A dozen cottagecore movies to add to your spring watchlist.
Rainy spring evenings lead to cozy movie nights: rounds of bubble tea (and spritzy mocktails), splayed blankets, and library-borrowed films (hint: this is your sign to try your local library’s on-demand streaming service of choice).
Cottagecore movies are my current go-tos. These films are the perfect escape. Woods canopied in sunlight, hillside slopes draped in flowers, and wide fields fringed with lakes encompass whole frames. You’ll hear birdsong alongside gentle scores, and see scenes linger on rustling grass and wildflowers. You’ll enter homes with the nostalgia of Miss Honey’s cottage from Matilda and move through stories that are just as heartfelt.
Here are twelve of my favorite cottagecore films (and where to stream them).
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12 Cottagecore Movies To Watch
Miss Potter (2006)
Miss Potter is a movie I rewatch every year in the spring. The film opens and closes in the Lake District, where glaciers once sculpted mountain valleys and narrow ribbons of water. The story in between, a loosely painted biopic, traces the imagination (over the life) of English artist and children’s book author, Beatrix Potter (Renée Zellwinger). Miss Potter is a movie that’s both tender and charming (Hill Top, her later home, is peak cottagecore). And its animated scenes (based on Potter’s watercolor illustrations) add whimsy to the drama.
Streaming on: Peacock, Tubi, The Roku Channel, Kanopy, Amazon Prime
Enchanted April (1991)
Many of my favorite cottagecore films are adaptations of my favorite cottagecore books. Enchanted April is one such adaptation. Much like in the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, four women (strangers, at first) rent an Italian castle (San Salvatore) for a vacation amongst wisteria and sunshine. If you’re looking for a movie that’s the cinematic equivalent of a holiday along the Mediterranean coast, Enchanted April is it.
Streaming on: Amazon
The Cave Of The Yellow Dog (2005)
The Cave Of The Yellow Dog soothes the soul. The narrative follows an age-old path (a young girl finds a dog, her father refuses to keep it, the girl is adamant that the dog stays, and the dog does stay after a hero arc). But the film is far from stilted. Emotions flow as naturally as those in a documentary. Every scene is set in the wide, open Mongolian steppes where sheep graze and horses run. The sounds of the grasslands are kept in, as is a sweeping score composed of fiddles and flutes and throat singing.
Streaming on: Kanopy
Daughters Of The Dust (1991)
Generations of a Gullah-speaking family sit on a giant picnic blanket spread over sunlit sands. Wicker baskets rise past the base of palm trees, and plates are full of husked corn and fruit. Today, the family feasts together. Tomorrow, they leave for the North. Daughters Of The Dust is a movie with the rhythms of a poem. It is emotive, luminous, and nonlinear. And the costumes (long, flowing gowns that reveal little details about each member of the Peazant family) are just as expressive as the film’s aesthetics.
Streaming on: Kanopy
The Cheese Sisters (2022)
The Cheese Sisters stitches together four short stories about women who fall in love with women in the prettiest (read: idealized) settings: a dairy farm, a cheese shop, the backroads near Chiang Rai, and a bakery. The romances are rushed (think: meet-cutes and insta-love), but the tone is steadily sweet and playful, and the atmosphere is as inviting as a cottagecore Pinterest moodboard.
Streaming On: Netflix (Thailand)
The Secret World Of Arrietty (2010)
If you’re planning a spring refresh, The Secret World Of Arrietty is the anime to watch. Within the leaf-patterned walls of Arrietty Clock’s room are slanted books on a bedside ledge, a quilted bedspread, flower stalks in jars, and leaves filling in every gap. The Clocks are a family of borrowers, little people who only take what they need to survive (the rule: don’t let human beans see you). And their home is delightfully cottagecore, with garden-green cabinets, buttons as wall art, and a dining table laden with tea and biscuits.
The Rose Maker (2020)
Ève Vernet (Catherine Frot) is the rose maker, a no-nonsense, straight-talking (or perhaps just French) Victor Frankenstein of roses. As Eve struggles to save her business (an independently run, rose-filled Eden), her wide-eyed secretary, Vera (Olivia Côte), hires three contractors (cue: found family storyline) to uproot weeds and spread fertilizer in Eve’s lucidly imagined garden. The Rose Maker frames the beauty of roses as ethereal. Through Eve, Catherine Frot channels a vivid character who, despite moments of unlikability, is easy to root for.
