Why would you watch a sad movie when you’re already sad? That’s a valid question, right? Why would you want to be…even sadder?
I’ve always been a crier…I’m triggered by stories of loss whether it’s a commercial, movie or short reel on social media. The tears pour freely whether I’m expecting them or not..and my family knows it’s going to happen. But sometimes, crying is just necessary. Watching people be sad is hard to watch. I believe our emotions need to be moved through the body and hearing other’s stories often help those emotions along.
Movies centered on grief provide a unique and powerful way to explore the complex emotions of loss, healing, and resilience. By telling stories of characters navigating their own grief journeys, these types of films can offer comfort, validation, and insight to viewers who may be dealing with similar emotions.
Watching movies about grief can be therapeutic in several ways.
They can serve as a reminder that you’re not alone in your pain, helping to normalize feelings of sadness, anger, and confusion.
They often provide a safe space to process emotions, inspire hope, and showcase the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
Additionally, these films can foster empathy and understanding, making them meaningful for anyone seeking to support a loved one through loss or better understand the grieving process.
Whether you’re searching for a sense of connection, a path toward healing, or simply a way to honor the complexity of loss, these movies offer a lens through which to explore grief in its many forms.
Here is a thoughtfully curated list of films by Daniel Hernandez that delve into this profound human experience. Many of these films can be found on either Netflix or Amazon Prime and are free to watch or can be rented or bought. These films are stories about how individuals and families experience, and cope with loss. (Many of these films will coincide with the presentations that will be offered in the up-and-coming Grief Seminar Series with the first seminar being offered on January 15th.) YOU CAN REGISTER HERE. The films are intended to be educational and thought provoking. The hope is that it will foster understanding, compassion, and freedom of judgement towards family or friends who have experienced similar losses.
A word of caution, in watching these films you may experience some strong emotions, sadness and tears depending on where you are in your mourning journey. This is normal and natural.
You may want to watch the film of your interest with family and/or a friend. Please keep in mind that these are stories created by “Hollywood” and may or may not reflect real life situations.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Jill at togetherweheelcommunity.org or Daniel Hernandez at d315hernandez@gmail.com.
Movies About Loss
1. Pieces of a Women: A heartbreaking home birth leaves a woman grappling with the profound emotional fallout, isolated from her partner and family by a chasm of grief.
2. Collateral Beauty: When a successful New York advertising executive (Will Smith) suffers a great tragedy, he retreats from life. While his concerned friends try desperately to reconnect with him, he seeks answers from the universe by writing letters to Love, Time and Death. When his notes bring unexpected personal responses, he begins to understand how these constants interlock in a life fully lived and how even the deepest loss can reveal moments of meaning and beauty.
3. Manchester by the Sea: After the death of his older brother Joe, Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is shocked that Joe has made him sole guardian of his teenage nephew Patrick. Taking leave of his job as a janitor in Boston, Lee reluctantly returns to Manchester-by-the-Sea, the fishing village where his working-class family has lived for generations. There, he is forced to deal with a past that separated him from his wife, Randi (Michelle Williams), and the community where he was born and raised.
4. Rabbit Hole: Eight months after the accidental death of their 4-year-old son, Howie (Aaron Eckhart) and Becca (Nicole Kidman) are trying to overcome their grief. He wants to hold on to everything that reminds him of Danny, while she would rather sell their home and make a fresh start. Cracks begin to appear in the relationship as Howie bonds with a member of his therapy group and Becca reaches out to a teenage boy with telling facial scars. Based on the play by David Lindsay-Abaire.
