Cinema · 2020s So Far
Best Films of the 2020s So Far, Ranked by IQ Score
Five years in, the post-COVID cinematic recovery, ranked by IQ Score.
The 2020s in cinema is still mid-decade, and the rubric reads work that already has its share of canonical entries. Oppenheimer (2023), The Zone of Interest (2023), TÁR (2022), Past Lives (2023), and Anora (2024) anchor the decade's prestige register. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) and Parasite (2019, awarded 2020) marked the global-cinema axis the decade has continued.
Mid-decade snapshot: The Brutalist, Conclave, Sing Sing, A Real Pain, and Nickel Boys define the 2024 cohort. The post-COVID theatrical recovery has been incomplete, but the films that have reached audiences have been disproportionately ambitious, partly because the pandemic accelerated the shake-out of the safe-bet mid-budget studio film.
35 titles · ranked by IQ Score
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Questions about this ranking
What is the best film of the 2020s so far?
By IQ Score on TV Intelligentsia, Oppenheimer (2023) and The Zone of Interest (2023) anchor the decade's Masterclass tier. TÁR (2022), Past Lives (2023), and Anora (2024) round out the canonical entries through 2024.
How does TVI rank 2020s films?
Every 2020s film in the database is scored on the same rubric: Cognitive Stimulation (40%), Educational Value (35%), Craft & Quality (25%). The decade's mid-point ranking is provisional, late-decade work will reshape the picture, just as the late 2010s did for that decade.
Will this list change as more 2020s films are released?
Yes. The rankings are rebuilt against the live TVI catalog, so they reflect the current database. The decade is half over; the second half is likely to produce work the current ranking can't anticipate. Particularly, 2025 and 2026 releases will reshape the upper tier.
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202 ranked-by-IQ lists, filmographies, decade hubs, year hubs, character rankings, streaming-platform lists, and editorial curations. All scored on the same published rubric.
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