The 20 best Irish movies of all time, ranked

Alex Fegan’s lauded documentary tells the stories of Ireland’s oldest public houses, the people who run them, and the colorful patrons who’ve helped keep them in operation for decades and, sometimes, centuries. If you’re all about cobblestone streets, pints of Guinness, and Irish history, check out this love letter to Irish pub culture.

Albert Sharpe stars as the titular caretaker who tries to capture a tribe of leprechauns and their king in Disney’s . Janet Munro and Sean Connery are also featured in this fantasy-adventure film that’s universally acclaimed and surprisingly underseen.

Brendan Gleeson plays real-life Irish crime boss Martin Cahill—the mastermind behind several notorious heists in the early 1980s—in . Directed by John Boorman, it also features Jon Voight as the police inspector on Cahill’s tail. Shot in black and white, The General won best director honors for Boorman and the Palme D’Or for best film at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Gleeson would go on to win Best Actor and the movie would claim Best Feature at the Irish Film and Television Awards.

Based on a true story, stars Judi Dench as Philomena Lee, an Irish woman forced to give up her son for adoption and has been searching for him for the past 50 years. Directed by Stephen Frears and based on the 2009 book The Lost Child Of Philomena Lee by Martin Sixsmith, Philomena was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Dench. Steve Coogan is also excellent as author-journalist Sixsmith, who is initially hesitant about investigating Lee’s case.

The 1947 film noir classic , set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, is the oldest movie on this list. Directed by Carol Reed, the movie follows James Mason as Johnny McQueen, a wounded Nationalist leader on the lam after escaping from prison. Based on the novel of the same name by F.L. Green, Odd Man Out is almost universally regarded as a masterpiece and it won the BAFTA award for Best British Picture.

Kenneth Branagh directed the coming-of-age drama starring Caitríona Balfe, Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan, and Ciarán Hinds. The movie, which Branagh describes as his “most personal,” is about a young boy growing up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the onset of the Troubles in 1969. It was nominated for seven Oscars, winning for Best Original Screenplay.

directed , a thriller starring Stephen Rea as an IRA volunteer named Fergus who befriends a captured British soldier named Jody (Forest Whitaker). Fergus promises to take care of Jody’s lover, Dil (Jaye Davidson), who has a personal secret we’re pretty sure everyone knows by now—but we’re still not going to tell you. The movie, with its haunting titular song by Boy George, was nominated for five Oscars, winning for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

Michael Collins was an Irish revolutionary and politician at the forefront of Ireland’s struggle for independence from Britain in the early 20th century. In director Neil Jordan’s , Liam Neeson plays the titular freedom fighter alongside costars Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea, Alan Rickman, and Julia Roberts. Although generally praised and nominated for two Academy Awards, the movie was criticized for some historical inaccuracies.

The animated fantasy film , set in ninth-century Ireland, tells the tale of a sheltered young boy who embarks on an adventure with an “illuminator” who possesses the ancient unfinished Book Of Kells. The Secret Of Kells was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2010 Academy Awards, but lost to Pixar’s Up. Co-director Tomm Moore’s so-called “Irish Folklore Trilogy” continued with 2014’s Song Of The Sea and 2020’s Oscar-nominated Wolfwalkers.

In , Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play longtime besties Pádraic and Colm, whose relationship reaches a crisis when Colm suddenly decides he no longer wants to be friends with Pádraic. The tragic black comedy, directed and written by Martin McDonagh, received a whopping nine nominations at the 95th Academy Awards, although it didn’t take home any trophies.

Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová play struggling Dublin musicians in the romantic musical drama , written and directed by John Carney. Hansgard and Irglová’s “Falling Slowly” won the Oscar for Best Original Song, and the soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy. This charming treasure of a film was later adapted into a Tony-winning stage musical.

A lot of movies on this list are heavy dramas, which makes the lighthearted comedy a breath of fresh air. The Kirk Jones-directed film is about two friends (Ian Bannen and David Kelly) who deduce that the lottery winner in their small Irish village of 52 people is the titular character, who died from shock after winning. Since only Ned Devine can collect the prize money, the townspeople band together to convince the claim inspector that Devine is still alive and kicking. This is a delightfully charming little fable with real heart.

In , American-born Irish actress Saoirse Ronan plays a young woman who emigrates from Ireland to Brooklyn in the 1950s to seek better employment. The romantic drama directed by John Crowley and based on the 2009 novel of the same name by Colm Tóibín was nominated for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actress for Ronan at the 2016 Academy Awards. It’s a rare immigrant story with a female lead and one of the better films about the immigrant experience.

Daniel Day-Lewis, who’s of Irish descent on his father’s side, plays Gerard Patrick “Gerry” Conlon—a man mistaken for an IRA sniper—in the biographical crime drama . Based on the story of the Guildford Four—four people wrongly accused of a pub bombing that killed a civilian and four off-duty British soldiers—the film was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Day-Lewis.

The biographical comedy-drama , directed by Jim Sheridan, stars Daniel Day-Lewis as a man born with cerebral palsy who is only able to control the movements of his left foot. Day-Lewis won a Best Actor Oscar and Brenda Fricker won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for their performances in this small-budget winner.

Paul Greengrass wrote and directed the historical drama , based on the 1972 “Bloody Sunday” massacre in Derry, Northern Island, that was also the subject of U2’s early classic “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (a live version of the song plays over the film’s end credits). Starring James Nesbitt and Tim Pigott-Smith, the film won several honors, including the Audience Award at Sundance and the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.

is a historical drama about IRA prisoner Bobby Sands, who organized the famous 1981 Irish hunger strike that led to the death of 10 prisoners. Michael Fassbender delivers a riveting performance as Sands. Directed by Steve McQueen, the movie won the Caméra d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.

John Ford directed this romantic comedy-drama featuring cinematographer Winton Hoch’s stunning images of the Irish countryside. Both men won Oscars (Ford’s fourth) for their work on , which stars John Wayne as an Irish-born retired boxer and Maureen O’Hara as the lass with whom he falls in love. Ford and Wayne were known for their work on Westerns and action movies, so The Quiet Man was seen as a triumphant stylistic change.

This fun, boisterous 1991 musical comedy-drama from director Alan Parker is based on the novel by Irish writer Roddy Doyle. Robert Arkins plays a music fanatic obsessed with 1960s Motown who forms a soul band with a group of working-class youths in Dublin. The film was such a musical sensation that it produced two soundtrack albums, and both were hits on the Billboard charts, with the first soundtrack going triple platinum.

Ken Loach directed the war drama , set during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, which took place between 1919 and 1923. Cillian Murphy and Pádraic Delaney play brothers in County Cork who join the Irish Republican Army to fight for Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom. The film won the Palme d’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and, at the time of its release, became the highest-grossing Irish-made independent movie in history.