I Was a Stranger (2025)

(0) based on 0 votes
A doctor, a soldier, a smuggler, a father, and a captain. In a world divided by borders and war, five lives intersect in the pursuit of safety and belonging. Their journeys reveal the heartbreak and fragile beauty of those who dare to start over.
Directors
Release Date
Dec 31, 2025
Runtime
01h 43m
Available in streaming on

A doctor, a soldier, a smuggler, a father, and a captain. In a world divided by borders and war, five lives intersect in the pursuit of safety and belonging. Their journeys reveal the heartbreak and fragile beauty of those who dare to start over.

Movies like I Was a Stranger

Hotel Rwanda

Inspired by true events, this film takes place in Rwanda in the 1990s when more than a million Tutsis were killed in a genocide that went mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world. Hotel owner Paul Rusesabagina houses over a thousand refuges in his hotel in attempt to save their lives.
Search similar movies
7.7
Hotel+Rwanda
Hotel Rwanda

2004

Search similar movies
Turtles Can Fly

Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iraq border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.
Search similar movies
7.8
Turtles+Can+Fly
Turtles Can Fly

2005

Search similar movies
Any Day Now

Bahman, Mahtab, Ramin and Donya Mehdipour are enjoying a perfect summer in a small Finnish town. Their routines are fractured by a negative decision on their application for asylum by the Finnish Immigration Service. But life must go on and the 13-year-old Ramin is about to enter an entirely new school, junior high. The Mehdipours use their last chance to appeal but continue their everyday lives, fuelled by their exceptionally positive outlook and attitude.
Search similar movies
5.5
Any+Day+Now
Any Day Now

2020

Search similar movies
The Last Witness

An ambitious young journalist uncovers the horrific slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers during World War II, a secret kept hidden for far too many years.
Search similar movies
6.0
The+Last+Witness
The Last Witness

2018

Search similar movies
Sounds of Sand

On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats, and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality.
Search similar movies
6.1
Sounds+of+Sand
Sounds of Sand

2007

Search similar movies
The Boat Is Full

During World War II, Switzerland severely limited refugees: "Our boat is full." A train from Germany halts briefly in an isolated corner of Switzerland. Six people jump off seeking asylum: four Jews, a French child, and a German soldier. They seek temporary refuge with a couple who run a village inn. They pose as a family: the deserter as husband, Judith as his wife, an old man from Vienna as her father, his granddaughter and the French lad, whom they beg to keep silent, as their children. Judith's teenage brother poses as a soldier. The fabrication unravels through chance and the local constable's exact investigation. Whom will the Swiss allow to stay? Who gets deported?
Search similar movies
6.3
The+Boat+Is+Full
The Boat Is Full

1981

Search similar movies
Strayed

Fleeing the June 1940 arrival of Hitler's army in Paris, a young war widow and her two children are rescued from dive-bombing German fighters by a cocky, reckless teenager. He finds them refuge in an abandoned house, but despite the fact that the family quickly comes to be depending much on his cunning and survival abilities, their cohabitation proves uneasy.
Search similar movies
5.9
Strayed
Welcome to Norway!

A couple decide to open a home for refugees in the remote cold mountains of Norway.
Search similar movies
6.1
Welcome+to+Norway%21
Welcome to Norway!

2016

Search similar movies
Letter to the King

In Letter to the King we meet a group of refugees, all with their own agendas, on an excursion to Oslo. A young man about to be deported visits his former employers to collect his off-the-books salary, a martial arts expert is looking for work, a young woman is haunted by the past and out for vengeance and an old man named Mirza is busy writing a letter to the king to get his final wish granted. An altogether urgent and nuanced portrait of a motley group of individuals, too often regarded as a homogeneous group.
Search similar movies
6.3
Letter+to+the+King
Letter to the King

2014

Search similar movies
Skeet

After being released from prison, Billy Skinner returns to his low-income neighbourhood feeling like a fish out of water; the area has changed dramatically, and what was once a predominantly white neighbourhood is now mostly occupied by refugee families.
Search similar movies
Skeet
The New Country

A 15-year-old Somalian boy meets a 40-year-old Iranian man in a refugee camp in Skåne, in the south of Sweden. With the threat of deportation hanging over them, they decide to take their faiths in their own hands and together they go on a journey in the Swedish summer.
Search similar movies
6.7
The+New+Country
The New Country

2000

Search similar movies
Limbo

An offbeat observation of refugees waiting to be granted asylum on a fictional remote Scottish island. It focuses on Omar, a young Syrian musician who is burdened by the weight of his grandfather’s oud, which he has carried all the way from his homeland.
Search similar movies
7.0
Limbo
The Invisibles

Four young Jews survive the Third Reich in the middle of Berlin by living so recklessly that they become "invisible."
Search similar movies
7.1
The+Invisibles
The Invisibles

2017

Search similar movies
Welcome to Hartmanns

The Hartmann family is turned upside down when mother Angelika decides to take in the refugee Diallo, against her husband's will. Amidst the typical chaos of our time, hope remains that the family finds its stability, confidence and peace again - just like the whole country.
Search similar movies
6.4
Welcome+to+Hartmanns
Welcome to Hartmanns

2016

Search similar movies
The Curve

Radi, who leads a reclusive life in his own van, finds himself on a road trip with three strangers, which alters his clockwork and very private lifestyle.
Search similar movies
The+Curve
Woman of the Year

Rival reporters Sam Craig and Tess Harding fall in love and get married, only to find their relationship strained when Sam comes to resent Tess' hectic lifestyle.
Search similar movies
6.9
Woman+of+the+Year
Woman of the Year