5. This is Where I Leave You: When their father passes away, four grown, world-weary siblings return to their childhood home and are requested -- with an admonition -- to stay there together for a week, along with their free-speaking mother (Jane Fonda) and a collection of spouses, exes and might-have- beens. As the brothers and sisters re-examine their shared history and the status of each tattered relationship among those who know and love them best, they reconnect in hysterically funny and emotionally significant ways
6. P.S. I love you: When Gerry (Gerard Butler), the husband of Holly Kennedy (Hilary Swank), dies from an illness, she loses the love of her life. Knowing how hard Holly will take his death, Gerry plans ahead. Beginning on her 30th birthday, she receives the first in a series of letters written by him, designed to ease her grief and encourage her to move forward to a new life.
7. Mass: Years after a horrible tragedy turned their lives upside down, two couples, one, the parents of a victim of school shooting and the other, parents of the perpetrator, sit down to have a painful and heart-wrenching conversation about grief and loss
8. The Lovely Bones: After being brutally murdered, 14-year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) watches from heaven over her grief-stricken family (Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz) -- and her killer (Stanley Tucci). As she observes their daily lives, she must balance her thirst for revenge with her desire for her family to heal.
9. Good Grief: An artist grieving the loss of his famous writer husband takes his two best friends on a trip to Paris, where they unpack messy secrets and hard truths.
10. We Bought a Zoo: Following his wife’s untimely death, Los Angeles journalist Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) decides to make a fresh start by quitting his job and moving his children (Colin Ford, Maggie Elizabeth Jones) to an 18-acre property containing the Rosemoor Wildlife Park. Though closed for years, Rosemoor is still home to many animals, cared for by Kelly Foster (Scarlett Johansson) and her small staff. Mee opens his heart and his checkbook as he, Kelly and the others work to renovate and reopen the zoo.
11. Reign Over Me: Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler), who lost his family in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, still grieves over their deaths. He runs into his former college roommate, Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle), and the two rekindle their friendship. Alan himself is feeling the strain of family and professional responsibilities, and his renewed bond with Charlie gives both men the strength to carry on during a turning point in their lives.
12. Jackie: After her husband’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy’s (Natalie Portman) world is completely shattered. Traumatized and reeling with grief, over the course of the next week she must confront the unimaginable: consoling their two young children, vacating the home she painstakingly restored, and planning her husband’s funeral. Jackie quickly realizes that the next seven days will determine how history will define her husband’s legacy - and how she herself will be remembered.
13. Swan Song: When a loving husband and father is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he’s presented with a controversial alternative solution to shield his family from his loss - replace himself with a carbon copy clone.
14. Kingdom of Us: Lucy Cohen follows a mother and her seven children as they experience the grief of their father’s suicide. She records their hardships as they attempt to recover emotionally and financially.
15. Extremely Loud Incredibly Close: Oskar (Thomas Horn), who lost his father (Tom Hanks) in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, is convinced that his dad left a final message for him somewhere in the city. Upon finding a mysterious key in his father’s closet, Oskar sets out in search of the lock it fits. Feeling disconnected from his grieving mother (Sandra Bullock) and driven by a tirelessly active mind, Oskar has a journey of discovery that takes him beyond his loss and leads to a greater understanding of the world.
16. Marley and Me: Newlyweds John and Jenny Grogan (Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston) leave behind snowy Michigan and move to Florida, where they buy their first home and find jobs at competing newspapers. Soon afterward, the Grogans adopt Marley, an adorable yellow Labrador pup. But Marley soon grows up to be a mischievous handful. Still, even while he’s destroying the furniture and failing obedience school, he always manages to bring out the best in John, Jenny and their growing family.
17. Charlie St. Cloud: Adored by his single mother and his little brother Sam, Charlie St. Cloud (Zac Efron) is an accomplished sailor and college-bound senior with a bright future ahead of him. When Sam dies in a terrible accident, Charlie’s dreams die with him. But so strong is the brother’s bond that, in the hour before each sunset, Charlie and Sam meet to play catch. The return of a former classmate (Amanda Crew) leads Charlie to a difficult choice: remain stuck in the past, or let love lead him to the future.
