Discover The Best Movies and TV Shows Like The Fabelmans Right Now

Young Sammy Fabelman attends his very first movie theater experience in post-World War II New Jersey, witnessing a train crash on the silver screen that both terrifies and mesmerizes him. To help process this fear, his imaginative mother, Mitzi, gives him a toy train set, which Sammy promptly crashes and films with his father’s 8mm camera. This sparks a lifelong, obsessive passion for filmmaking.As Sammy grows into a teenager, the family relocates to Arizona due to his brilliant computer-engineer father, Burt, accepting a new job. Sammy continues making increasingly ambitious home movies, roping his younger sisters and neighborhood boy scouts into chaotic, action-packed productions complete with explosive special effects. Mitzi, a gifted former concert pianist whose artistic spirit is slowly suffocating under the weight of domesticity, fiercely encourages Sammy’s creative ambitions, recognizing a kindred spirit. Conversely, the pragmatic Burt views Sammy's hobby merely as a harmless, expensive distraction rather than a legitimate career path.The family dynamic shifts when Burt’s business associate and surrogate uncle to the children, Bennie Loewy, moves in with them temporarily after a personal setback. During a long camping trip meticulously documented by Sammy's camera, the observant young filmmaker edits together family footage and inadvertently discovers a devastating truth: Mitzi and Bennie are engaged in a passionate romance. This revelation shatters Sammy’s idealized view of his parents. Consumed by guilt, anger, and heartbreak, Sammy stops making movies entirely, his creative spark snuffed out by the heavy burden of his family's impending dissolution.When Burt accepts a prestigious promotion requiring another cross-country move to Northern California, Mitzi stays behind in Arizona to be with Bennie, officially fracturing the family. In California, Sammy struggles as an awkward senior navigating a new high school, where he becomes the target of antisemitic bullying by popular jocks Logan and Chad.Spurred by a fierce confrontation with his mother, who reminds him that art can reveal truths, Sammy finally picks up his camera again. He agrees to film the school's annual senior skip day at the beach. When he screens the finished movie at the post-graduation prom, Sammy uses cinematic illusion to paint his tormentor Logan as a heroic, golden-god figure. This profound gesture completely disarms Logan and earns Sammy the school’s newfound respect.Ultimately, Sammy’s parents officially divorce. Mitzi moves in with Bennie, while Burt accepts an even higher position in Hollywood. Sammy later lands a low-level job on a television set, where a brief, inspiring encounter with legendary director John Ford instills in him a final, invaluable piece of artistic wisdom: the horizon should never be placed in the middle of the frame.