100+ Good Slice-of-Life Movies & Shows to Watch

Train Dreams

Dir. Clint Bentley

Based on the 2011 novella of the same name, Train Dreams depicts the life of Robert Grainier in the first…

Left-Handed Girl

Dir. Shih-Ching Tsou & Tsou Shih-ching

Left-Handed Girl is titled after I-Jing, the youngest daughter of the Ching family, whose left-handedness puts her at odds with…

Hal & Harper

Following his sophomore feature Cha Cha Real Smooth, writer-director Cooper Raiff made his way to television with family dramedy Hal…

The New Years

The concept of The New Years is simple: It’s the multi-year glimpses of a relationship like One Day, except on…

Hard Truths

Dir. Mike Leigh

Hurt people hurt people, the saying goes, and nowhere is that more evident than in Hard Truths. Directed by Mike…

His Three Daughters

Dir. Azazel Jacobs

Not everybody holds a good relationship with their sisters, but ideally, we get to reunite and repair things in a…

Touch

Dir. Baltasar Kormákur

With the internet able to connect people from miles away, the concept of the one that got away has become…

Blue Box

When a show is focused on a kid and their sport, chances are, the main character holds a passion for…

Housekeeping for Beginners

Dir. Goran Stolevski

Only a few people in Dita’s house are related by blood, but you wouldn’t know that by how they move.…

One Day

Dir. Molly Manners

With a film version that didn’t live up to the hype of the original novel, Netflix’s adaptation of One Day…

Boy Swallows Universe

Coming-of-age shows are practically Netflix’s bread-and-butter, but the working class side of Brisbane in the 80’s is a suburb we…

Bird

Dir. Andrea Arnold

Given the genre being centered on a child protagonist, many coming-of-age stories sideline parents in the narrative, sometimes to the…

We Live in Time

Dir. John Crowley

For better or for worse, every romantic relationship anyone will ever have will end. This isn’t a bitter statement single…

Stonewalling

Dir. Huang Ji & Ryuji Otsuka

At two hours and nearly 30 minutes, Stonewalling is quite long. The third film from spouses Ryuji Otsuka and Huang…

House of Ninjas

From the fantasy-powered folktales to superhero-like depictions, ninjas have captivated the world, but seem to be a relic of the…

BARTENDER Glass of God

Regardless of age, most viewers would be familiar with the way alcoholic drinks are portrayed in the media as a…

Spermworld

Dir. Lance Oppenheim

For people having difficulty bearing a child, artificial insemination is one way to go for parenthood, but going to sperm…

Maamla Legal Hai

Dir. Rahul Pandey

With the stakes involved in plenty of cases, legal dramas tend to be more serious and dramatic. However, sometimes, ludicrous…

A Round of Applause

Dir. Berkun Oya

A Round of Applause is just so darn weird. We’ve seen stories about people remembering their past lives, but we’ve…

Expats

With immigration being a vastly different experience across race, gender, and origin country, it can be easy to dismiss Amazon…

God Save Texas

Sometimes thinking about your home state can feel complicated, because while it’s your home, the events and issues and controversies…

Perfect Days

Dir. Wim Wenders

For public toilet cleaner Hirayama, “enjoy the little things in life” is more than just an adage: it’s a philosophy.…

The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House

Dir. Female director & Hirokazu Kore-eda

On the surface, The Makanai is a simple, slice-of-life show about food and friendship. While it is that, to be…

Fremont

Dir. Babak Jalali

Aptly for a film partly set in a fortune cookie factory, Fremont deals with luck — specifically, the other side…

Terrestrial Verses

Dir. Ali Asgari & Alireza Khatami

Since we live in a society, interacting with authority is inescapable. Terrestrial Verses depict fairly mundane day-to-day interactions– getting a…

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Dir. Radu Jude

With a title like this, it was expected that Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World…

Carol & the End of the World

The end of the world isn’t the most optimistic thing to think about, but the scenario leads you to thinking…

Falling in Love Like in Movies

Dir. Yandy Laurens

Given the title, it isn’t surprising that Falling in Love Like in Movies would be a metanarrative with the main…

The Old Oak

Dir. Ken Loach

Renowned British director Ken Loach’s signature traits are present in The Old Oak: simple, humanistic, and unapologetically hopeful. But this…

American Fiction

Dir. Cord Jefferson

On the one hand, American Fiction is a razor-sharp satire that pokes fun at the hypocrisy of the literary and…

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

Dir. Anna Hints

Nakedness has been demonized or at least, has been considered inappropriate outside of certain situations. One such situation is the…

Abang Adik

Dir. Jin Ong

At the fringes of society, sometimes, all you have is your family. You would do all you can to feed,…

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

In fantasy worlds, races with different lifespans are a given, but rarely does a work actually contemplate how these variations…

Pictures of Ghosts

Dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho

Like people, places have things that change and things that remain the same. Most of us keep our thoughts about…

The Lying Life of Adults

Based on a novel, The Lying Life of Adults might feel, at first, like a standard Netflix coming-of-age series, complete…

The Good Bad Mother

Life never goes the way we expect, especially for those who don’t have plenty of options. Because of this, parents…

Tell Me That You Love Me

Dir. Kim Yoon-jin

Romantic relationships can come and go, but sometimes, one partner comes along and irrevocably changes your life forever. Tell Me…