As we reach the quarter-point of this century, some publications are taking stock of the films that the culture has deemed the “best” of the past 25 years. It’s a descriptor with no firm definition—one person may determine the “best” by analyzing pure technical merit, another may choose whatever inspires the strongest emotional reaction. Either way, it’s all subjective!

We asked our crew and contributors to pen odes to their favorite pictures of the 21st century, though with a catch: they must have fewer than 50,000 watches on Letterboxd. That’s because we all know and love Top 250 staples like Parasite and Mulholland Drive, but what about the hidden gems that slipped through the cracks of an unpredictable industry? Be it due to marketing, social and economic climates, legal issues, timing or pure bad luck, these movies remain underseen. This is our attempt to identify them, to give them temporary homes on your watchlists, then permanent homes in your diaries.

The following picks range from a 55-minute comedy consisting entirely of film clips of dogs, to a 352-minute adaptation of The Great American Play—something for everyone, no matter where you fall on the silly/serious spectrum.

Friday Night (2002)

Directed by Claire Denis, written by Denis and Emmanuèle Bernheim, based on a novel by Bernheim
Selected by Mitchell Beaupre

No one creates a sensorial cinematic experience like Claire Denis. Watching Friday Night is akin to a grounding exercise. How it works its way into your mind and then down into your skin, your flesh, your bones. You feel every sensation these characters do. The amount of attention she gives to close-ups of hands invites us to inhabit that textural rush. Your fingers connecting with the steering wheel of your car, body parts of your lover, cigarette boxes, removed watches, buttons on a blouse, the check at a restaurant, the keys to a hotel room, the knob turning on the radiator. The way your feet feel as they’re grazing between your lover’s legs and the bedsheet. Friday Night lights up with the romanticism of late night in the world—the neon lights of store signs, the way that light shimmers off the wet road as you are rushed by the thrill of a chance encounter with a stranger who can take you on a journey before the sun comes up.

Angels in America (2003)

Directed by Mike Nichols from a play by Tony Kushner
Selected by Mia Lee Vicino

Oscar winners Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson are being directed by Oscar winner Mike Nichols to say words written by Pulitzer-winning playwright Tony Kushner. So why does this have just 34,000 logs despite its heavenly 4.2-star rating? And before you say, “Because it’s a miniseries, not a movie!!!”… You try to secure funding to adapt a controversial six-hour “gay fantasia on national themes” that distills the scope of the 1980s AIDS crisis—the politics, the suffering, the indifference, the relationships tested and strengthened, the crises both existential and faith-based—into two epic-length theatrical features. If Nichols, the man behind Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate, couldn’t pull it off, who could?! It’s the Great American Play, adapted into the Great American TV Movie, and it’s streaming on the Great American Streaming Service (HBO Max). The Great Work Begins.

Hill of Freedom (2014)

Written and directed by Hong Sang-soo
Selected by Samm Ruppersberger

Hong Sang-soo’s underseen epistolary story follows lonely loverboy Mori’s futile search for the woman he adores through the letters he wrote during his time spent meandering about her village. When she receives his letters at the start of the film, she accidentally drops them down a stairwell, shuffling them (and the story’s structure) out of order. Like in most of Sang-soo’s work, cigs, drinks and nature are life’s best medicine, and a new friend is always around the corner. As Mori stumbles through his despair, the locals he meets along his excursion walk him through it with tenderness. There’s something so distinctively therapeutic about Sang-soo’s filmography; like a mindfulness practice, time slows down, making the next moment feel a little easier. Hill of Freedom would be a perfect entry point into his work for newcomers, or a slight change of pace for more seasoned Hong heads. It’s hopeful and breezy, deviating from conventions and constantly finding the humor in our humanness.

