15 Best International Fantasy Movies, Ranked

Image via Picturehouse/courtesy Everett Collection Updated Sep 21, 2026, 5:11 AM EDT Jeremy has more than 2800 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows. His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings). When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account. He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas. Sign in to your Collider account While there have been plenty of great fantasy films produced in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries, one would be doing a disservice to themselves by not branching out and exploring such films from other territories. The fantasy genre is one that, perhaps more than any other, knows no limits, so limiting oneself to only watching fantasy movies in English doesn’t feel in line with the genre as a whole. The following international fantasy movies offer a sampling of how fascinating the genre is and always has been around the world. The following films come from places around the world, including Spain, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and Mexico, and are ranked below, beginning with the very good and then ending with the titles that can count themselves among the very best fantasy movies ever made. 15 'I Dream in Another Language' (2017) Image via FilmRise Magical realism and Latin American literature are so intricately tied together that they're almost inseparable, and Mexico in particular has a delectably rich fantasy tradition. From that history of magical realism came Ernesto Contreras' I Dream in Another Language, a drama about a linguist (Fernando Rebeil) who travels to a Mexican jungle in order to research a dying indigenous language. The only problem? Its last two remaining speakers refuse to talk to each other. It's one of the best fantasy movies of the 21st century, a study of cultural erasure, regret, and reconciliation that's often nothing short of a tear-jerker. As deeply rooted as it is in Mexican traditions of magical realism, it's a universally delightful romance drama that everyone who loves low fantasy should check out at least once in their lives. —Diego Pineda Pacheco 14 'Time of the Gypsies' (1988) Image via Ljubavny Film Some of history's greatest genre films come from countries that no longer exist, and Yugoslavia was a nation that produced a particularly rich body of fantastical work. The country's greatest filmmaker was undoubtedly Emir Kusturica, whose Time of the Gypsies follows a young Romani man (Davor Dujmović) with telekinetic powers who's seduced by the world of petty crime. It's yet another example of beautifully poetic and cinematic magical realism, a masterpiece that blends fantasy with gritty neorealism in a way that lends the story even more emotional depth than it already had on the page. With its unforgettable score, its stellar performances, and the authentic feel of being among the first major feature films spoken entirely in the Romani language, it's an '80s classic that has only gotten better with age. —Diego Pineda Pacheco 13 'Dreams' (1990) Not only was Akira Kurosawa the greatest Japanese filmmaker in history; he may very well have been the best in history, regardless of country of origin. For proof of those superlatives, people often look at classics like Seven Samurai or High and Low, but there's one awfully underappreciated Kurosawa masterpiece that's among the best '90s fantasy movies that nobody remembers: Dreams, a collection of stories based upon Kurosawa's own recurring dreams. It's one of the most unforgettable multi-story movies ever made, a deeply personal and wonderfully unique semi-autobiography that's unlike anything else fantasy—or even cinema in general—has ever seen since. Visually gorgeous, imaginative, and tonally complex, it may not have been Kurosawa's last movie, but it nonetheless serves as a deeply moving swan song to the career of one of the all-time greats. —Diego Pineda Pacheco 12 'The Spirit of the Beehive' (1973) Image via Bocaccio Distribución The spirit of The Spirit of the Beehive can be felt in numerous unconventional fantasy films that have followed in its wake, including some directed by the legendary Guillermo del Toro. It's a Spanish film that follows a young girl whose life is changed after seeing and being affected by 1931’s Frankenstein, all before becoming even more overwhelmed by the ideas of spirits and even a fantasy world she may or may not be able to cross over into. The Spirit of the Beehive is odd and oftentimes grounded, being something like low fantasy or magical realism… alternatively, the fantasy parts can be read as being merely in one character’s head, which could make the film more of a psychological drama. Anyway, it’s up to one’s interpretation, and there is a somber feeling of childhood innocence/discovery explored throughout the film, with some fantastical ideas potentially being included as a result. 11 'Wings of Desire' (1987) Image via Road Movies There are numerous languages spoken throughout Wings of Desire, but most of it’s in German, with the film being a co-production between (then West) Germany and France. It’s rightly held up as one of Wim Wenders’ best-ever films, and sees the director tackling a fantastical romance storyline, but also bringing his distinct style to it, making it feel surprisingly realistic or at least somehow mundane, in a way, even with the main characters being angels and all. The narrative of Wings of Desire centers on a pair of angels who oversee humanity without being able to interact directly with any people, and what happens when one of the angels starts wishing he could become human. It’s a slow but continually engaging film, strong on atmosphere and with the capacity to emotionally impact those who are willing to sit with it patiently throughout its leisurely paced and visually dazzling two-hour runtime. 10 'Ugetsu' (1953) Image via Daiei Film Perhaps a little like Wim Wenders, Kenji Mizoguchi is a filmmaker best known for his dramas, some of them with historical settings and some intended to reflect then-modern-day Japan, but one of his most noteworthy movies – 1953’s Ugetsu – belongs to the fantasy genre. It’s in contrast to most of the other films he made, because if one goes to Letterboxd, for example, Ugetsu is his only film (and he has about 50 directorial credits) that’s tagged as belonging to the fantasy genre. It has a historical setting, thanks to being set during the 16th century, but also works in folktale/ghost story elements; never enough to be an over-the-top fantasy film or anything approaching the horror genre, but enough to ensure Ugetsu stands out. It’s a sometimes eerie and always absorbing film, and perhaps one of Mizoguchi’s most beautiful (and that’s saying something). 9 'The Tale of the Princess Kaguya' (2013) Image via Studio Ghibli Directed by Isao Takahata, far and away one of the most groundbreaking filmmakers in the history of anime cinema, Studio Ghibli's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is one of the best fantasy masterpieces of the last 15 years. Inspired by the 10th-century folk story The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, it's a coming-of-age story about a beautiful young woman coveted by five nobles, who sends her suitors on seemingly impossible tasks in order to avoid marrying a stranger she doesn't love. It's a centuries-old tale full of tropes that have been present in cinema for as long as the fantasy genre has existed, yet Takahata finds all sorts of ways to make the whole narrative feel fresh and modern. The score is beautiful, the watercolor animation is consistently jaw-dropping, and the story is so profoundly moving that not a single second of the nearly two-and-a-half-hour runtime is ever a dead spot. —Diego Pineda Pacheco Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance. 💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power) 👒Grand Line(One Piece) 🐺The Continent(The Witcher) 🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson) FIND YOUR WORLD → 01 What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic. ASomething ancient and half forgotten that came down through my family. BSomething completely ridiculous that works in a fight and gets a laugh. CNo magic at all, just training, potions and a very sharp sword. DSomething I inherited from a parent I have barely met. