# The 27 Best Modern Black-and-White Films

> Monochrome by choice, not by age: shot in the era of color and still worth the contrast. Festival darlings, studio epics and shoestring oddities share one palette.

*By YPB Team · Published October 17, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-27-best-modern-black-and-white-films*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Schindler's List** — score 1000/1000
   Steven Spielberg's 1993 Holocaust drama shot in stark black and white, with one girl in red as its only color.
2. **Mank** — score 943/1000
   David Fincher's 2020 look at the writing of Citizen Kane, styled like a 1940s studio picture.
3. **Roma** — score 900/1000
   Alfonso Cuarón's 2018 semi-autobiographical portrait of a domestic worker in 1970s Mexico City.
4. **C'mon C'mon** — score 877/1000
   Mike Mills' 2021 gentle road movie about a radio journalist traveling with his young nephew.
5. **Satantango** — score 771/1000
   Bela Tarr's seven-hour 1994 epic about a collapsing farm collective in rural Hungary.
6. **The Artist** — score 771/1000
   A 2011 silent homage to Hollywood's transition to sound, which won the Best Picture Oscar.
7. **Ida** — score 692/1000
   Pawel Pawlikowski's 2013 Polish drama about a novice nun who uncovers her family's wartime past.
8. **Belfast** — score 692/1000
   Kenneth Branagh's 2021 coming-of-age story set in Northern Ireland at the start of the Troubles.
9. **Dead Man** — score 692/1000
   Jim Jarmusch's 1995 hallucinatory Western following a doomed accountant played by Johnny Depp.
10. **The White Ribbon** — score 692/1000
   Michael Haneke's 2009 chilling study of a German village before the First World War.
11. **Good Night, and Good Luck** — score 600/1000
   George Clooney's 2005 drama of Edward R. Murrow's broadcast stand against Senator McCarthy.
12. **A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night** — score 600/1000
   Ana Lily Amirpour's 2014 Persian-language vampire western set in a ghostly Iranian town.
13. **Ed Wood** — score 491/1000
   Tim Burton's 1994 biopic of the endearingly hopeless cult director, starring Johnny Depp.
14. **Nebraska** — score 491/1000
   Alexander Payne's 2013 road movie about a stubborn old man convinced he has won a million dollars.
15. **The Lighthouse** — score 491/1000
   Robert Eggers' 2019 two-hander about two keepers sliding into madness on a remote island.
16. **The Man Who Wasn't There** — score 491/1000
   The Coen brothers' 2001 noir about a quiet barber whose small scheme goes badly wrong.
17. **Following** — score 491/1000
   Christopher Nolan's 1998 low-budget debut about a young writer who trails strangers around London.
18. **Frances Ha** — score 491/1000
   Noah Baumbach's 2012 comedy about a drifting young dancer in New York, starring Greta Gerwig.
19. **Pi** — score 491/1000
   Darren Aronofsky's 1998 grainy paranoid thriller about a mathematician hunting for patterns in numbers.
20. **Cold War** — score 491/1000
   Pawel Pawlikowski's 2018 love story of two musicians across decades of Cold War Europe.
21. **Coffee and Cigarettes** — score 491/1000
   Jim Jarmusch's 2003 collection of deadpan conversations over, yes, coffee and cigarettes.
22. **Persepolis** — score 360/1000
   A 2007 animated memoir of growing up during the Iranian revolution, drawn in stark monochrome.
23. **The Tragedy of Macbeth** — score 360/1000
   Joel Coen's 2021 stripped-back Shakespeare adaptation with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand.
24. **The Turin Horse** — score 360/1000
   Bela Tarr's 2011 austere, hypnotic final film about six days in a farmhouse.
25. **Clerks** — score 0/1000
   Kevin Smith's 1994 microbudget comedy about one long day behind a convenience store counter.
26. **La Haine** — score 0/1000
   Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 raw drama of three friends in a Paris banlieue over a single day.
27. **Frankenweenie** — score 0/1000
   Tim Burton's 2012 stop-motion tale of a boy who revives his dead dog.

Tags: movies, classics, 2010s, black and white, arthouse