Ghost Tropic (2019)

Written and directed by Bas Devos
Selected by Aaron Yap

Belgian filmmaker Bas Devos’s third film is an unassuming, gently textured ode to the city of Brussels and its marginalized inhabitants, drifting through nocturnal urban spaces via the watchful eyes of Khadija (Saadia Bentaïeb), a widowed cleaner who has to find her way back home after falling asleep on a bus through her stop. Backed by the lulling finger-plucked guitar of Ameel Brecht and the earthy glow of Grimm Vandekerckhove’s 16mm cinematography, Devos imbues the stillness of the night with mystery and possibility as Khadija encounters fleeting but revealing moments of human connection. A generous, pulse-slowing, spiritually restorative cinematic balm.

Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018)

Directed by RaMell Ross, written by Ross and Maya Krinsky
Selected by Schae

How lucky are we that the 21st century has allowed us to witness the fresh and unique filmmaking talent of RaMell Ross? While most recently he’s gotten the deserved recognition for 2024’s Nickel Boys, my pick for our list is his stunning 2018 directorial debut Hale County This Morning, This Evening. Ross’s documentary depicts slice-of-life moments of a Black community in Hale County, Alabama, framed only by intertitles asking “What is the orbit of our dreaming?” or “Whose child is this?” He simply lets his subjects be in their own moments while his experimental kino-eye challenges the documentary genre. It might just be the most profoundly human documentary I’ve personally seen, and I encourage more Letterboxd members to check it out, enter the community of Hale County as a spectator and ruminate on the visual treat Ross has given us.

Rocks (2019)

Directed by Sarah Gavron, written by Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson
Selected by Kadija Osman

If you haven’t seen Rocks, it’s time to catch up. Directed by Sarah Gavron, Rocks is a powerful and tender story about a teenage girl who’s forced to step up and care for her younger brother after their mother abruptly leaves. Gavron, collaborating closely with a young and talented cast, crafts a film that’s emotionally raw, free-flowing, and deeply rooted in the bonds of community and friendship among Black and Brown girls in East London. What makes this film linger in my mind is, first, its dialogue—natural, improvised and deeply authentic. It almost feels like a documentary, immersing you in the lives of these girls with remarkable realism. On a more personal level, the presence of Somali representation through the character Sumaya (Kosar Ali) was especially meaningful. Though not a central focus of the plot, hearing Somali spoken and seeing characters who reflect my identity on-screen is a rare and deeply appreciated experience.

Police, Adjective (2009)

Written and directed by Corneliu Porumboiu
Selected by Brian Formo

A Bucharest policeman tails a teenager because someone said he smoked marijuana. The policeman thinks it’s incorrect to arrest him, because why should a kid go to jail for years for something society now agrees is minor? Labyrinthian-plotted police potboilers like Chinatown, The Big Sleep and L.A. Confidential are often cited as being among the best scripts ever written, but Police, Adjective might actually be the most cerebral detective film. It deconstructs everything about the genre down to the most mundane. Like much of the Romanian New Wave, Police, Adjective is playfully academic with a distinct yet minimal flavor. Ultimately, it’s about definitions, redefining what a police film can be via office debates instead of shootouts. If semantic discussions are as appealing to you as they are to me, then this picture is a linguistics holy grail in an unlikely package: a Romanian cop uniform.

Tropical Malady (2004)

Written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Selected by Flynn Slicker

While Apichatpong Weerasethakul is often known for his 2010 Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, beneath the underbelly of the deep Thai jungle lies Tropical Malady. Much like his other films, it teeters on the line of fantasy and realism. Weerasethakul blends a tender queer love story with a folktale of the primal nature of humanity. Shea calls it, “The kind of film that beckons questioning and shapeshifts before you can even ask, but holds you in its spell all the same. A lot like love.” Tropical Malady has a way of sinking you into your seat, only to end up in the forest, eye-to-eye with a tiger.

Anchor and Hope (2017)

Directed by Carlos Marques-Marcet, written by Marques-Marcet and Jules Nurrish from a novel by Maria Llopis
Selected by Sophie van Waardenberg

Anchor and Hope follows Eva and Kat (Oona Chaplin and Natalia Tena), a lesbian couple, and Roger (David Verdaguer), their softhearted friend with an inexplicable beard, as they drift through London waterways in their canal boat home and decide whether to have a baby. I could leave it there—surely that premise ticks everyone’s boxes? Truly, though, I think way more people would love this film if they knew it existed. It’s precise and warm, buoyant but not saccharine and it manages to earnestly explore serious questions—how to love each other, how (and whether) to become a parent and when to properly grow up—while also including a drunken elegy for a cat named Chorizo. Watch for languorous shots of canal boats cutting through bottle-green water, the wistful songs of Molly Drake and a pair of sometimes charming, often frustrating lesbians trying really hard to figure things out.

