Hide and Seek
6.545

Sung-soo has everything a man could want: a beautiful wife and children, a comfortable home and luxury car, and plenty of money in the bank. When he learns that his estranged brother, Sung-chul, has gone missing, haunting memories of their troubled past urge him to visit his brother’s apartment in search of answers.



Engaging Father Christmas

It's Christmas and Miranda leaves Seattle with a suitcase full of presents to join her long- lost family in Carlton Heath, where she will experience the joyful traditions she missed as a child. Last Christmas, Miranda fell in love with Ian, a local man who helped her as she searched for her father, James Whitcomb, a famous theatre actor she believed had a connection to the town. At his widow Margaret’s request, Miranda agrees to keep it a secret to protect the family from scandal.



Not on My Watch
5.325

A single mother gets entangled in a web of lies to protect her sons.



The Tearsmith
6.508

Adopted together after a tough childhood in an orphanage, Nica and Rigel realize that unexpected but irresistible feelings pull them together.



The Naked Kiss
7

A former prostitute works to create a new life for herself in a small town, but a shocking discovery could threaten everything.



Secret Things
5.7

Two young women find themselves struggling to survive in Paris, street-wise Nathalie, a stripper, and naïve Sandrine, a barmaid. Together, they discover that sex can be used to their advantage, and pleasure.



Bliss
Bliss(1997)
5.4

On his wedding day, Joseph nervously admits that his wife is not quite like other women. But his beautiful bride is more than just the "impulsive, compulsive, obsessive" woman he thinks he knows. And when Joseph discovers she is hiding troubling secrets, it sends them both on a sexual odyssey that will either destroy or redeem their relationship.



Cat People
6

After years of separation, Irena Gallier and her minister brother, Paul, reunite in New Orleans. When zoologists capture a wild panther, Irena is drawn to the cat – and zoo curator Oliver to her. Soon, Paul will have to reveal the family secret: that when sexually aroused, they revert into predatory jungle cats.



London River
6.7

After traveling to London to check on their missing children in the wake of the 2005 terror attacks on the city, two strangers come to discover their respective children had been living together at the time of the attacks



Albert Nobbs
6.354

Albert Nobbs struggles to survive in late 19th century Ireland, where women aren't encouraged to be independent. Posing as a man, so she can work as a butler in Dublin's most posh hotel, Albert meets a handsome painter and looks to escape the lie she has been living.



Echo Valley
6.4

Kate lives a secluded life—until her troubled daughter shows up, frightened and covered in someone else's blood. As Kate unravels the shocking truth, she learns just how far a mother will go to try to save her child.



Human Capital
7.5

The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.



Lazy Eye
Lazy Eye(2016)
5.539

Passions reignite and hidden secrets revealed when a graphic designer in Los Angeles reconnects with an ex-lover he hasn’t seen or heard from in 15 years. Over the course of a weekend at a vacation house in the desert, they must determine whether or not they have a future together.



Detective Story
7

Tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod, leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city's lowlife. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.



Consenting Adults
5.4

Richard and Priscilla Parker are an ordinary suburban couple whose lives are invaded and rocked by their hedonistic, secretive new neighbors, Eddy and Kay Otis.



Foster
Foster(2011)
6.7

Looking to adopt a child and unable to conceive a child of their own, the Morrisons' lives are turned upside down when a seven-year-old boy unexpectedly shows up on their doorstep.



Lady Chatterley's Lover

After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.



Tell It to the Bees
7.498

Dr. Jean Markham returns to the town she left as a teenager to take over her late father's medical practice. When a school-yard scuffle lands Charlie in her surgery, she invites him to visit the hives in her garden and tell his secrets to the bees, as she once did. The new friendship between the boy and the bee keeper brings his mother Lydia into Jean's world.



Stories We Tell
7.1

Canadian actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley investigates certain secrets related to her mother, interviewing a group of family members and friends whose reliability varies depending of their implication in the events, which are remembered in different ways; so a trail of questions remains to be answered, because memory is always changing and the discovery of truth often depends on who is telling the tale.



The Keeping Hours
6.947

A supernatural love story that centers on two parents whose life together falls apart after their son dies. The man, now a successful lawyer, and the woman, now married and an author, get a chance at reconciliation ten years later.



Missing
Missing(2016)
6.9

A working single mother comes home one day to find that her daughter and the nanny have disappeared -- and this is just the beginning of her nightmare.



Cass
Cass(2008)
5.95

The incredible true story of how an orphaned Jamaican baby, adopted by an elderly white couple and brought up in an all white area of London, became one of the most feared and respected men in Britain.



Birth/Rebirth
6.333

A single mother and a childless morgue technician are bound together by their relationship to a little girl they have reanimated from the dead.



Stonehearst Asylum
6.9

An Oxford Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.



Human Capital
5.67

Ian begins a relationship with Drew's daughter, who works in the financial sector. The couple gets involved in a tragic accident that will change their lives forever. At the same time, the accident has a major impact on both their families who, despite the class difference, cross paths.



What Maisie Knew
7.1

In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.



The Color of Lies
5.7

In a small Breton town, a 10-year-old girl is found murdered. René, her art teacher, a professional painter, is the last person to have seen her alive. The inspector in charge of the investigation immediately questions him. In this small provincial town where people all know each other and regularly meet at the Bar des Amis, René is increasingly unsettled by the other inhabitants' suspicions and by the inspector's investigation. Children stop coming to him for lessons. His wife, Viviane, a district nurse, protects him and supports him with her love. However, a self-centred media-star writer adds to René's confusion...



Black or White
6.8

A grieving widower is drawn into a custody battle over his granddaughter, whom he helped raise her entire life.



No Love Lost
6.2

Étienne is barely twenty when he falls in love with Valérie. They are hardly any more when their daughter Rosa is born. And then, one day, Valérie leaves and never returns. He chooses not to make a drama of it and builds a happy life for him and his child. Sixteen years later, when Rosa is about to lead her own life, Étienne recognizes his wife in a television report. The past brutally resurfaces, and father and daughter are propelled into one last chaotic family journey.



The Truth
The Truth(2019)
5.986

Fabienne is a star; a star of French cinema. She reigns amongst men who love and admire her. When she publishes her memoirs, her daughter Lumir returns from New York to Paris with her husband and young child. The reunion between mother and daughter will quickly turn to confrontation: truths will be told, accounts settled, loves and resentments confessed.



Missing
Missing(2023)
7.414

When her mother disappears while on vacation in Colombia with her new boyfriend, June’s search for answers is hindered by international red tape. Stuck thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, June creatively uses all the latest technology at her fingertips to try and find her before it’s too late. But as she digs deeper, her digital sleuthing raises more questions than answers... and when June unravels secrets about her mom, she discovers that she never really knew her at all.



Eastern Promises
7.3

A Russian teenager living in London dies during childbirth but leaves clues in her diary that could tie her child to a rape involving a violent Russian mob family.



May December
6.576

Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.



In a Better World
7.1

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.



Disappearance at Clifton Hill

Following the death of her mother, a young woman returns home to Niagara Falls and becomes entangled in the memory of a kidnapping she claims to have witnessed as a child.



The Truth About Emanuel

A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.

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