We’re only just over halfway through, and the 2020s have already been an eventful decade for cinema. The pandemic brought the theatrical industry to its knees and streaming services became more dominant than ever, yet great filmmakers continued to push the medium in bold new directions.

Today, after a few years of uncertainty, cinema is thriving more than ever on both the big and small screens. The result has been a stellar collection of modern classics, from intimate dramas about memory and grief to enormous and ambitious historical epics. Each of these movies has earned the label of “masterpiece,” and time can only be kinder to their already growing reputation.

‘The Father’ (2020)

“I feel as if I’m losing all my leaves.” This psychological drama is one of the most powerful depictions of dementia ever put to screen. An Oscar-winning Anthony Hopkins delivers one of his finest performances (which is truly saying something) as the elderly Anthony, whose mind is slowly slipping away from him. The audience is placed inside his disorientation: we watch as Anthony’s apartment subtly changes around him, characters inexplicably appear with different faces, and seemingly settled facts become unreliable.

Time loops back on itself, conversations repeat with slight variations, clever editing hammering the stylistic approach home. The directorial choices are visionary across the board. For instance, to replicate the confusion of face blindness and memory gaps, the film swaps actors without warning. Masterclass performances from all involved, including Olivia Colman and Rufus Sewell, do the rest of the heavy lifting.

‘The Souvenir Part II’ (2021)

“Anthony was a junkie.” This is the finest film by director Joanna Hogg, a master of restrained dramas. The Souvenir Part II is the rare sequel that not only expands on its predecessor but fundamentally changes how viewers understand it. Following Anthony’s (Tom Burke) death at the end of the first movie, it sees Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) returning to film school and attempting to process a relationship that she increasingly realizes she never completely understood. Her grief gradually becomes inseparable from her development as an artist.

Rather than being dry or dour, the story that follows is funny, awkward, painfully intimate, and remarkably perceptive about the creative process. Subtle writing, strong performances, and three-dimensional characters are at a premium here. The Souvenir Part II is deeply autobiographical, too, with Hogg drawing on some of her experiences to create one of the decade’s most poignant cinematic self-portraits.

‘Sentimental Value’ (2025)

“Why didn’t our childhood ruin you?” Sentimental Value is the latest masterpiece from The Worst Person in the World‘s Joachim Trier, reuniting the director with star Renate Reinsve. Here, she plays Nora, a successful stage actress who is close to her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter-Lilleås) but estranged from their father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), an acclaimed Ingmar Bergman-type filmmaker. It’s a rich family drama, a layered story about parents and children, sisters, artists, inherited trauma, and the messy ways people attempt to communicate.

Instead of sticking to a linear narrative, Trier structures the 2-hour-and-14-minute runtime like a multi-perspective novel divided into distinct chapters. Even one great character study would have been impressive, but here he presents several. He’s assisted by a superb, committed cast that also includes Elle Fanning. Each of the four main players complements the others perfectly, making Sentimental Value way more than the sum of its parts.

‘Aftersun’ (2022)

‘The Zone of Interest’ (2023)

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“The life we enjoy is very much worth the sacrifice.” There have been plenty of Holocaust films over the decade, yetJonathan Glazerstill found something new and urgent to say withThe Zone of Interest. It focuses on Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his family as they pursue an almost idyllic domestic existence in a house immediately beside the concentration camp. The children play, the adults worry about mundane matters, and beyond the wall, mass murder continues.

Glazer never shows that violence directly ; instead , it exists primarily through sound : gunshots , screams , machinery , trains , and an ominous industrial rumble that becomes part of the family’s everyday environment . The result isa powerful portrait of the banality of evil. By stripping away the cinematic tropes of mustache-twirling villainy ,The Zone of Interestexposes a far more terrifying reality :how easily ordinary human beings can compartmentalize atrocity.