31 Best Spanish Movies on Amazon Prime Video (2021)

1. Amores Perros

Accent: Mexican

2. Sin Nombre (Nameless)

In this suspenseful 2009 Mexican-American thriller, a young Honduran girl and a Mexican gangster are united in a journey across the American border.

Accents: Honduran, Mexican

3. ROCÍO

Beautiful, moving film about Darío Guerrero, an undocumented Harvard student who self deports himself and his dying mother to seek alternative treatment in Mexico.

Woven from footage collected over a quarter of a century, ROCÍO is the story of a mother’s love and the American Dream.

The story received national attention because Darío was not allowed to return to the US, even with his DACA status. He started this hourlong documentary as his thesis at Harvard, where it received top honors.

Even the trailer is wonderful.

Accent: Mexican

4. El Callejón de los Milagros (Midaq Alley)

Prizewinning adaptation of Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s novel, transposed from Cairo to Mexico City.

This film centers on a diverse group of characters in Mexico City’s central neighborhood and the connection between them. Featuring Salma Hayek in one of her first starring roles.

Accent: Mexican

5. Locas por el cambio

^{Note: No English subtitles available for trailer}

Cute Mexican comedy about Paula and Paulina, two young women who hate each other, who magically swap bodies after a high school reunion.

This is Amazon Prime Video’s first original movie from Mexico.

Accent: Mexican

6. Los olvidados (The Young And The Damned)

The haunting story follows a group of juvenile delinquents who live a violent and crime-filled life in Mexico City’s squalid slums. Pedro, the youngest gang member, evinces a spark of decency, but remains a tragic victim of circumstances beyond his control.

Accent: Mexican

7. Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes)

Cesar is a handsome playboy who has it all until he falls hard for the beautiful Sofia (Penelope Cruz). When a jealous ex tries to kill him and herself in a car accident that leaves him horribly disfigured, his perfect life turns into a nightmare.

Accent: European Spanish

8. América

When her abusive boyfriend takes away her daughter, América escapes from her idyllic Caribbean village in Puerto Rico to a new life in New York City.

She works long hours as a nanny to raise money so that her daughter can make the journey and join her, but soon her troubled past hunts her down.

Accents: Puerto Rican, Mexican, Dominican, Colombian

9. Sólo Química

Fun and light rom-com from Spain.

Nineteen year old Oli falls for her TV idol and embarks on a Cinderella-like romance filled with luxury, fame, success and money.

It seems she has found her fairy tale ending, until she learns good chemistry and true love are not one and the same.

Accent: European Spanish

10. Hecho en China (Made in China)

Note that Amazon is incorrectly showing the reviews of a Korean movie with the same title.

Accent: Mexican

11. Cartas a Elena

Sweet and sentimental story set in Chihuahua’s beautiful Copper Canyon.

Young Emilio and his adoptive father deliver mail as well as read and write letters for the illiterate villagers. Emilio feels saddened by the difficult news sent by relatives working north of the border and begins inventing happy letters for his customers.

Accent: Mexican

12. A la mala

In this cute romantic comedy set in Mexico City, struggling actress Maria Laura (Aislinn Derbez) finds a lucrative new career when her best friend begs her to flirt with her boyfriend to test his fidelity.

After being hired by women across the city, Maria is given a gig that should be business as usual until she ends up falling head over heels for her latest mark.

Mauricio Ochmann and Aislinn Derbez became a couple while filming this movie. They are now married.

Look for a cameo by Eugenio Derbez, the father of Aislinn Derbez.

Accent: Mexican

13. Sólo con tu pareja

This screwball comedy was renowned Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón’s debut film.

Reckless playboy Tomás juggles so many women he can’t keep their names straight. His bed-hopping catches up with him when his latest conquest, a nurse, falsely checks the “positive” box on his AIDS test to curtail Tomás’s rampant womanizing.

Accent: Mexican

14. Santa y Andres

Critically acclaimed film banned in its home country of Cuba.

In 1983, Andrés, a dissident gay novelist is placed under house arrest. Santa, a local peasant woman working on a state farm, is assigned to keep a close watch on him for three days. An unlikely friendship forms between the two.

Accent: Cuban

15. Pelo Malo

In much of Latin America, curly Afro-textured hair is referred to as pelo malo, or bad hair.

In this heart-rending coming-of-age film set in the slums of Caracas, a nine-year-old boy’s obsession with straightening his hair and becoming a pop singer elicits a tidal wave of homophobic panic in his mother.

Accent: Venezuelan

16. El Abrazo de la Serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent)

Through parallel stories set 30 years apart, this absorbing odyssey follows two Western scientists who travel deep into the Amazon jungle looking for a rare plant that possesses healing powers, with an enigmatic shaman as their guide.

Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2016.

Incredibly, the film includes dialogue in nine languages: Cubeo, Huitoto, Ticuna, Wanano, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Catalan, and English, so it might not be the best choice if your only objective is to improve your Spanish.