Streaming on: Amazon Prime, Tubi, Kanopy
Little Women (2019)
Greta Gerwig’s Little Women is praised for its fierce feminism and boldness, for being a movie that does not wish-fulfill romance. It’s not the first film I have seen that chooses to do this, but it is the most ambitiously cast period piece I know of that does. Gerwig’s Little Women spotlights sisterhood and friendship, individuality and daydreams, against the backdrop of a small town (now city) in Massachusetts.
Streaming on: Amazon
photo (left) by Life of Safia, photo (right) by Jovan Vasiljević
The Girls Are Alright (2023)
The Girls Are Alright is a movie I can endlessly rewatch. If you’re hosting a cottagecore movie night with friends, this is the film I recommend. Five women rent a house in the Spanish countryside for seven days to rehearse a play. The lines between the production and their lives blur as they ease into a rapport, act, and talk about love and loss. Watching The Girls Are Alright feels like wandering through a gallery where every frame is slightly gauzy and surreal.
Streaming on: Film Movement Plus, Kanopy
Little Forest (2018)
A Korean movie based on a Japanese film based on a slice-of-life manga, Little Forest centers on Hye-won (Kim Tae-ri), an earnest city girl who returns to her hometown village hungry for a simpler life. Her mother isn’t there, but her childhood home is. Taut and tight childhood friendships (that never quite snap into a love triangle) are a constant feature in Little Forest, as is fresh food (noodles topped with petals, spring cabbage swallowed raw). Early montages are musicless, so you can hear water splashing against beans, grains of rice scraping a basket, flour sifting and swirling.
Streaming On: Netflix (South Korea), Amazon, Kanopy, Tubi
The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001)
Look up cottagecore in the dictionary. The idyllic Shire sequence in The Fellowship Of The Ring should be the first entry. Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) reads in a meadow. Gandalf (Ian McKellan) trundles down a gentle path in a horse-drawn wagon. Hobbit homes adorn rolling hills in The Shire. The Shire’s spirit is comforting and stays with you long after Frodo embarks on a quest to rid the One Ring.
Streaming On: HBO Max
That They May Face The Rising Sun (2024)
Kate (Anna Bederke) and Joe Ruttledge (Barry Ward) have left London for a rural Irish town where the grass dances in the wind. Beauty exists in small moments (you can stare at the light framed through tree branches for minutes and never notice time pass), yet That They May Face The Rising Sun never bursts into romanticization. Kate and Joe’s micro-expressions carry a sort of exhaustion (or acceptance, perhaps both). They live in the now, where neighbors stop by unannounced with their stories (and opinions) and death orbits their life as much as the living. The story unfolds without rush or hurry. Every scene is given space to breathe, and you are too.
Did you enjoy this cottagecore movie list? What are your favorite cottagecore movies? Let me know in the comments below!
This is a great list, thanks for sharing! I love Miss Potter.
Hi Danielle, I’m glad you liked it! Miss Potter is an underrated movie! xx – Anshula
More cottagecore recommendations
1. Over The Garden Wall (you must watch this)
2. The Sound Of Music (the opening scene in the hills)
3. Goodbye Christopher Robin
4. Pride And Prejudice (the Colin Firth Darcy version and only the Colin Firth Darcy version)
Disgusting propaganda. And Anne with an E is racist and not accurate at all.
Hi Ching, thank you for expressing your opinions! This blog post is not meant to be a propaganda piece (you don’t have to watch any of these films or series).
I definitely agree that Anne With An E is not accurate to the tone of LM Montgomery’s works. The show does try to represent minority characters, but doesn’t flesh out their storylines enough to address the problems of the time in which it was set. While I personally enjoyed the modernization, you are right: it has problems. It’s not historically accurate. Season One begins ambitiously, but over the seasons, the diverse storylines felt like reflections of the decade the scripts were written, and not the century in which the narrative is set.
I want this blog to be a welcoming place, so I’ll add this article to my content calendar to replace the Anne With An E rec with the 1979 anime version of Anne Of Green Gables, which is very faithful to the book.
Sincerely,
Anshula
Your writing style is so engaging and easy to read It makes it a pleasure to read your blog and I always look forward to your new posts