Film

Once

Name: Once
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Released: 2007
Cast: Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová, Hugh Walsh, Gerard Hendrick, Alaistair Foley

Shot on a shoestring in real Dublin streets, Once is less a movie than a live recording of two people falling for each other through songwriting. Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, both musicians rather than actors, sing what they can't quite say aloud. Tender, unpolished, deliberately unresolved — for anyone who wants romance stripped of gloss and Hollywood tidiness.

TMDb rating

7.4

If you liked this

Sing Street2016

From the same director, John Carney, this one trades busking heartbreak for teenage swagger — a Dublin kid starts a band to impress a girl, and the songs are just as good.

But It's sunnier and more crowd-pleasing than Once, with a tidier ending that some will find too neat.

Begin Again2013no page yet

Carney's other music-romance, this time in New York with Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo — same idea of strangers building songs together, filtered through a starrier, more polished lens.

But The studio-movie gloss and famous faces work against the scrappy intimacy that made Once feel so real.

Inside Llewyn Davis2013

The Coen brothers' portrait of a struggling folk musician in 1961 Greenwich Village shares Once's ache of near-success, but replaces hope with a colder, funnier fatalism.

But It's a bleaker, more circular film with none of Once's warmth — deliberately frustrating rather than uplifting.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Bicycle Thieves1948

Once's whole method — real streets, non-actors, unresolved endings, dignity found in ordinary hardship — is a direct descendant of Italian neorealism, and this is the film that wrote the rulebook.

Watch the film that invented the aesthetic Once borrows: real Roman streets, an untrained cast, and a devastating tenderness earned entirely through observation rather than performance.

But It's a much harsher story about poverty and desperation, in black-and-white Italian with subtitles, and offers none of Once's musical comfort.

The Commitments1991

Another Dublin music story, about a scrappy soul band chasing a dream — funnier, louder, and full of the same working-class Irish grit and love of music for its own sake.

But It's an ensemble comedy-drama, not a quiet two-hander, so the intimacy Once trades on is mostly traded away.

La La Land2016

If you want the big, glossy, full-blown musical version of two artists falling for each other while chasing their dreams, this is Once dressed up in Technicolor and choreography.

But It's a proper studio musical with dance numbers and gloss — the opposite of Once's handheld, unglamorous honesty.

A Star Is Born2018

Another musician-to-musician romance built around real songwriting and real chemistry, with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga actually performing — bigger in scale, but the ache is familiar.

But It's a bigger, more tragic Hollywood arc, with none of Once's shrugging, open-ended restraint.

Brooklyn2015

Swap the busker for a shopgirl and Dublin for 1950s New York, and you get the same quiet ache of an Irish immigrant torn between two lives and two kinds of love.

But There's no music at all, and the tone is more classical period drama than lo-fi indie.

Blue Valentine2010

For the same raw, handheld honesty about how love actually starts and frays, without a script that ties things up neatly — just two people caught on camera being human.

But It's a much harder, sadder watch about a relationship falling apart rather than one just beginning.

Frances Ha2013

A different kind of low-budget, black-and-white intimacy — less romance, more a portrait of a broke young artist in a city, filmed with the same do-it-yourself tenderness.

But It's about friendship and ambition more than romance, so if you came for the love story you may feel short-changed.

Song Exploder2020no page yet

Once treats songwriting itself as the love story; this series strips away the romance and just watches musicians build a song from nothing, which is exactly the moment Once keeps returning to.

Each short episode takes one song apart track by track with the artist who wrote it — the same intimate, unglamorous magic of watching a song get born that Once captures almost by accident.

But There's no story and no characters to follow, just craft and process — it can feel dry if you wanted narrative rather than analysis.

Anna and the Apocalypse2018

Both are small, homemade musicals about ordinary young people finding connection through song in a decaying town — Once just plays it hushed and sincere where this one goes full splatter and jazz-hands.

A Scottish high-schooler fights off a zombie outbreak between big, joyful musical numbers — proof the low-budget, heart-on-sleeve musical instinct behind Once can curdle into glorious, gory camp.

But It's a horror-comedy with fake blood and dance breaks — if you want anything resembling Once's hushed realism, this will whiplash you.