The Top 25 Best International Feature Winners So Far (Updated for 2025)

Happy Monday everyone, it’s time to get on with another Oscar category ranking! Continuing a tradition I’ve been keen on for years, I’m ranking the new crop of Academy Award winners for your reading pleasure. For nearly all of the Oscar categories, you’ll see me list the top 25 recipients of that prize. Sometimes, our newest winner will appear. Other times, they’ll be relegated to the Honorable Mention category. Who knows, maybe one or two won’t even make the cut? It’s a list series that I’ll do each and every single year, in the weeks after the ceremony concludes. So, while this is a fun way to think about the Oscars in the aftermath of the latest telecast, it’s also a beginning for another column here on the site. Of course, definitely show us your own lists as well, in the comments section below. We’re definitely keen to know what you think!

Up on the podium for me this week is the Best International Feature category. Once called Best Foreign Language Film, the now more appropriately named field has generated, especially in recent years, some all-time great winners. Movies like Another Round (fairly recently, three Oscars ago) Parasite, and A Separation immediately took their place in the upper tier of victors, as you can see below. They make up an incredible top seven with the likes of 8½, Cinema Paradiso (my personal favorite) Life is Beautiful, and Rashoman. Throw in All About My Mother, Fanny and Alexander, and The Lives of Others, and you have quite the top ten. When Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon comes in at number eleven, you know you’ve got good stuff ahead of it. To see the full ranking, including where recent winner Drive My Car parks, alongside All Quiet on the Western Front, last year’s winner The Zone of Interest, as well as our newest in I’m Still Here, read on below…

Here are what I consider to be the 25 best winners of the Best International Feature Oscar, to date:

25. The Zone of Interest
24. Babette’s Feast
23. Nights of Cabiria
22. Ida
21. La strada
20. Black Orpheus
19. Amour
18. Son of Saul
17. The Barbarian Invasions
16. Roma
15. The Bicycle Thief
14. The Virgin Spring
13. Day for Night
12. The Sea Inside
11. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
10. The Lives of Others
9. All About My Mother
8. Fanny and Alexander
7. Another Round
6. Rashoman
5. A Separation
4. Life is Beautiful
3. 8½
2. Parasite
1. Cinema Paradiso

Honorable Mentions: All Quiet on the Western Front, I’m Still Here, Pelle the Conqueror, The Secret in Their Eyes, Tsotsi, and Z

Stay tuned for another category early next week!