Hello and welcome to my 2026 movie watch project. We’re already a quarter of the way through the 21st century so I figured this was a great year to look back on the things we’ve missed along the way and see if any wisdom could be gathered from a random list of movies, one from each year 2000 to 2025.
My SO and I picked these movies in the most scientific way possible: going through the top 200 movies for each year on Letterboxd and then arguing about which ones looked the most interesting to us. There were so many extremely amazing movies we didn’t pick but I added about 120 of those to my watchlist on my letterboxd also.
2000
- La comunidad [Common Wealth] (Spain, dir. Álex de la Iglesia)
2001
- 買兇拍人 [You Shoot, I Shoot] (Hong Kong, dir. Edmond Pang)
2002
- Dzień świra [Day of the Wacko] (Poland, dir. Marek Koterski)
2003
- Kontroll (Hungary, dir. Nimród Antal)
2004
- Český sen [Czech Dream] (Czech Republic, dir. Vít Klusák, Filip Remunda)
2005
- エリ・エリ・レマ・サバクタニ [My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?] (Japan, dir. Shinji Aoyama)
2006
- Den brysomme mannen [The Bothersome Man] (Norway, dir. Jens Lien)
2007
- Los cronocrímenes [Timecrimes] (Spain, dir. Nacho Vigalondo)
2008
- 밤과 낮 [Night and Day] (South Korea, dir. Hong Sang-soo)
2009
- Püha Tõnu kiusamine [The Temptation of St. Tony] (Estonia, dir. Veiko Õunpuu)
2010
- Reflexões de um Liquidificador [Reflections of a Blender] (Brazil, dir. André Klotzel)
2011
- O Homem do Futuro [The Man from the Future] (Brazil, dir. Cláudio Torres)
2012
- Starlet (United States, dir. Sean Baker)
2013
- La grande bellezza [The Great Beauty] (Italy, dir. Paolo Sorrentino)
2014
- En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron [A Pigeon Sat on a Branch] (Sweden, dir. Roy Andersson)
2015
- Fúsi [Virgin Mountain] (Iceland, dir. Dagur Kári)
2016
- Death in the Gunj (India, dir. Konkona Sen Sharma)
2017
- Zama (Argentina, dir. Lucrecia Martel)
2018
- Au poste! [Keep an Eye Out] (Belgium, dir. Quentin Dupieux)
2019
- ダンスウィズミー [Dance With Me] (Japan, dir. Shinobu Yaguchi)
2020
- ドロステのはてで僕ら [Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes] (Japan, dir. Junta Yamaguchi)
2021
- Espíritu sagrado [The Sacred Spirit] (Spain, dir. Chema García Ibarra)
2022
- Ang Pagbabalik ng Kwago [Leonor Will Never Die] (Philippines, dir. Martika Ramirez Escobar)
2023
- The Monk and the Gun (Bhutan, dir. Pawo Choyning Dorji)
2024
- On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (UK, dir. Rungano Nyoni)
2025
- Wake Up Dead Man (America, dir. Rian Johnson)
Join me (or don’t) on my journey through the 21st century this year!