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own. AA fellowship drawn from every corner of the world who barely trust each other. BA crew I picked up one at a time, all of whom would die for me. CTwo or three people I would never describe out loud as friends. DTwo mates from school who are exactly as out of their depth as I am. NEXT QUESTION → 03 Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live. AA high city of white stone with the sea somewhere far below. BA ship under sail, with an island ahead that nobody has mapped. CA rented room over a tavern, in a town I am leaving in the morning. DA cabin at a summer camp with everybody else already awake outside. NEXT QUESTION → 04 How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse. AI am not, because somebody far older than me decided this was my duty. BTreasure, and I am not always careful about whose it used to be. CI take contracts, since people will pay well for what they will not touch. DI am fifteen and this is all technically a school trip. NEXT QUESTION → 05 There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark. ASend word to somebody who has seen this before, then hold the line. BWalk straight in, because it is interesting and possibly edible. CAsk what it has been eating and what the village is willing to pay. DWork out which myth it escaped from, then improvise very badly. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does. AAn ancient evil that has been patient for several thousand years. BA government that has spent a long time calling itself the good guys. CA man who turns out to be far worse than anything I hunt for money. DA god, or possibly my own family, and quite likely both at once. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it. ASome things are worth defending even when the odds are hopeless. BNobody gets to tell me where I can go or what I am allowed to want. CPick the lesser evil, and never pretend afterwards that it was not evil. DMy friends come before anything a prophecy has to say about it. NEXT QUESTION → 08 A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world. AIn a song, in a language hardly anybody still speaks. BAs the one who got there first and proved the whole thing was possible. CBarely, and mostly wrongly, in ballads I would absolutely hate. DOn a plaque at a camp, read by kids about to do the same thing. REVEAL MY WORLD → The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in return. Middle-earthYou belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime. This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat, fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends. You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost everything you touch is older than your entire family line. The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight. You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot. The Grand LineYou want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is finding out what is over there. One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together. You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea. The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land harder because of that rather than in spite of it. You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of it. The ContinentYou would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the people are where it all gets complicated. Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept. You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer. The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people. You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story got told wrong. Camp Half-BloodYou want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as everybody kept telling you. Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners, which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse. You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for something nobody thought to test for. The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud every time a prophecy tries to get in the way. Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 8 'The Seventh Seal' (1957) Image via AB Svensk Filmindustri You can’t really talk about iconic international fantasy movies without mentioning Ingmar Bergman, who made his mark on the genre with a couple of his most well-known works, perhaps most famously with The Seventh Seal. It’s a movie you'll likely find out about through references and parodies before actually watching it, what with the famed plot of “playing a game of chess with Death” being at the film’s center. But The Seventh Seal is more than just a medieval/fantastical The Queen’s Gambit. Chess takes a backseat to a story about losing one’s religion, seeking redemption, and finding a purpose among all the difficulties that life throws one’s way. It’s a downbeat but not entirely hopeless film, and it’s a film worth returning to and continuing to analyze, given there’s a lot here, and it’s difficult to entirely absorb it all after just one viewing. 7 'Die Nibelungen' (1924) Image via UFA Die Nibelungen was released in two parts, both coming out in 1924, with Siegfried and Kriemhild’s Revenge adding up to one single epic-length story that plays out over approximately 4.5 hours. It’s generally seen as one of German filmmaker Fritz Lang’s best films, but not always one of his very best, which might be the “downside” of him having directed a handful of even greater films, like M, Metropolis, and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Both parts of Die Nibelungen ultimately demonstrate Lang’s surprising range, showcasing how he was able to craft fantasy films back during the silent era better than just about any of his contemporaries. Now over a century old, Die Nibelungen still impresses and contains plenty of excitement, being a must-watch for anyone who’s watched and appreciated any of Lang’s better-known classics from around the same time. 6 'Princess Mononoke' (1997) Image via Toho Anime films encompass all sorts of genres, fantasy naturally included. Few do the medium of animation and the genre of fantasy as much of a service as the untouchable Hayao Miyazaki, with numerous great works of fantasy to his name. There are probably two films of his, however, that stand out above the others, with the first of those being Princess Mononoke. This 1997 film is arguably Miyazaki’s darkest and most epic movie (though The Boy and the Heron is also a contender), and is almost definitely his most violent. It tells a sprawling adventure/fantasy story with a fascinating conflict for its main character to get entangled in, and a blunt but effective environmental message at the heart of it all. Princess Mononoke impresses both technically and narratively, and is rightly considered one of the best anime films ever made.