The Best Mexican Movies of All Time
From Buñuel's Mexican period and the Golden Age to Cuarón and Iñárritu — Mexican cinema ranked by our composite score.
Viridiana (1961) leads with a composite score of 3.59.
- 1Viridiana1961 · Luis Buñuel · Mexico / Spain · comedy, drama3.59
Palme d'Or winner 1961 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #52 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1962 #4
- 2Roma2018 · Alfonso Cuarón · United States / Mexico · drama3.24
BAFTA Best Film winner 2019 · Venice Golden Lion winner 2018 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 2018
- 3Y tu mamá también2001 · Alfonso Cuarón · Mexico · drama, comedy, romance1.99
Rolling Stone 100 Best of the 21st Century #5 · Film Comment year-end poll 2002 #3 · Ebert's annual top 10 2002 #6
- 4Pan's Labyrinth2006 · Guillermo del Toro · Mexico / Spain · fantasy, drama, war1.80
Ebert's annual top 10 2006 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2007 #10 · Film Comment year-end poll 2006 #15
- 5The Exterminating Angel1962 · Luis Buñuel · Mexico · fantasy, comedy, drama1.75
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1963 #3 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #169 · NYT Best 1,000 Movies
- 6Los Olvidados1950 · Luis Buñuel · Mexico · drama1.64
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1951 #4 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #157 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1953 #9
- 7
- 8Memoria2021 · Apichatpong Weerasethakul · Colombia / Thailand / Germany · drama1.50
Film Comment year-end poll 2021 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2021 #3
- 9Amores perros2000 · Alejandro González Iñárritu · Mexico · drama, thriller1.29
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2002 #10 · Film Comment year-end poll 2001 #16 · Empire 500 (2008) #492
- 10Él1953 · Luis Buñuel · Mexico · drama1.16
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1954 #1 · Criterion Collection spine #1289
- 11
- 12Nazarín1959 · Luis Buñuel · Mexico · drama0.88
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1960 #6 · Vatican film list · Sarris's annual top 10 1968 #5
- 13The Beginning and the End1993 · Arturo Ripstein · Mexico · drama0.75
San Sebastián Golden Shell winner 1993
- 14The Ruination of Men2000 · Arturo Ripstein · Spain / Mexico · drama, comedy, crime0.75
San Sebastián Golden Shell winner 2000
- 15
- 16The Kings of the World2022 · Laura Mora Ortega · Colombia / Luxembourg / France · drama, adventure0.75
San Sebastián Golden Shell winner 2022
- 17Simon of the Desert1965 · Luis Buñuel · Mexico · comedy0.70
Sarris's annual top 10 1969 #4 · Siskel's annual top 10 1969 #4 · Criterion Collection spine #460
- 18Jauja2014 · Lisandro Alonso · United States / France / Denmark · drama, western0.60
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2015 #6 · Film Comment year-end poll 2015 #16
- 19Santa Sangre1989 · Alejandro Jodorowsky · Mexico · horror, drama0.59
Ebert's annual top 10 1990 #6 · Empire 500 (2008) #476 · Roger Ebert's Great Movies
- 20The Devil's Backbone2001 · Guillermo del Toro · Spain / Mexico · horror, fantasy, drama0.59
Sarris's annual top 10 2001 #2 · Criterion Collection spine #666 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
- 21The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz1955 · Luis Buñuel · Mexico · crime, thriller0.53
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1957 #5 · Sarris's annual top 10 1960 #10
- 22Like Water for Chocolate1992 · Alfonso Arau · Mexico · romance, drama0.50
NYT Best 1,000 Movies · Ebert's annual top 10 1993 #7 · Sarris's annual top 10 1993 #7
- 23No2012 · Pablo Larraín · France / Chile / United States · drama0.44
Rolling Stone 100 Best of the 21st Century #97 · Film Comment year-end poll 2013 #23
- 24Japón2002 · Carlos Reygadas · Mexico / Germany / Spain · drama0.34
Film Comment year-end poll 2003 #45 · Criterion Collection spine #968
- 25El Mariachi1992 · Robert Rodriguez · Mexico / United States · action, thriller, crime0.34
National Film Registry (inducted 2011) · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
- 26Battle in Heaven2005 · Carlos Reygadas · Mexico / France / Germany · drama0.34
Film Comment year-end poll 2006 #36 · Hoberman's annual top 10 2006 #10
- 27Deep Crimson1996 · Arturo Ripstein · Mexico · crime, drama0.33
Sarris's annual top 10 1997 #7 · Criterion Collection spine #1285
- 28The Young One1960 · Luis Buñuel · Mexico · drama0.30
