Best Yorgos Lanthimos Movies: Dark, Strange, and Brilliant Films You Can't Ignore

When you think of Yorgos Lanthimos, a Greek filmmaker known for surreal, unsettling stories that twist normal human behavior into something eerie and darkly comic. Also known as the king of awkward cinema, he doesn’t make movies—he builds psychological puzzles with human actors. His films don’t ask you to like the characters. They ask you to question why you ever thought they were normal to begin with.

His work sits at the intersection of dark comedy, a genre that finds humor in discomfort, social breakdown, and emotional isolation, and psychological drama, where characters are trapped by rules they didn’t make, and the only way out is to break completely. You won’t find traditional heroes here. Instead, you get people in absurd systems: a society that forces you to find a partner in 45 days or face becoming a dog (The Lobster), a royal court where power is won by whispering secrets and stabbing backs (The Favourite), or a woman rebuilt from scratch after a tragic accident, learning to feel for the first time (Poor Things).

What makes his films stick isn’t just the weirdness—it’s how real they feel. The silence between lines, the stiff walks, the dead-eyed stares—they’re not acting tricks. They’re reflections of how we all sometimes pretend to understand each other. His actors don’t perform. They endure. And that’s why Emma Stone, Colin Farrell, Olivia Colman, and Willem Dafoe keep coming back. They know Lanthimos isn’t asking them to be charming. He’s asking them to be honest.

If you’ve ever watched one of his films and walked away thinking, "Wait… was that funny or horrifying?"—you’re not alone. That’s the point. His movies don’t fit neatly into boxes. They don’t want you to cheer. They want you to sit still, stare, and wonder what’s wrong with the world—or maybe, what’s wrong with you.

Below, you’ll find the best Yorgos Lanthimos movies that shaped modern cinema. From his early Greek-language experiments to his Oscar-winning English-language breakthroughs, each film is a step deeper into a world where love is a contract, grief is a costume, and normalcy is the real horror.