Top 10 Eastern European Films of All Time

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), the German-language film set in 1984 East Germany (GDR) and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007 and is widely considered one of the finest films about the surveillance state and moral redemption ever made. Set in East Berlin during the Stasi secret police's systematic surveillance of the country's cultural figures, it explored themes of complicity, artistic freedom, and humanity that resonated globally. It has sold over 1 million DVD copies in Germany alone and remains a reference point in discussions of authoritarianism and privacy.

Ostre sledovane vlaky (Closely Watched Trains), directed by Jiri Menzel and adapted from a novel by Bohumil Hrabal, is one of the masterworks of the Czechoslovak New Wave and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1968. Set at a small Czech railway station during the Nazi occupation, it follows a young trainee stationmaster navigating his sexual awakening and eventually an act of wartime resistance, blending dark comedy with melancholy and anti-heroism. The film's humanist warmth and deadpan tone influenced generations of European directors and remains a touchstone of Central European cinema.

The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Adrien Brody as Polish-Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2002 and three Academy Awards including Best Director and Best Actor. Based on Szpilman's 1946 memoir of surviving the Warsaw Ghetto and the destruction of Warsaw, the film drew on Polanski's own childhood experience of surviving the Krakow Ghetto to achieve a devastating authenticity. It remains one of the most powerful films about the Holocaust and is essential viewing for understanding Warsaw's wartime history.

4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile, directed by Cristian Mungiu, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2007 and is the film most often cited as the defining work of the Romanian New Wave — a movement that brought Romanian cinema to global attention for the first time. Set during the last years of Ceausescu's communist regime, it follows a university student who helps her roommate obtain an illegal abortion, depicting with unflinching realism the moral complexities of life under totalitarianism. Critics worldwide hailed it as one of the greatest films of the 2000s and Mungiu received the Best Director prize at Cannes again in 2022 for his follow-up RMN.

Ida, directed by Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski, is a luminously beautiful black-and-white film about a novice nun in 1960s Poland who discovers before taking her vows that she is Jewish and that her family was murdered during the Holocaust. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2015 and the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language, becoming the first Polish film to win an Oscar in that category. Shot in a stark 4:3 aspect ratio with extraordinary visual discipline, it is considered one of the greatest Polish films ever made and was selected by critics as one of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century.

Saul fia (Son of Saul), directed by Hungarian debut filmmaker Laszlo Nemes, won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2015 and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016. Shot almost entirely in extreme close-up with a shallow depth of field that keeps the horrors of Auschwitz perpetually at the edge of frame, it follows a Hungarian Jewish Sonderkommando's desperate effort to give a proper Jewish burial to a dead boy he believes is his son. The film's formally radical approach to depicting the Holocaust was acclaimed as a landmark of moral and aesthetic seriousness in cinema.

Chelovek s kino-apparatom (Man with a Movie Camera), directed by Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, is a city symphony documentary capturing daily life across Soviet cities (Moscow, Kyiv, Odessa, and Kharkov) through an extraordinary array of cinematic techniques including split screens, slow motion, freeze frames, tracking shots, and extreme close-ups. Voted the greatest documentary film of all time in a 2014 Sight & Sound poll and the eighth greatest film of any kind in the 2022 poll, it is the foundational work of avant-garde cinema and remains as formally inventive as any film made in the 96 years since. Vertov's Kino-Pravda movement established the theoretical and aesthetic foundations of documentary filmmaking worldwide.

La Double Vie de Veronique, directed by Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski and starring Irene Jacob in a dual role as two women — one Polish, one French — who are mysteriously connected without knowing each other, is one of the most lyrical and emotionally resonant films in European cinema. Jacob won the Best Actress prize at Cannes 1991, and the film established Kieslowski's international reputation before his Three Colours trilogy (1993-94) cemented him as one of the great filmmakers of his era. Its meditation on fate, identity, and spiritual connection remains deeply influential in art cinema.

Zimna Wojna (Cold War), directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, is a visually ravishing black-and-white romantic epic spanning 15 years and five countries, following two doomed lovers — a music director and a singer — across the divided Europe of the Cold War. It won Best Director at Cannes 2018 and was nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director, and Best Cinematography. Named the greatest film of 2018 by the British Film Institute and Sight & Sound magazine, it is a summation of Polish and Eastern European 20th-century history told through an aching love story.

