The Best Movies Never Nominated for a Single Oscar
Last updated: January 24, 2023
Judging from the complaints that pour in each year, the Academy gets many things wrong—including, with surprising regularity, completely ignoring some of each year's most acclaimed films. In the gallery above, you can find the 30 highest-scoring films since 2000 that did not receive any Oscar nominations (in any category). They are ranked by Metascore, but all of these films scored or higher—suggesting massive critical acclaim.
Note that documentaries are excluded (since there are fewer opportunities for those films to receive nominations). Also excluded are movies that qualified for Emmys rather than Oscars (such as the Small Axe films).
Additional content by Keith Kimbell
Claire Denis has the sad distinction of being the only director with two entries on our list. It certainly doesn't help that her own country, France, has never submitted one of her films for foreign-language Oscar consideration. Yes, not even this 2000 French Foreign Legion drama (set in Djibouti and loosely based on Melville's Billy Budd) that took first place in the Village Voice's critics poll that year. It also scored 13 points higher than the film France did submit to the Oscars that year, The Taste of Others.
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