What is the best Focus Features film?

Oscar-winning prestige dramas, beloved Austen adaptations, social-issue films, and arthouse crossovers — this distributor has consistently championed the kind of intelligent cinema that rarely gets a big platform. Which is their finest?

1

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Michel Gondry's Charlie Kaufman-scripted sci-fi romance about a couple who erase each other from their memories — formally dazzling, emotionally devastating, and Jim Carrey's finest performance.

1000pts

2

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Ang Lee's Oscar-winning epic romance about two ranch hands whose love story spans two decades of denial and distance — a film that changed American cinema's relationship with LGBTQ+ stories.

666pts

3

Atonement (2007)

Joe Wright's devastating adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel — a young girl's lie destroys two lives and a second-act single-take Dunkirk beach tracking shot that ranks among cinema's greatest.

666pts

4

Milk (2008)

Gus Van Sant's portrait of Harvey Milk, San Francisco's first openly gay elected official, with Sean Penn's deeply inhabited Oscar-winning performance and a script that honours Milk's humanity and courage.

571pts

5

Emma. (2020)

Autumn de Wilde's vivid, slightly satirical Austen adaptation with Anya Taylor-Joy's perfectly poised Emma Woodhouse and Johnny Flynn's charming Mr. Knightley, shot in blazing English country-house colour.

399pts

6

Nosferatu (2024)

Robert Eggers's gothic reimagining of the 1922 vampire classic set in 1838 Germany, a stately, sexually charged horror film of extraordinary visual invention starring Bill Skarsgård and Lily-Rose Depp.

399pts

7

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Wes Anderson's charming fable about two twelve-year-olds who run away together on a New England island in 1965, his most purely romantic film and a visual love letter to nostalgia.

399pts

8

Spotlight (2015)

Tom McCarthy's methodical recreation of the Boston Globe's investigation into the Catholic clergy abuse scandal — one of the great journalism films and Best Picture winner at the Oscars.

399pts

9

Still Alice (2014)

Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's intimate drama about a linguistics professor's early-onset Alzheimer's diagnosis, with Julianne Moore's Oscar-winning performance of heartbreaking dignity.

249pts

10

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Kenneth Lonergan's quietly unbearable drama about a man forced to return to his hometown after his brother's death — Casey Affleck's performance and the film's refusal of easy catharsis make it unforgettable.

249pts

11

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Joe Wright's gorgeous rural-England adaptation of Austen's novel — Keira Knightley's Lizzie Bennet and Matthew Macfadyen's Darcy — a film that succeeds by trusting the source material's wit.

249pts

12

Belfast (2021)

Kenneth Branagh's Oscar-winning black-and-white memoir of a working-class Protestant family deciding whether to leave Troubles-era Belfast, shot with tender nostalgia and precise period feeling.

249pts

13

Lost in Translation (2003)

Sofia Coppola's tender Tokyo reverie about two lonely Americans — Bill Murray's fading movie star and Scarlett Johansson's young wife — who form an ineffable connection in the Park Hyatt bar.

0pts

14

The Favourite (2018)

Yorgos Lanthimos's deliciously savage period comedy about a rivalry between two cousins vying for the affections of an ailing Queen Anne — Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz at peak ferocity.

0pts