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 89 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
Metacritic's highest-scoring international feature of 2022 is just the latest triumph for dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi, though an Oscar boycott by the Iranian government meant that his film was not submitted for consideration. Awarded a Special Jury Prize in Venice, the latest from the now-imprisoned auteur is another slice of piercing meta-fiction in which he finds a version of himself making a film in the Iranian village of Jabbar and causing a bit of trouble for the locals after they accuse him of taking a photo of a pair of young lovers, which he denies.