The 6 Best International Films of the 2020s So Far, Ranked

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Yūsuke Kafuku in the backseat of a car driven by Misaki Watari

Published Sep 21, 2026, 5:53 PM EDT

One of the easiest ways to waste this decade of movies is to let language decide what gets watched. Seriously. Some of the sharpest romances, ugliest moral questions, strangest mysteries, and most devastating family stories since 2020 have arrived from outside Hollywood, and several of them make the usual awards-season prestige movie feel painfully safe by comparison. Subtitles are doing a lot less work than the filmmakers are.

And these six are miles apart from one another. That range is exactly why international cinema feels so alive right now. And while I don’t plan to jump into this one in the list below, if you’re interested in Bollywood movies, don’t miss Main Vaapas Aunga if it’s available to stream in your region. But let’s get to proper international releases of the 2020s so far, and here are six of them, ranked.

6 'The Worst Person in the World' (2021)

Julie smiling while running down the street in The Worst Person in the World

Julie (Renate Reinsve) keeps changing her mind about what her life is supposed to look like. Medicine becomes psychology, psychology becomes photography, relationships shift, and adulthood keeps arriving without providing the certainty everybody promised it would. The Worst Person in the World divides that mess into twelve chapters, plus a prologue and epilogue, without pretending Julie’s contradictions can be tidied into a simple coming-of-age lesson.

The famous sequence where Oslo appears to freeze while Julie runs across the city toward Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) captures the movie beautifully. It is romantic, selfish, impulsive, and completely understandable at the same time. Her relationship with older comic-book artist Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) carries a different weight because love and compatibility gradually stop meaning the same thing. Joachim Trier lets Julie be funny, frustrating, affectionate, avoidant, and occasionally awful without turning her into a problem the screenplay needs to solve. That honesty is why the movie connects so strongly with anyone who has ever reached adulthood and thought, wait, this is the part where I am supposed to know what I am doing?

5 'Decision to Leave' (2022)

An emotional Tan Wei standing in front of a colorful wall in Decision to Leave

Detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) investigates the death of a man who fell from a mountain, and the dead man’s widow, Seo-rae (Tang Wei), quickly becomes the person he cannot stop observing. Decision to Leave begins as a murder investigation and gradually becomes something much stranger, where surveillance starts resembling intimacy and professional curiosity becomes nearly impossible to separate from attraction.

Park Chan-wook makes that obsession tactile. Hae-jun watches Seo-rae from across the city and mentally places himself beside her. Translation apps become part of flirtation because language itself keeps creating tiny distances between them. Mountains, fog, wallpaper patterns, photographs, and the sea keep sliding into the mystery without feeling like clues placed there for a clever reveal. Even Hae-jun’s insomnia becomes useful because this is a man already accustomed to living slightly outside ordinary life. The romance is sexy precisely because it is so restrained. Nobody needs to tear their clothes off for the room to feel dangerous.

4 'I'm Still Here' (2024)

Fernanda Torres standing still and looking ahead in I'm Still Here

Before politics crashes through the front door, the Paiva household feels wonderfully alive. Children run in and out, friends visit, music plays, people argue, the beach is nearby, and family photographs keep capturing ordinary happiness. Then Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) is taken away by agents of Brazil’s military dictatorship, and I'm Still Here stays with the wife and children who are expected to continue living while the state refuses to tell them what happened.

Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) becomes the center without being transformed into some clean inspirational symbol. She has children to protect, questions nobody will answer, money to think about, and the maddening requirement to remain functional while government intimidation keeps invading private life. Walter Salles makes the earlier warmth essential because the loss is measured against all those noisy dinners and casual afternoons that came before it. The family camera becomes especially affecting for that reason. Pictures keep insisting these people had whole lives outside the political violence inflicted on them. That is what makes the film hurt. History arrives in textbooks as dates and regimes. Here, it enters a house and leaves an empty chair.

Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

FIND YOUR FILM →

What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.

ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.

NEXT QUESTION →

Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?

AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.

AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.

NEXT QUESTION →

What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?

AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?

AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.

NEXT QUESTION →

Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible.

AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.

NEXT QUESTION →

What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.

AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.

NEXT QUESTION →

What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.

ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.

AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?

AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.

REVEAL MY FILM →

The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.

Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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3 'Anatomy of a Fall' (2023)

Sandra looking pensive on the witness stand in Anatomy of a Fall

Samuel (Samuel Theis) is found dead beneath the family’s Alpine home, and suspicion lands on his wife, Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller). From there, Anatomy of a Fall does something far more interesting than asking whether she pushed him. Their marriage gets hauled into court, translated into arguments, recordings, resentments, career jealousy, parenting decisions, and fragments that suddenly have to mean something definitive to strangers.

The details are painfully specific. Samuel had been blasting an instrumental version of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” before his death, and the song later becomes part of the courtroom’s attempt to reconstruct the atmosphere inside the house. A recorded marital argument is dissected as if one ugly conversation can explain years between two people. Their visually impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) is forced to process his parents through testimony he was never supposed to hear, while Snoop the dog somehow becomes involved in one of the film’s most tense stretches. The genius of the movie is how quickly curiosity becomes judgment. You start weighing evidence like a juror, then realize how absurdly confident people become when handed incomplete access to somebody else’s marriage.

2 'The Zone of Interest' (2023)

Christian Friedel as Rudolf Höss smoking a cigarette in 'The Zone of Interest'

Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) lives with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their children in a comfortable home with a garden, servants, flowers, a swimming area, and Auschwitz on the other side of the wall. The Zone of Interest understands that showing less can force the viewer to confront more. The family treats the camp as workplace, neighbor, and source of opportunity while screams, gunshots, machinery, and trains continue beyond their domestic routine.

That separation is horrifying because the Höss family is not shown behaving as if they inhabit a horror film. Hedwig is proud of the life they have built. Children play. Clothes are tried on. Plants are discussed. Work promotions create family complications. Meanwhile, the soundtrack keeps telling you what their comfort requires. Jonathan Glazer refuses the relief of allowing atrocity to become spectacle you can look at and then emotionally file away. The garden is beautiful. That is the problem. The wall is right there. They know exactly what is behind it, and breakfast still needs to be served. Few films this decade have made ordinary domestic behavior feel so morally sickening.

1 'Drive My Car' (2021)

Hidetoshi Nishijima as Yūsuke Kafuku and Tōko Miura as Misaki Watari talking to eachother through the car window in Drive My Car

Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a theater actor and director carrying a complicated grief when he travels to Hiroshima to stage Uncle Vanya. Festival rules require him to use a driver, so the beloved red Saab 900 he normally drives himself is handed over to Misaki Watari (Tōko Miura), a quiet young woman with her own history of loss. Drive My Car runs for almost three hours and somehow makes long drives, cassette recordings, rehearsals, and pauses in conversation feel more gripping than plenty of thrillers.

The theatrical process is fascinating in itself. Kafuku casts performers speaking different languages, including Japanese, Mandarin, Korean Sign Language, and others, then has them repeat Chekhov’s text almost mechanically until meaning begins emerging through rhythm rather than theatrical flourish. Outside rehearsal, Oto’s recorded voice continues reading lines through the Saab’s speakers, meaning Kafuku literally drives around with the voice of his dead wife occupying the empty seat beside him. Misaki gradually becomes the one person who can share that silence without trying to fix him. Ryusuke Hamaguchi never rushes their connection because grief does not operate on screenplay time. When Drive My Car finally opens emotionally, it feels enormous precisely because the film spent so long listening first.