All 18 International Movies Ever Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, Ranked

Throughout the history of the Academy Awards, there really haven’t been that many genuine foreign films nominated for the top prize: Best Picture. The term “foreign film” will be used interchangeably with “international film” below, and here, it’s referring to anything that was made outside an English-speaking country and in a language other than English.

If a film was co-produced with a country where the primary language is English, or if it featured some dialogue in English, it’s still going to be counted below. Films that almost qualify, but not quite, include Letters from Iwo Jima, Babel, Minari, and Past Lives.

These are all the undeniable international movies that have been nominated for Best Picture, ranked pretty haphazardly in terms of quality. At the bottom is Cries and Whispers (1972): the only Ingmar Bergman film that ever earned a Best Picture nomination, and a movie the piece calls the bad kind of arthouse—overwrought and off-putting.

best picture, international films, foreign films, academy awards, oscars, oscar nominations, ingmar bergman, iwo jima, minari, past lives