This hypnotic film is highly recommended though for those interested in Amazonian cultures.

Accents: Colombian, European Spanish

17. BBoy For Life

Accent: Guatemalan

18. Cuatro Lunas (4 Moons)

A sensitive portrait of gay boys and men in modern-day Mexico.

Four stories about love and self-acceptance: An eleven year-old boy feels attracted to his male cousin. Two college students start a relationship and one of them refuses to come out. A long-lasting male relationship is in serious trouble when one feels attracted to somebody else. An old family man is obsessed with a young male prostitute and tries to raise the money to afford it.

Accent: Mexican

19. Ma Ma

This old-fashioned tear-jerker stars Oscar-winner Penelope Cruz as Magda, a woman determined to live life to the fullest in the face of her recent breast cancer diagnosis.

Accent: European Spanish

20. El Dedo

After years of dictatorship, a remote village formally becomes a town with the birth of its 501st inhabitant, creating an opening for the position of mayor.

Based on a true story, this whimsical comedy celebrates democracy while gently poking fun at village life.

Thanks to travel and pet writer Tina of 21 Pup Street for recommending this one!

Accent: Argentinian

21. 500 Years

Passionate and moving documentary about the resistance of Guatemala’s indigenous Mayan population against a history of genocide, corruption, and disappearances.

Accent: Guatemalan

22. Sueño en Otro Idioma (I Dream in Another Language)

Haunting and poetic film about the last two speakers of an indigenous language, who had a quarrel in the past and haven’t spoken to each other in over 50 years.

Martín, a young linguist, undertakes the challenge of bringing the old friends back together and convincing them to speak once again to save the language from extinction.

Winner of the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award.

Accent: Mexican. Some dialogue in Zikril, a fictional indigenous language created for the film.

23. La Buena Vida

Beautiful, tragic documentary set in the village of Tamaquito, deep in the forests of Colombia.

Here, nature provides the people with everything they need. But the Wayúu community’s way of life is being destroyed by the vast and rapidly growing El Cerrejón coal mine.

Determined to save his community from forced resettlement, leader Jairo Fuentes negotiates with the mine’s operators in what soon becomes a fight for survival.

Accent: Colombian. Some dialogue in the Wayúu language.

24. Un Padre No Tan Padre

Note: Available free on Amazon with a Pantaya channel trial, or for rental here.

Cute family comedy that follows an old-fashioned Mexican patriarch who gets kicked out of his retirement home for bad behavior. When his estranged son Francisco is forced to take him into the house full of hippies he shares with his girlfriend and young son, New Age collides with old age.

The title plays on the double meaning of padre — in Mexican slang it also means “cool.”

Set in the beautiful colonial city of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Accent: Mexican

25. No Manches Frida

Note: Available free on Amazon with a Pantaya channel trial.

Funny screwball comedy in which an ex-con works as a substitute teacher in order to retrieve the loot he buried under a high school’s new gym.

Subtitles in Spanish only.

Accent: Mexican

26. La Distancia Más Larga (The Longest Distance)

Beautiful and touching film that tells the story of a 10-year-old boy who travels to the country to meet his grandmother and rebuild family ties. Little does he know this will be the grandmother’s last journey as she is ill and wants to die in Mount Roraima, the place where she once was happy.

This award-winning Venezuelan/Spanish co-production contrasts the chaos and violence of Caracas with the natural paradise of Venezuela’s Gran Sabana region.

Accents: Venezuelan, European Spanish

27. Narco Cultura 

Most interviews are in Spanish.

Accent: Mexican

28. Return to Cuba

After 18 years in Italy, Barbara Ramos returns to live in Cuba. Shot over a period of three years, this documentary chronicles her life after the Fidel Castro era, in the wake of liberal reforms and reconciliation with the US. Joyful, heartwarming film.

Accent: Cuban

29. La Luciérnaga (The Firefly)

Accent: Colombian

30. Wakolda (The German Doctor)

Chilling Argentine drama directed, produced, and written by Lucía Puenzo based on her own novel Wakolda.

Patagonia, 1960. A German doctor meets an Argentinean family and follows them on a long desert road to a small town where the family will be starting a new life.

In this fictionalized account, the doctor turns out to be Nazi SS officer and physician Josef Mengele, infamous for performing human experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The family welcome the doctor into their home and entrust their young daughter to his care, not knowing that they are harboring one of the most dangerous criminals in the world.

Accent: Argentinian. Some dialogue in German.

31. Una danza para mi Habana (Dancing for my Havana)

In this inspirational, music-filled drama, young Cuban dancers struggle to achieve fame and fortune on the world stage.

Accents: Cuban, some European Spanish

Bonus: Recommended Spanish Movies for Rental on Amazon Prime

These Spanish-language movies are no longer available to stream free, but are well worth a rental.

Have more Amazon movies in Spanish to recommend? Some of my best suggestions come from you, my readers! Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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