18. Things We Lost in the Fire: After her husband dies in an act of senseless violence, Audrey Burke (Halle Berry) is left alone with two young children and no idea how to cope. Nearly paralyzed by grief, Audrey tracks down her husband’s childhood friend, Jerry (Benicio del Toro). Jerry is a drug addict, but Audrey invites him to move into her home nevertheless, and a mutually dependent relationship develops between the two damaged souls.
19. What Dreams May Come: After Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams) dies in a car accident, he is guided through the afterlife by his spirit guide, Albert (Cuba Gooding Jr.). His new world is beautiful and can be whatever Chris imagines. Even his children are there. But, when his wife, Annie (Annabella Sciorra), commits suicide and is sent to hell, Chris ignores Albert’s warnings and journeys there to save her. Upon arrival, Chris finds that rescuing Annie will be more difficult than he’d imagined.
20. Ordinary People: Tormented by guilt following the death of his older brother, Buck, in a sailing accident, alienated teenager Conrad Jarrett (Timothy Hutton) attempts suicide. Returning home following an extended stay in a psychiatric hospital, Conrad tries to deal with his mental anguish and reconnect with his mother, Beth (Mary Tyler Moore), who has grown cold and angry, and his emotionally wounded father, Calvin (Donald Sutherland), with the help of his psychiatrist, Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch).
21. Return To Zero: After mourning the loss of their stillborn son, a woman (Minnie Driver) and her estranged husband (Paul Adelstein) learn that she is pregnant again.
22. Five Nights in Maine: After his wife dies in a tragic car accident, a man goes to rural Maine to visit his terminally ill mother-in-law.
23. The Art of Grieving: Following the untimely death of his 35-year-old brother, an artist immerses himself in a yearlong painting project to process grief.
24. After Love: Set in the port town of Dover, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.
25. The Greatest: Three months after Allen and Grace’s son dies, Rose shows up on their doorstep pregnant with his child. At first her arrival stirs up their emotions and threatens to tear the family further apart, but as time passes, she may just be the very thing that brings them back together.
26. The Descendants: Native islander Matt King (George Clooney) lives with his family in Hawaii. Their world shatters when a tragic accident leaves his wife in a coma. Not only must Matt struggle with the stipulation in his wife’s will that she be allowed to die with dignity, but he also faces pressure from relatives to sell their family’s enormous land trust. Angry and terrified at the same time, Matt tries to be a good father to his young daughters, as they too try to cope with their mother’s possible death.
27. The Fault in our Stars: Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley), a 16-year-old cancer patient, meets and falls in love with Gus Waters (Ansel Elgort), a similarly afflicted teen from her cancer support group. Hazel feels that Gus really understands her. They both share the same acerbic wit and a love of books, especially Grace’s touchstone & An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten. When Gus scores an invitation to meet the reclusive author, he and Hazel embark on the adventure of their brief lives.
28. A Thousand Miles Behind: A man sets off on a solo motorcycle trip across California to deal with his grief.
29. Blur Circle: A single mother (Cora Vander Broek), still grieving the loss of her young son who disappeared two years earlier, meets a man (Matthew Brumlow) with a shrouded past while following up on a lead.
30. Love Lisa: Following the unexplained suicide of his wife Liza, website designer Wilson Joel turns to gasoline fumes and remote-control gaming while avoiding an inevitable conflict with his mother-in-law.
31. Our Soul at Night: Addie Moore and Louis Waters, a widow and widower, have lived next door to each other for years. When Addie tries to make a connection with her neighbor, the two begin sleeping in bed together platonically, with the innocent goal of alleviating their shared loneliness. As their relationship deepens, however, they each deal with grief and loss, and a real romance begins to blossom.
32. The Grief of Others: A couple try to return to their life after their baby dies 57 hours after his birth.
We hope you find this list of movies helpful in your own personal journey through grief. There is never any pressure to watch anything that doesn’t feel good or right for you. Everyone processes grief in their own unique way and it should be your own decision how you navigate yours.