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Best Father daughter relationship Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of father daughter relationship cinema — measured across 4,725 indexed frames from 62 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Father daughter relationship films over-index on girl and snow — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Wolfwalkers (2020)

    Tomm Moore, Ross StewartIMDb 8.0TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    In a time of superstition and magic, when wolves are seen as demonic and nature an evil to be tamed, a young apprentice hunter comes to Ireland with her father to wipe out the last pack. But when she saves a wild native girl, their friendship leads her to discover the world of the Wolfwalkers and transform her into the very thing her father is tasked to destroy.

  2. 2

    Interstellar (2014)

    Christopher NolanDP Hoyte van HoytemaIMDb 8.7TMDB 8.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    In the near future around the American Midwest, Cooper, an ex-science engineer and pilot, is tied to his farming land with his daughter Murph and son Tom. As devastating sandstorms ravage Earth's crops, the people of Earth realize their life here is coming to an end as food begins to run out. Eventually stumbling upon a N.A.S.A. base 6 hours from Cooper's home, he is asked to go on a daring mission with a few other scientists into a wormhole because of Cooper's scientific intellect and ability to pilot aircraft unlike the other crew members. In order to find a new home while Earth decays, Cooper must decide to either stay, or risk never seeing his children again in order to save the human race by finding another habitable planet.

  3. 3

    Hotel Transylvania

    Genndy TartakovskyIMDb 7.0TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1895, Dracula builds a resort in Transylvania, hidden from the humans, to raise his beloved daughter Mavis in a safe environment. In the present, the place is the Hotel Transylvania, where monsters bring their families to vacation far from the frightening humans. Dracula invites his friends - Frankenstein and his wife Eunice; Wayne and Wanda, the werewolves; Griffin, the invisible man; Murray, the mummy; Bigfoot, among others - to celebrate the 118th birthday of Mavis. When the party is ready to start, the 21-year-old Jonathan is walking through the forest and stumbles upon the hotel. Dracula sees Jonathan and disguises him as a monster to hide Jonathan from the guests. But Mavis also sees Jonathan and Dracula forces him to pose as a monster. Soon Mavis believes that Jonathan is the "zing" of her life despite the advice of her father about humans.

  4. 4

    King Richard (2021)

    Reinaldo Marcus GreenDP Robert ElswitIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Armed with a clear vision and a brazen 78-page plan, Richard Williams is determined to write his daughters, Venus and Serena, into history. Training on Compton, California's neglected tennis courts--rain or shine--the girls are shaped by their father's unyielding commitment and their mother's balanced perspective and keen intuition, defying the seemingly insurmountable odds and prevailing expectations laid before them. Based on the true story that will inspire the world, "King Richard" follows the uplifting journey of a family whose unwavering resolve and unconditional belief ultimately delivers two of the world's greatest sports legends.

  5. 5

    Pet Sematary (2019)

    Dennis Widmyer, Kevin KölschDP Laurie RoseIMDb 5.7TMDB 5.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Louis Creed, his wife Rachel, and their two children, Gage and Ellie, move to a rural home where they are welcomed and enlightened about the eerie 'Pet Sematary' located nearby. After the tragedy of their cat being killed by a truck, Louis resorts to burying it in the mysterious pet cemetery, which is definitely not as it seems, as it proves to the Creeds that sometimes, dead is better.

  6. 6

    Aftersun (2022)

    Charlotte WellsDP Gregory OkeIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    At a fading vacation resort, 11-year-old Sophie treasures rare time together with her loving and idealistic father, Calum (Paul Mescal). As a world of adolescence creeps into view, beyond her eye Calum struggles under the weight of life outside of fatherhood. Twenty years later, Sophie's tender recollections of their last holiday become a powerful and heartrending portrait of their relationship, as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't, in Charlotte Wells' superb and searingly emotional debut film.

  7. 7

    Somewhere (2010)

    Sofia CoppolaDP Harris SavidesIMDb 6.3TMDB 6.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    Hollywood actor Johnny Marco, nested in his luxury hotel of choice, is a stimulated man. Drinking, parties and women keep a creeping boredom under wraps in between jobs. He is the occasional father of a bright girl, Cleo, who may be spoiled but doesn't act it. When Cleo's mother drops her off and leaves town, Johnny brings her along for the ride, but can he fit an 11-year-old girl into his privileged lifestyle?

  8. 8

    Definitely, Maybe (2008)

    Adam BrooksDP Florian BallhausIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    Romantic comedy: Will Hayes, a 30-something Manhattan dad is in the midst of a divorce when his 10 year old daughter, Maya, starts to question him about his life before marriage. Maya wants to know absolutely everything about how her parents met and fell in love. Will's story begins in 1992, as a young, starry-eyed aspiring politician who moves to New York from Wisconsin in order to work on the Clinton campaign. For Maya, Will relives his past as a idealistic young man learning the ins and outs of big city politics, and recounts the history of his romantic relationships with three very different women. On the campaign, Will's best buddy is Russell McCormack. They not only have similar political aspirations, they share the same type of girl problems, too. Will hopelessly attempts a "PG" version of his story for his daughter ad changes the names so Maya has to guess who he finally married. Is her mother Will's college sweetheart, the dependable girl next-door Emily? Is she his longtime best friend and confidante, the apolitical April? Or is she the free-spirited but ambitious journalist? As Maya puts together the pieces of her dad's romantic puzzle, she begins to understand that love is not so simple or easy. And as Will tells her his tale, Maya helps him to understand that it's definitely never too late to go back...and maybe even possible to find a happy ending.

  9. 9

    The Tomorrow War (2021)

    Chris McKayDP Larry FongIMDb 6.6TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    The world is stunned when a group of time travelers arrive from the year 2051 to deliver an urgent message: Thirty years in the future, mankind is losing a global war against a deadly alien species. The only hope for survival is for soldiers and civilians from the present to be transported to the future and join the fight. Among those recruited is high school teacher and family man Dan Forester (Chris Pratt). Determined to save the world for his young daughter, Dan teams up with a brilliant scientist (Yvonne Strahovski) and his estranged father (J.K. Simmons) in a desperate quest to rewrite the fate of the planet.

  10. 10

    Thelma (2017)

    Joachim TrierDP Jakob IhreIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    Having just enrolled at a university in Oslo against her stern parents' will, the sheltered Biology freshman and devout Christian, Thelma, leaves for the first time the isolated Norwegian countryside, to start a new life away from home. Tangibly lonely, a casual conversation and one unexpected friendship with the beautiful fellow student, Anja, will broaden Thelma's hazy horizons; however, as the glacially alluring misfit wrestles with an onslaught of novel feelings, little by little, an unprecedented psychosomatic manifestation of repressed emotions start to take over. Indeed, a mystery cloaks soft-spoken Thelma's past, and the more she struggles to renounce her nebulous desire, the more violent becomes her quivering awakening. Can Thelma unearth a denied truth behind the stinging temptation?

What father daughter relationship films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a father daughter relationship frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — girl is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • girl3.5×
  • snow1.7×

How father daughter relationship films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate father daughter relationship from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 85%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

The Beach Bum (2019) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 4,725 frames from 62 films carrying the father daughter relationship label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/father-daughter-relationship

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