Film

Disobedience

A hushed, aching drama about a woman who returns to the Orthodox community that once shunned her, and to the love she never resolved with the friend now trapped in a marriage there. Sebastián Lelio directs Weisz and McAdams with restraint rather than melodrama, weighing faith against desire without villains. For anyone who wants their romance slow-burning and morally complicated.

TMDb rating6.9

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Carol2015

Todd Haynes's aching, restrained love story between two women in 1950s New York, all stolen glances and impossible timing — the same slow-burn tension Disobedience trades in, wrapped in exquisite period detail.

But Its glacial pace and elegant reserve can feel distancing if you want raw emotional release instead of quiet control.

Carol poster

A Fantastic Woman2017no page yet

Lelio's other masterpiece follows a trans woman fighting to grieve her partner amid a hostile family — same director, same fascination with dignity under pressure, wildly different story.

But It's angrier and more confrontational than Disobedience, with institutional cruelty replacing romance as the driving force.

Unorthodox2020no page yet

A young woman flees her ultra-Orthodox Hasidic marriage in Brooklyn for Berlin, wrestling with faith, community and selfhood — the exact tension Disobedience explores, stretched into four gripping episodes.

But Its Yiddish-language authenticity and deliberate character work may test viewers wanting something punchier or more plot-driven.

The wildcard

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Black Narcissus1947

Both hinge on a woman whose vow to God cracks under desire she can't outrun, staged inside a closed religious community built to punish deviation.

Nuns in a remote Himalayan convent unravel with repressed desire and spiritual crisis in this Powell and Pressburger classic — the same claustrophobic collision of faith and longing, seven decades early.

But Its Technicolor melodrama and theatrical performances feel stylistically far from Disobedience's naturalism; it's operatic where the film is hushed.

Black Narcissus poster
More like this (8)

Brokeback Mountain2005

The defining forbidden-love story of the 2000s: two men bound by desire and paralyzed by the world they were raised in, devastating and patient and unforgettable.

But It's a heavier gut-punch than Disobedience, offering considerably less hope by the time it ends.

Brokeback Mountain poster

God's Own Country2017

A lonely young farmer opens up to a migrant worker on a remote Yorkshire farm — raw, physical, unsentimental romance that trades synagogue hush for mud and hard labor.

But It's grittier and less dialogue-driven than Disobedience; patience is required for its quiet, observational rhythm.

God's Own Country poster

Call Me by Your Name2017

Sun-drenched and sensuous, this Oscar-winning romance shares Disobedience's interest in desire colliding with duty and time running out, just in a warmer key.

But It's dreamier and less burdened by community consequence — the stakes feel gentler and more elegiac than urgent.

Call Me by Your Name poster

Ammonite2020

Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan smolder in this Victorian-set romance between a fossil hunter and a doctor's wife, another study of desire straining against convention and silence.

But Critics were split on its historical liberties, and its pacing is even more deliberate than Disobedience's.

Ammonite poster

Loving2016

The true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, whose interracial marriage was illegal in 1950s Virginia, shares Disobedience's quiet devastation — love as an act of defiance against community and law.

But It's more restrained and less about internal sexual awakening, staying firmly in the register of true-story docudrama.

Loving poster

The Kids Are All Right2010no page yet

A lighter companion piece — a lesbian couple's marriage tested by an outside disruption, handled with warmth, humor and real messiness rather than tragedy.

But Its comic tone and suburban setting make it a much easier watch, lacking Disobedience's spiritual weight.

Trembling Before G-d2001no page yet

It's the nonfiction bedrock beneath Disobedience's premise: the same rabbinic arguments and communal shunning, spoken by people who actually lived it.

A documentary giving voice to real gay and lesbian Orthodox and Hasidic Jews caught between faith and identity — the true stories Disobedience's fiction is built from, told with startling candor.

But It's a talking-heads documentary with none of the visual polish or romantic sweep of Disobedience — informative rather than immersive.

But I'm a Cheerleader2000

Same battleground — an institution insisting desire is a sin to be corrected — but the register flips from mournful realism to gleeful, subversive camp.

A neon-bright satire about a teenager sent to gay conversion therapy — camp, funny, and furious underneath, taking the same collision of sexuality and religious institution and detonating it as comedy.

But Its broad, cartoonish tone is a jarring tonal 180 from Disobedience's hushed seriousness — this is satire, not drama.

But I'm a Cheerleader poster

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