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
Nominated for seven BAFTA awards (among other honors), Sarah Gavron's coming of age drama centers on a homeless teenage girl (widely praised newcomer Bukky Bakray) who must care for her younger brother after they are abandoned by their mother. After debuting at TIFF in 2019, the film played in theaters in the UK in 2020 and arrived in the States on Netflix in February 2021—within the extended eligibility window for the 2020 Oscars.