The 45 Saddest Movies of All Time (2024)

Still Alice stars Julianne Moore as Dr. Alice Howland, a linguistics professor who’s diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. When her memory begins to fade, Alice struggles to hold on to her identity and connect with her family, who are forced to watch her suffer. With its devastating plot and star-studded performances, Still Alice is a tearjerker that will make you appreciate just how precious life is.

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You may consider May December a drama (or even a thriller, depending on who you ask), but the plot is downright heartbreaking. May December, which is inspired by a true story, follows a couple with a troubling age gap. Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton) have been together for years, but that’s only possible because Joe was groomed into the relationship as a child. When an actress asks to study them for an upcoming film, Joe realizes Gracie may not be as innocent as she seems.

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Will and Jaden Smith star as a father-son duo in The Pursuit of Happyness. The film is based on a true story and follows Christopher Gardner, a single father who’s just been evicted from his apartment. While battling homelessness, Christopher lands an internship at a brokerage firm, which, of course, pays nothing. Throughout the film, Christopher relies on sheer faith and perseverance to create a better life for his son. The film is equal parts inspiring and tragic—don’t even try to watch this without a box of tissues on hand.

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What’s more devastating than a lost love? In Past Lives, Greta Lee stars as Nora, a woman who reconnects with her childhood friend, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo). They lost touch when Nora left South Korea with her family, but when they reconnect, it’s as if no time has passed ... but it has. Now, Nora is married—and she has a new life in New York City. When she meets up with Hae Sung, she’s forced to confront the cruel banality of timing and destiny.

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Matthew McConaughey stars as Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club. Ron’s life is forever changed when he’s diagnosed with AIDS and learns he has a month left to live. Despite the grim circumstances, Ron won’t go down without a fight. Instead of relying on the medical system, he finds and smuggles unapproved drugs into America. Along the way, he meets Rayon (Jared Leto), another AIDS patient, and they work together to distribute drug treatments to anyone in need. Dallas Buyers Club is a film that will break your heart and then patch it back up again.

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Cinema Paradiso is a beautifully nostalgic picture not just about the beauty and community of movies but about the people in our lives who make us who we are. The movie is told as a flashback through the life of a film director who remembers his friendship in his younger years with a projectionist, Alfredo—who helped him nurture his creativity and love of cinema.

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It’s tough to make a dramedy about something as difficult as a cancer diagnosis, but screenwriter Will Reiser based this script on his personal experiences struggling with the disease. Joseph Gordon-Levitt brilliantly plays Adam Lerner, a young journalist who is diagnosed with spinal cancer and given a 50/50 chance to live.

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Sofia Coppola has made a name for herself as an incredible director. Her 2003 romantic-comedy-drama features a great depiction of a midlife crisis, told through Bill Murray’s aging movie star, Bob Harris. The film has an incredibly melancholy feel throughout while still mining moments of levity and humor.

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Steel Magnolias is another tearjerker that balances its tone with plenty of warmth and humor between moments of tragedy. The film follows a tight-knit group of southern women who band together to help their friend, who starts suffering with advanced complications from type 1 diabetes. It features a stacked main cast, with stars Sally Field, Julia Roberts, Dolly Parton, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, and Shirley MacLaine playing members of the friend group.

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Far and away the best Melissa McCarthy performance in years, this biographical drama is based on the life of Lee Israel, who became infamous in the literary world when she confessed to writing and selling fake letters by famous authors to make ends meet. The film helps you empathize with Israel’s motivation behind the crimes, but it’s still unflinching in showing the harm of her actions to those she conned. Her dynamic with friend and forgery conspirator Jack—played brilliantly by Richard E. Grant—is the beating heart of the film.

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Into the Wild is based on the Jon Krakauer book about the true story of Christopher McCandless. He was an adventurer who died after hitchhiking to Alaska, where he attempted to live off the land in an abandoned bus near Denali National Park. The film is one of Sean Penn’s best directing accomplishments. He found great images in the wilderness and from McCandless’s early life, in addition to guiding the performances by the cast—especially a young Emile Hirsch as the lead—very well.

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It’s difficult to show depression in an authentic and humanizing way onscreen, but Manchester by the Sea deftly tells the story of a grieving man who suddenly has to care for his teenage nephew after his brother’s passing. Every character is achingly well written and brought to life by their respective actors.

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Thanks to Remember the Titans, you’ll never hear “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” the same way again.

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The Banshees of Inisherin shows one of the most extreme friend breakups ever put on film. Plus, it serves as a reunion of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson with director Martin McDonagh, following their brilliant lead roles in 2008’s In Bruges. On a remote Irish island in the 1920s, Farrell’s sweet but dull Pádraic is devastated when his longtime drinking buddy Colm (Gleeson), suddenly refuses to talk to him. Throughout it all, McDonagh expertly balances moments of emotional rawness and pure laughs.

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While you may think that Midsommar is just a straightforward horror film, Ari Aster blends terrifying images, moments of dark humor, and gutting tragedy into a wholly unnerving film. The movie sees Florence Pugh’s character, Dani, travel to a remote Swedish commune—and antics ensue. There’s a feeling of tragic inevitability in the film’s events as Dani, her friends, and her distant boyfriend, Christian, seem powerless to escape from the increasingly disturbing cult.

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Simply one of the best coming-of-age stories in recent years, Barry Jenkins’s breakout film takes us through three different periods in the life of a gay Black man coming to terms with his identity. Moonlight managed to simultaneously feel deeply intimate to and also profoundly resonant with many viewers. If you haven’t seen the film since it won three Oscars, it’s absolutely worth the rewatch.

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This war drama, which is set in Auschwitz, is unflinching and profound without reducing the real events it depicts to melodrama. The film stars Géza Röhrig as Saul Ausländer, a member of the Sonderkommandos—which were work units made of death-camp prisoners who had to clean gas chambers and retrieve valuables from the corpses of those killed in them. Most of the film stays in a close shot on Saul as he seeks to give a young gas-chamber victim a proper Jewish burial, which is a haunting cinematic depiction of his growing numbness to the horrors around him.

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Oh captain ... [sniffles] my captain [sobs].

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Wong Kar-wai’s moving and tragic romance follows two neighbors who eventually learn their spouses are having an affair with each other—so they try to begin a relationship of their own. The film is both sweeping and intimate, with beautiful musings on isolation, longing, and missed chances that still resonate today.

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This indie drama, which is set in a budget motel near Disney World, is expertly crafted to hit you with a huge range of emotions. Brooklynn Prince’s amazing performance as six-year-old Moonee gives us an innocent point of view of her character’s young single mother, who is struggling to make ends meet and stave off homelessness. Still, Moonee finds tons of fun during aimless summer days at the Magic Castle motel.

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