Driveways (2019)

Directed by Andrew Ahn, written by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen
Selected by Isaac Feldberg

An exquisite, intimate drama about the friendship between an eight-year-old boy (newcomer Lucas Jaye) and his octogenarian neighbor (Brian Dennehy, in a final performance that ranks among his finest), Andrew Ahn’s Driveways reminds us how small acts of kindness signify everything. Its gentle and understated story—elevated by graceful performances from its three leads, including Hong Chau—somehow sidesteps sentimentality at every turn. This is a quiet masterpiece, overlooked due to its virtual-theatrical release during the pandemic’s first months, about what we owe each other in difficult times. It’s the film we all needed then—and still do.

Bright Star (2009)

Written and directed by Jane Campion
Selected by Marya E. Gates

As shocked as I was that Jane Campion had not one but two films that qualified for this list, I chose Bright Star because In the Cut seems well on its way to rediscovery. Meanwhile, her ode to the ill-fated love between Romantic era poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his muse Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) remains woefully neglected. Don’t be fooled by its PG rating: it’s equally as emotionally volatile and erotic as her more well-known masterworks and, in my opinion, is her clearest treatise on how romantic love is a violent emotion, tethering our bodies and our souls to another, twisting us inside and out until we become one heart, an organ made from fire that can shatter like fragile porcelain. It can be patched, but will always bear its scars proudly on its surface—even as it keeps its secrets locked away deep inside.

Please Baby Please (2022)

Directed by Amanda Kramer, written by Kramer and Noel David Taylor
Selected by Katie Rife

If nothing else, this retro-pulp genderqueer fantasia would be notable for predicting the rise of Cole Escola and the Demi Moore renaissance. Both were on the verge of exploding when writer-director Amanda Kramer featured them in her 2022 tribute to ’50s-style rough trade, and both wear Kramer’s heightened aesthetic like a well-loved leather motorcycle jacket. Moore and Escola aren’t the only players worth swooning over, however: Andrea Riseborough and Harry Melling star as a square couple whose encounter with a gang of West Side Story-meets-Kenneth Anger street toughs prompts parallel awakenings around gender and sexuality. In Kramer’s world, boys are boys and so are girls, and everyone is hot and horny and harder than a muscular thigh in a worn pair of Levi’s. It’s queer camp paradise, and an instant cult classic.

Never Die Alone (2004)

Directed by Ernest R. Dickerson, written by James Gibson from a novel by Donald Goines
Selected by Justin LaLiberty

It’s a minor miracle that Ernest R. Dickerson adapted a Donald Goines crime novel in 2004 and got it distributed by Fox Searchlight. It’s a major miracle that it starred DMX and was shot on 16mm by Darren Aronofsky’s regular cinematographer, Matthew Libatique. The result is an unapologetically bleak, stunningly violent neo-noir exercise that feels like what might have happened if Tony Scott and Hype Williams co-directed a remake of Sunset Boulevard. Words don’t do Never Die Alone justice and there’s nothing else like it. One of the great, often overlooked, genre films to come out of any studio in the 2000s. Double feature it with Belly and thank me later.

Lingua Franca (2019)

Written and directed by Isabel Sandoval
Selected by Brandon Streussnig

In the malaise of COVID lockdown, a stunning, singular portrait of romance and survival in America appeared on Netflix, seemingly out of nowhere. Lingua Franca wasn’t Isabel Sandoval’s first film, but it’s what introduced her to me as one of the vital filmmakers of the 21st century. As her character Olivia (Sandoval also stars) traverses life and love as a trans immigrant in New York, shades of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wong Kar-wai stream through her visions of sensuality. Lingua Franca is more than a balm in an increasingly sexless Western landscape, though. Against the backdrop of the first Trump term echoing over her images, her film becomes more urgent than ever. To simply exist, to love, to yearn—all protest in the face of those who seek to erase.

