Film

Pickpockets

Name: Pickpockets
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Crime
Released: 2018
Cast: Carlos Bardem, Natalia Reyes, Emiliano Pernia, Duban Prado, Marcela Mar

Crime

A brutal street education in Bogotá, where desperate teenagers learn the craft of pickpocketing from a hardened mentor. Pickpockets moves with the energy of a crime thriller but the moral weight of a coming-of-age tragedy, following kids with no real choices into a world that devours them. It's angry, intimate, and unsparing about how poverty manufactures criminals.

TMDb rating

2.5

If you liked this

City of God2002

Another portrait of children surviving in Brazil's favelas through crime, with the same unflinching eye and propulsive storytelling. Visually inventive and morally complex about young people with no exit.

But Three-hour runtime and rapid-fire editing can feel exhausting. Some sequences are deliberately difficult to watch.

Slumdog Millionaire2008

Street kids in Mumbai navigate crime and survival with similar energy and emotional intelligence. It finds beauty and possibility without ever looking away from the grinding reality of their situation.

But The romance subplot feels lighter than the crime material. Some find the ultimate trajectory too redemptive.

A Prophet2009

French prison drama about a teenager forced into crime, learning survival and power in a closed system. The same anatomical precision about how systems corrupt and educate the young.

But Slower pacing and more internal. Less kinetic energy than Pickpockets—some find it deliberately punishing to sit with.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Pickpockets

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Act of Killing2012

Both investigate the psychology of violence with anthropological precision. Neither judges from safety—both put you inside the mind of someone who has crossed a line and how they live with it.

Indonesian documentary where actual mass murderers are given cameras to remake their killings as they wish to be remembered. Same unflinching moral anatomy of how humans become criminals—what they tell themselves, what they need to believe.

But Deeply disturbing and manipulative footage. Watching perpetrators dramatize their atrocities is genuinely hard. Not narrative, and demands you sit with complicity.

City of Men2007

Spiritual sequel to City of God that follows two young men navigating favela life with wit and genuine affection for its characters. Balances thriller momentum with real tenderness.

But Lower stakes than City of God can feel anticlimactic. Not as visually flashy or narratively propulsive.

GoodFellas1990

The template for how seductive crime can be to the young and desperate, how mentorship in that world corrupts. Shares Pickpockets' dark comedy and the texture of street life.

But Very different register—glossier and funnier. Two decades of cinema language separate them. Much longer.

We Are What We Are2013

Colombian horror-thriller about family survival through horror and shame. Same attention to how desperation shapes choices, same Bogotá landscape and moral darkness.

But Extreme content and body horror. Very different genre altogether—will feel like a tangent unless you want something darker.

Caché2005

French thriller about a wealthy family targeted by someone from their past. Same theme of crime emerging from class guilt and structural violence, though told from the opposite perspective.

But Deliberately slow and ambiguous—some find it frustratingly withholding. No cathartic release or clear villain.

The Godfather Part II1974

Young Vito's rise from desperate immigrant to crime boss shows the same trajectory: how poverty teaches crime as the only viable language, how mentorship corrupts.

But Three-and-a-half-hour epic with much older filmmaking language. Operates at a mythic scale, not a street-level one.

Menace II Society1993

Teen protagonist in Compton learns crime from his environment the way Pickpockets' kids do—same observation about how neighborhood and mentor shape identity, though with American gangsta context.

But Early-90s aesthetics and some dated elements. Shorter on character interiority than Pickpockets.

Kes1970

Same core tragedy: a young person discovering something or someone that matters, in a system designed to crush aspiration. But where Pickpockets shows crime as education, Kes shows what happens when there's no crime to fall back on.

British kitchen-sink drama about a working-class boy finding brief grace through a trained hawk. Like Pickpockets, it's about a kid with no future and a temporary mentor, but shot through with the possibility of beauty and escape rather than inevitability.

But Nearly 60 years old and spare—no crime element, no action. Some find it slow. The Yorkshire dialect requires attention. Ends in genuine heartbreak.

The Farewell2019

Both track how environment teaches survival differently depending on where you're born. Both are about what we inherit and what that makes us do.

American-Chinese film about class, family secrets, and what gets passed down through generations. Completely different genre and tone, but the same examination of how circumstance and inheritance shape who we become and what we're capable of.

But Quiet and domestic instead of criminal. Comedy-drama instead of thriller. Some want more plot momentum. Requires care with cultural context to fully land.