1942

Search similar movies
Silent Night

Fact-based World War II story set on Christmas Eve, 1944, finds a German Mother and her son seeking refuge in a cabin on the war front. When she is invaded by three American soldiers and then three German soldiers, she successfully convinces the soldiers to put aside their differences for one evening and share a Christmas dinner.
Search similar movies
5.9
Silent+Night
Silent Night

2002

Search similar movies
I Have to Run

A gay artist flees the repressive laws and war in Russia to go to Berlin, leaving his boyfriend behind. Meanwhile, life in Berlin turns out to be less inclusive he had expected.
Search similar movies
I+Have+to+Run
I Have to Run

2025

Search similar movies
Salvation Has No Name

A troupe of clowns gather to perform a story about a priest and a refugee, but as their misguided tale unfolds, the boundaries between fiction and reality begin to fray.
Search similar movies
6.8
Salvation+Has+No+Name
Salvation Has No Name

2022

Search similar movies
Blood Alley

An American Merchant Marine captain, rescued from a Chinese Communist jail by local villagers, is "shanghaied" into transporting the entire village to Hong Kong on an ancient paddle steamer.
Search similar movies
5.9
Blood+Alley
Blood Alley

1955

Search similar movies
The Good Lie

A young refugee of the Sudanese Civil War who wins a lottery for relocation to the United States with three other lost boys. Encountering the modern world for the first time, they develop an unlikely friendship with a brash American woman assigned to help them, but the young man struggles to adjust to this new life and his feelings of guilt about the brother he left behind.
Search similar movies
7.4
The+Good+Lie
The Good Lie

2014

Search similar movies
Kadal Kuthiraigal

A school in a remote village gets a swimming coach who turns the fortunes of its students.
Search similar movies
Kadal+Kuthiraigal
Kadal Kuthiraigal

2018

Search similar movies
Two Women

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.
Search similar movies
7.8
Two+Women
Up at the Villa

Superficial people are revealed and drastically changed by circumstance or luck in this a tale of death, seduction, blackmail and theft among British and Americans in Florence in the turbulent days just before World War II.
Search similar movies
5.3
Up+at+the+Villa
Up at the Villa

2000

Search similar movies
Never Alone

1942. The State of Finland has formed an alliance with Nazi Germany. An elderly man single-handedly tries to stop a secret attempt by the Finnish State Police to hand over Jewish refugees directly to the Gestapo.
Search similar movies
6.2
Never+Alone
Never Alone

2025

Search similar movies
The Hunted

After their boat capsizes in the Mediterranean Sea, a group of refugees are rescued by rich Europeans who offer them shelter on an idyllic island. But the miracle soon becomes a nightmare when the saviors turn into ruthless manhunters.
Search similar movies
7.3
The+Hunted
The Hunted

2024

Search similar movies
Happy End

A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.
Search similar movies
6.2
Happy+End
Kandahar

After an Afghanistan-born woman who lives in Canada receives a letter from her suicidal sister, she takes a perilous journey through Afghanistan to try to find her.
Search similar movies
6.2
Kandahar
The Silence

Fatma and her mother are Kurdish refugees living in Italy. One day at the hospital, Fatma learns her mother has breast cancer.
Search similar movies
7.3
The+Silence
The Silence

2016

Search similar movies
Journey for Margaret

An American newspaperman and his wife, end up in London after several retreats in the opening days of WWII. After a shrapnel wound and loss of her baby she returns to America. War weary, he is forced to do a story about war orphans, where he meets Margaret.
Search similar movies
6.6
Journey+for+Margaret
Journey for Margaret

1942

Search similar movies
The Crossing I

At the end of the World War II and the middle of the Chinese Revolution, three couples from different backgrounds with different nationalities flee from China to the island of Taiwan.
Search similar movies
5.6
The+Crossing+I
The Crossing I

2014

Search similar movies
Ayaan

An escaped asylum seeker encounters an Aboriginal man on a remote Australian beach. She must decide whether to trust him or  journey on alone.
Search similar movies
2.0
Ayaan
Arch of Triumph

In the winter of 1938, Paris is crowded with refugees from the Nazis, who live in the black shadows of night, trying to evade deportation. One such is Dr. Ravic, who practices medicine illegally and stalks his old Nazi enemy Haake with murder in mind. One rainy night, Ravic meets Joan Madou, a kept woman cast adrift by her lover's sudden death. Against Ravic's better judgment, they become involved in a doomed affair.
Search similar movies
5.8
Arch+of+Triumph
Arch of Triumph

1948

Search similar movies
Kannathil Muthamittal

A little girl is told by her parents that she is adopted. Determined to find her birth mother, her family eventually agrees to take her to Sri Lanka, where they encounter the militant group known as the Tamil Tigers.
Search similar movies
7.6
Kannathil+Muthamittal
Kannathil Muthamittal

2002

Search similar movies
The Truce

After the liberation of Auschwitz, an Italian prisoner of War begins a torturous voyage home to Turin, through a Europe caught between war and peace.
Search similar movies
6.2
The+Truce
Death of a Scoundrel

A Czech refugee uses women to advance his business interest.
Search similar movies
6.0
Death+of+a+Scoundrel
Death of a Scoundrel

1956

Search similar movies
That Which Once Was

In 2032 an eight-year old boy, displaced by global warming, fends for himself as an environmental refugee in a hostile northern metropolis. Haunted by memories of flooding that left him homeless and orphaned, the boy forms an unexpected friendship with an Inuk ice carver who helps him confront his past.
Search similar movies
That+Which+Once+Was
That Which Once Was

2011

Search similar movies
Ghabe

A refugee falling in love. "Ghabe" follows a Syrian refugee during the summer of the 2015 migration as he falls in love with a majestic forest in Sweden and a mysterious local woman living on its border.
Search similar movies
5.5
Ghabe