37 Seconds (2019)

Written and directed by Hikari
Selected by Claira Curtis

There’s a bold sort of ambition to Hikari’s 37 Seconds. It’s a dissection of complicated mother/daughter relationships, a commentary on the microaggressions people with cerebral palsy may experience and, most strikingly, a story about unapologetically seeking complete agency. Yuma’s (Mei Kayama) unwavering pursuit of sexual liberation is expressed with a vulnerability that feels poignantly delicate and all-encompassing. Her artwork is used as both a driving force within her journey and a bridge for the audience to experience her inner perspective more directly, similar to The Diary of a Teenage Girl or Ninjababy. It’s the type of film that is hard to shake because it so tenderly wraps you up in its intentions.

Morvern Callar (2002)

Directed by Lynne Ramsay, written by Ramsay and Liana Dognini from a novel by Alan Warner
Selected by Jenni Kaye

Morvern Callar changed everything for me. Lynne Ramsay’s hypnotic second feature, about a young woman’s quiet, radical escape from grief, is both elusive and emotionally gutting. Samantha Morton gives a transfixing performance, and the film’s use of sound and music made me realize how powerful and personal filmmaking could be. This is the movie that inspired me to make my first short film, plus Kristen Stewart cited it as one of her four favorites and a key inspiration for her upcoming directorial debut, The Chronology of Water. Ramsay is a poet and a master, and it’s time more people said so.

Queen of Hearts (2019)

Directed by May el-Toukhy, written by el-Toukhy and Maren Louise Käehne
Selected by Stevee Taylor

Queen of Hearts is an incredibly tough watch with a twisted ethical dilemma at its center: a lawyer who advocates for young, vulnerable victims has an affair with her troubled teenage stepson. While the story could have easily veered into salacious territory, the result is a cold, tense film like only a Scandinavian thriller can deliver. It hinges on the powerhouse performance from Danish acting royalty Trine Dyrholm, in a fascinating exploration of manipulation and consequences (or lack thereof). The film rarely plays it safe in a way I felt was missing from Catherine Breillat’s 2023 French remake, culminating in an emotional gut-punch that’s stuck with me for over five years since I first saw it.

The Strange Case of Angelica (2010)

Written and directed by Manoel de Oliveira
Selected by Öykü Sofuoğlu

It might seem incongruous, even pretentious, to refer to a film made by a 102-year-old filmmaker when discussing the cinema of the 21st century. However, Manoel de Oliveira’s resistance to the zeitgeist is what makes The Strange Case of Angelica an essential feature in an era where every work of art is doomed to become “outdated.” Angelica tells the tale of a photographer who, through the lens of his camera, captures a glimpse of life (and love) on a dead woman’s face and hopelessly seeks to retrieve them. For all its narrative simplicity, de Oliveira’s penultimate gift to us is an exquisite meta-text about the cinematic apparatus—an eerie allegory about how all films, at their core, are still haunted by the primal obsession with finding movement within stillness, and life within death.

The Painted Veil (2006)

Directed by John Curran, written by Ron Nyswaner from a novel by W. Somerset Maugham
Selected by Noreen Plabutong

Some may call The Painted Veil failed Oscar bait, but this movie falls into a very particular subgenre that I love, which involves furtive glances, sweeping landscapes, adultery, unrequited love and lots of yearning—made all the more dramatic by impeccable period dress. And this sure delivers! The relationship at the center of this film isn’t quite the love story that you’d expect—it’s complex and progresses in fits and starts before gradually building into something else. With stunning cinematography, a beautiful score by Alexandre Desplat and two great performances by Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, this is an underrated favorite of mine that takes its literary roots and gives it a bit of an old-school Hollywood spin.

