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
One of the most critically acclaimed directors working today, master Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda has been churning out quiet masterpieces for decades but has never personally been nominated for an Academy Award. In fact, 2018's Shoplifters is his only feature to date to even receive an Oscar nomination. The best of his non-nominees this century is 2009's Still Walking, which, like all but two of his films, wasn't even Japan's official Oscar submission. This life-affirming drama spends a day with an extended family that reunites to mark the 15-year anniversary of the death of the family's youngest son.
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