Sarris's annual top 10 1961 #5 · Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
- 29Miss Bala2011 · Gerardo Naranjo · Mexico / United States · action, drama, thriller0.30
Film Comment year-end poll 2012 #42 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
- 30Cronos1992 · Guillermo del Toro · Mexico · horror, fantasy, mystery0.27
Criterion Collection spine #551 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
- 31Silent Light2007 · Carlos Reygadas · Mexico / Netherlands / France · drama0.24
Film Comment year-end poll 2008 #16
- 32El Topo1970 · Alejandro Jodorowsky · Mexico · western, drama0.24
Roger Ebert's Great Movies · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
- 33The Devil Never Sleeps1994 · Lourdes Portillo · Mexico / United States0.23
National Film Registry (inducted 2020)
- 34
- 35Post Tenebras Lux2012 · Carlos Reygadas · France / Netherlands / Mexico · drama0.21
Film Comment year-end poll 2013 #27
- 36
- 37
- 38My brother's wife2005 · Ricardo de Montreuil · Mexico / Peru · drama0.17
Sarris's annual top 10 2006 #7
- 39Two Monks1934 · Juan Bustillo Oro · Mexico · mystery, horror, romance0.16
Criterion Collection spine #1048
- 40Redes1936 · Fred Zinnemann, Emilio Gómez Muriel · Mexico / United States · drama0.16
Criterion Collection spine #686
- 41
- 42Canoa: A Shameful Memory1976 · Felipe Cazals · Mexico · drama, crime0.16
Criterion Collection spine #862
- 43Sólo Con Tu Pareja1991 · Alfonso Cuarón · Mexico · comedy, romance0.16
Criterion Collection spine #353
- 44
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The story the best Mexican films tell about themselves is one of two peaks separated by half a century — a Golden Age that made Mexico the dominant film industry of the Spanish-speaking world, and a generation of exiles-in-Hollywood who came back to collect Oscars. Our composite score, which cares about accumulated canonical weight rather than nationality or nostalgia, sorts those peaks in an order that will surprise anyone expecting the classics to win on seniority alone.
What the ranking actually says
At the top sits not a modern Oscar collector but Luis Buñuel, the Spanish surrealist whose most productive decades were spent inside the Mexican industry: Viridiana (1961) is the page's highest-scoring film, with The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Los Olvidados (1950) — his lacerating study of Mexico City's abandoned children — ranking high behind it. The strongest entry from the exiles-in-Hollywood generation is Alfonso Cuarón's Roma (2018), the page's second film by score — a black-and-white memory piece that became, per Wikipedia's account of Mexican cinema, the first Mexican film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, out of ten nominations. The pure Golden Age, by contrast, ranks lower than its historical importance: Emilio Fernández's María Candelaria (1944), which took the top prize at Cannes, sits well down the list. The composite reads the auteurs, not the melodramas, as the enduring core.
Two peaks, one industry
The Golden Age ran roughly 1936 to 1956, opening with Allá en el Rancho Grande and swelling through the 1940s as wartime Hollywood looked elsewhere and Mexican production tripled. Fernández and his cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa built the era's monumental visual language; Buñuel, arriving mid-century, weaponised the same industry for something stranger. The second peak is the Nuevo Cine Mexicano of the 1990s and the three directors it launched onto the world stage — Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu. Their signatures are all here: Cuarón's Y tu mamá también (2001), del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006), Iñárritu's Amores perros (2000). What unites the two peaks is an industry confident enough to hand foreign masters its cameras and get masterpieces back.
How to read our list
Membership is drawn by country of origin — Wikidata's P495 production-country claim, with historical states folded into the modern nation — and then re-ranked entirely by our own composite score; it is not any external best-of list reordered. That provenance explains the outliers: because a production country counts even in a co-production, films that read as Chilean, Venezuelan or Thai — Larraín's No (2012), Vigas' From Afar (2015), Weerasethakul's Memoria (2021) — surface here on the strength of Mexican co-financing. Read the list as a map of where canonical weight has settled, not as a passport check.