Take This Waltz (2011)

Written and directed by Sarah Polley
Selected by Kate Hagen

Can a single music montage send a film into the stratosphere? Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz certainly makes that argument in its third act, when the slinky poetry of Leonard Cohen’s song of the same name soundtracks the entire half-life of a shiny new relationship between Margot (Michelle Williams) and Daniel (Luke Kirby) in one stunning, swooning blur of exploratory sex, comfortable domesticity and inevitable malaise. I hated Take This Waltz when I first saw it at twenty, completely unable to connect with Margot’s romantic ambivalence. Then I saw it again at 28—after blowing up my own relationship with a partner much like Margot’s ineffectual husband, Lou (Seth Rogen), for greener grass—and discovered that Polley’s film had always been a perfectly pitched tale of messy Millennial love. Come for a career-best Rogen, stay for the multitude of emotions Margot conveys during one of cinema’s most melancholy carnival rides.

Diggers (2006)

Directed by Katherine Dieckmann, written by Ken Marino
Selected by Dan Mecca

“I just met these guys and I feel like I’ve known them my whole life,” writes Andrew. That’s how it feels watching Diggers, the criminally underseen 2007 indie directed by Katherine Dieckmann and written by Ken Marino. Paul Rudd stars as a clam digger desperate to escape the small town in which he’s stuck. His three best friends (Marino, Ron Eldard and Josh Hamilton) are less inclined to leave, while a summering gal (Lauren Ambrose) may provide the inspiration for his exodus. Rudd has never been better, and neither has Marino. Dieckmann lets most scenes play out without much coverage or visual complication. This is a comfortable, lovely piece of work.

How to Build a Time Machine (2016)

Written and directed by Jay Cheel
Selected by Matt Goldberg

This stunning documentary from Jay Cheel tells two stories influenced by time travel narratives. One belongs to Rob Niosi, a stop-motion animator who spent thirteen years creating a full-scale, true-build replica of the time machine from 1960’s The Time Machine. The other belongs to theoretical physicist Dr. Ronald Mallett, who, after losing his father at a young age, wants to unlock the secrets of time travel. Both tales are lovely narratives of men reaching back into the past, not through science fiction, but through labors of love that transcend time. Cheel never hides from the bittersweetness of these stories, nor does he neglect the beauty of devoting years of your life to studying and perfecting your craft. They both exist as expressions of love—whether they’re science or art.

HyperNormalisation (2016)

Written and directed by Adam Curtis
Selected by Sholto Bolton

While it’s certainly not obscure, I’m astonished that more people haven’t seen Adam Curtis’s HyperNormalisation. It’s a genuinely impressive documentary that manages to link so many seemingly disparate ideas and events into something that is not only extremely compelling but is actually watchable by a wider audience. Despite some killer needle-drops (or maybe because of them), it can come across as dreadfully bleak. You may find yourself staring at your screen for some time once it’s finished, but it’s still a must-watch.

Postcard From Earth (2023)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky and Graham Booth, written by Ari Handel
Selected by Jack Moulton

Okay, I’m going to be annoying and pick a film that you can only watch at one specific venue: The Sphere in Las Vegas. Yes, I’m talking about Darren Aronofsky’s dystopian tone poem Postcard From Earth, quite literally the largest film ever made in terms of accommodating that colossal 160,000-square-foot screen. You can hardly blame your seatmate for snapping a pic in sheer awe. Naturally, many have pointed out the irony of experiencing such a potent environmental message in one of the most costly modern monuments, whether that detracts from the film’s meaning or not. However, in true Aronofsky fashion, Postcard From Earth is an immersive sensory feast—a novel spectacle worth its weight in existential enlightenment.

Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez! (2012)

Directed by Nic Maier and Dimitri Simakis
Selected by Clark Baumgartner

This isn’t my favorite, but it is a favorite: Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez! The best way to explain it is clips of 2,000+ VHS video rips with dogs in them strung together to form something of a narrative. It’s psychedelic, cosmic and at one point, a spiritual remake of The Holy Mountain. There are micro narratives around a particular theme that gradually shift into other narratives. It’s Koyaanisqatsi for ADHD memelords. It’s not for everyone, but I love it.