The Best Sad Movies on Netflix For When You Need a Cathartic Cry

Sometimes we all need a cathartic cry. And there’s no perfect companion for wallowing in self-pity than a sad movie. And sometimes this heartbreaking emotional drama makes for the best cinema—from broken families to LGBTQ stories and war movies. Here, we run down the best sad movies on Netflix from Marriage Story to Moonlight and Mudbound.

1 Seven Pounds

Ben Thomas (Will Smith)'s mission is to improve the life of seven strangers who need a second chance. He poses as an IRS agent to gain the trust of the people he wants to help.

2 Marriage Story

Charlie Barber (Adam Driver) and his wife, Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), are getting a divorce, but Nicole wants to raise their son in her hometown, Los Angeles. Charlie is a Broadway director whose career requires that he stay in New York City. They both get lawyers and what was originally an amicable split suddenly involves a lot of emotions and hurt feelings. This Noah Baumbach film is nominated for a 2020 Oscar for Best Picture and also stars Laura Dern (Best Supporting Actress nomination), Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, and more.

3 What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) has a lot of responsibilities in his life. He takes care of his mentally disabled younger brother, Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his obese mother (Darlene Cates) and is having an affair with an older woman (Mary Steenburgen). He hardly has time for his own happiness, like his romance with Becky (Juliette Lewis).

4 Moonlight

The 2017 Best Picture winner follows the coming of age story of a boy named Chiron in Miami. We see Chiron through three snapshots of his life as he navigates the circumstances of his community, his family, and his sexuality.

5 Roma

Alfonso Cuarón's 2019 Oscar winner is about Cleo, a live-in maid in Colonia Roma, a neighborhood in Mexico City in 1970. She helps Antonio and Sofía take care of their four children. Suddenly, Antonio runs off with his mistress and Cleo finds out she's pregnant. She goes with Sofía on a trip with the kids to clear their minds.

6 The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

This 2008 film, based on the 2006 novel by John Boyne, is about eight-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield), who lives in World War II Berlin, where his father has gotten a job as a Nazi commandant at a concentration camp. Bruno meets Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a Jewish boy his age. The boys begin a forbidden friendship.

7 First They Killed My Father

This historical thriller film directed and co-written by Angelina Jolie is based on Loung Ung's memoir of the same name. It tells the story of Ung, who at five years old was trained to be a child soldier in Cambodia while her siblings were sent to labor camps during the Khmer Rouge regime.

8 Beasts of No Nation

When war breaks out in West Africa, a warlord (Idris Elba) trains a young orphan, Agu (Abraham Attah), to join his group of guerrilla soldiers.

9 Doubt

The film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's play stars Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius, who suspects Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the priest at her Catholic school, has abused its first black student. Viola Davis also stars.

10 To the Bone

The Marti Noxon written-and-directed movie stars Lily Collins as a 20-year-old anorexic woman who spent her life as a teenager in recovery programs, where she didn't make any progress. She finally lands in a group home, where she starts on the path of accepting herself.

11 Blue Is the Warmest Color

Two teenage French girls fall in (and out) of love in this sexy and intensely emotional coming of age film that picked up the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

12 Blue Valentine

This heart-wrenching drama about a couple (played by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) looks at their relationship from all angles (and its realistic sex scenes almost earned it an NC-17 rating).

13 Dallas Buyers Club

This film tells the true story of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), an AIDS patient who smuggles pharmaceutical drugs to distribute to others afflicted with the disease (including a transgender woman played by Jared Leto).

14 Milk

Sean Penn plays activist Harvey Milk, who became the first openly gay elected official in California before he was shot by a fellow member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

15 Mudbound

Dee Rees’s Academy Award-nominated drama tells the story of two families—one white, one black—who are linked by their neighboring land in post-World War II Mississippi and are caught in the complicated racial tensions of the era.

16 P.S. I Love You

A young widow (Hilary Swank) grieves her husband (Gerard Butler), who died of a brain tumor. As she avoids moving on from her sadness, she begins to find messages that her late husband left behind for her in order to inspire her to move on and find happiness on her own.

17 Room

Brie Larson plays a woman who was abducted and held captive by a stranger in a one-room shed. There she raises her young son, Jack—until the pair of them are able to escape, and Jack learns that there is a big, scary world outside of the room he has come to know.

18 The Spectacular Now

Two polar opposites—a hard-partying high school senior (Miles Teller) and an unpopular misfit (Shailene Woodley)—find unexpected romance in this teen drama.

Hilary Weaver Hilary Weaver is a freelance writer based in New York who writes about politics, queer issues, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, and every woman the Queen has ever made a dame.

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