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
Not released in the U.S. until 2015, this epic 2012 Bollywood gangster drama spans over 70 years as it tells the stories of three crime families battling to dominate the coal industry in eastern India. But because the final product was over five hours long, it was split into two separate films for screening in Indian cinemas—a fact that probably doomed its already slim Oscar hopes. (And India submitted the much lighter Barfi! instead, perhaps because it didn't paint the country in a negative light.)
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