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), the German-language film set in 1984 East Germany (GDR) and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007 and is widely considered one of the finest films about the surveillance state and moral redemption ever made. Set in East Berlin during the Stasi secret police's systematic surveillance of the country's cultural figures, it explored themes of complicity, artistic freedom, and humanity that resonated globally. It has sold over 1 million DVD copies in Germany alone and remains a reference point in discussions of authoritarianism and privacy.

Ostre sledovane vlaky (Closely Watched Trains), directed by Jiri Menzel and adapted from a novel by Bohumil Hrabal, is one of the masterworks of the Czechoslovak New Wave and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1968. Set at a small Czech railway station during the Nazi occupation, it follows a young trainee stationmaster navigating his sexual awakening and eventually an act of wartime resistance, blending dark comedy with melancholy and anti-heroism. The film's humanist warmth and deadpan tone influenced generations of European directors and remains a touchstone of Central European cinema.

The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Adrien Brody as Polish-Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2002 and three Academy Awards including Best Director and Best Actor. Based on Szpilman's 1946 memoir of surviving the Warsaw Ghetto and the destruction of Warsaw, the film drew on Polanski's own childhood experience of surviving the Krakow Ghetto to achieve a devastating authenticity. It remains one of the most powerful films about the Holocaust and is essential viewing for understanding Warsaw's wartime history.

4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile, directed by Cristian Mungiu, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2007 and is the film most often cited as the defining work of the Romanian New Wave — a movement that brought Romanian cinema to global attention for the first time. Set during the last years of Ceausescu's communist regime, it follows a university student who helps her roommate obtain an illegal abortion, depicting with unflinching realism the moral complexities of life under totalitarianism. Critics worldwide hailed it as one of the greatest films of the 2000s and Mungiu received the Best Director prize at Cannes again in 2022 for his follow-up RMN.

Ida, directed by Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski, is a luminously beautiful black-and-white film about a novice nun in 1960s Poland who discovers before taking her vows that she is Jewish and that her family was murdered during the Holocaust. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2015 and the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language, becoming the first Polish film to win an Oscar in that category. Shot in a stark 4:3 aspect ratio with extraordinary visual discipline, it is considered one of the greatest Polish films ever made and was selected by critics as one of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century.

Saul fia (Son of Saul), directed by Hungarian debut filmmaker Laszlo Nemes, won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2015 and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016. Shot almost entirely in extreme close-up with a shallow depth of field that keeps the horrors of Auschwitz perpetually at the edge of frame, it follows a Hungarian Jewish Sonderkommando's desperate effort to give a proper Jewish burial to a dead boy he believes is his son. The film's formally radical approach to depicting the Holocaust was acclaimed as a landmark of moral and aesthetic seriousness in cinema.

Chelovek s kino-apparatom (Man with a Movie Camera), directed by Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, is a city symphony documentary capturing daily life across Soviet cities (Moscow, Kyiv, Odessa, and Kharkov) through an extraordinary array of cinematic techniques including split screens, slow motion, freeze frames, tracking shots, and extreme close-ups. Voted the greatest documentary film of all time in a 2014 Sight & Sound poll and the eighth greatest film of any kind in the 2022 poll, it is the foundational work of avant-garde cinema and remains as formally inventive as any film made in the 96 years since. Vertov's Kino-Pravda movement established the theoretical and aesthetic foundations of documentary filmmaking worldwide.

La Double Vie de Veronique, directed by Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski and starring Irene Jacob in a dual role as two women — one Polish, one French — who are mysteriously connected without knowing each other, is one of the most lyrical and emotionally resonant films in European cinema. Jacob won the Best Actress prize at Cannes 1991, and the film established Kieslowski's international reputation before his Three Colours trilogy (1993-94) cemented him as one of the great filmmakers of his era. Its meditation on fate, identity, and spiritual connection remains deeply influential in art cinema.

Zimna Wojna (Cold War), directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, is a visually ravishing black-and-white romantic epic spanning 15 years and five countries, following two doomed lovers — a music director and a singer — across the divided Europe of the Cold War. It won Best Director at Cannes 2018 and was nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director, and Best Cinematography. Named the greatest film of 2018 by the British Film Institute and Sight & Sound magazine, it is a summation of Polish and Eastern European 20th-century history told through an aching love story.