[Editor’s note: This list was originally published in December 2023. It has since been updated to include new films from the director.]

Yorgos Lanthimos’ films all look different from each other, but they feel the same. Since the Greek director has made the transition from independent Greek cinema to larger Hollywood productions, the washed-out, largely white palettes and simple trappings of his earliest films have given way to more sumptuous cinematography and staging. Even the frills of thrillers like “The Lobster” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” feel bare-bones compared to his recent embrace of the costume drama with “The Favourite” and “Poor Things,” both of which feature alternatively gorgeous and (intentionally!) garish production design and costuming.

But when you look past the budget and the aesthetics of each film, every movie that Lanthimos has made feels like they share a similar cinematic language. The characters in his films tend to communicate through stilted but natural dialogue that often tilts toward deadpan, and hide their cruelty behind politeness and social niceties. And his films are cruel, often putting the protagonist through hell before denying them a happy ending. His overarching preoccupation is on transgression, focusing on people who go against the social constraints against them — sometimes sympathetically (the anti-love lovers at the heart of “The Lobster,” the feminist Frankenstein figure of “Poor Things”) sometimes less so (Barry Keoghan’s menacing “Killing of the Sacred Deer” villain) — as well as what it means to have control, whether that’s over yourself or somebody else.

Although Lanthimos’ early works never caught on with Oscar voters, he fully broke through in 2018 with “The Favourite,” which became a massive award season contender and netted him a Best Director nod. It also introduced him to Emma Stone, and the two’s artistic collaboration has carried over to “Poor Things” and “Kind of Kindness.”

With their new collaboration “Bugonia” now in theaters, IndieWire refreshed our look at the director’s film canon. This list includes both the director’s Greek-language and Hollywood films; it does not include his directorial debut “My Best Friend,” a comedy film he co-directed with director Lakis Lazopoulos in 2001, which has gone undistributed in the United States. Here are all nine of Lanthimos’ solo directorial films ranked, sorted from worst to best. Read on to find your film favourite.

9. “Kinetta” (2005)

Image Credit: © Kino Lorber / courtesy Everett Collection

Lanthimos’ solo directorial debut, “Kinetta” was released all the way back in 2005, but didn’t receive a proper American release until 2019. It’s an obvious first film, containing kernels of ideas that he would flesh out and explore in his future work, including “Dogtooth.” The scattered mood piece follows three amateur filmmakers (Aris Servatelis, Evangelia Randou, and Costas Xikominos) making a movie at a seaside resort, revolving around Randou’s character being humiliated and brutalized. It’s an intriguing premise that doesn’t take off: the dynamic between the trio never totally comes together, and the themes of gender dynamics and human cruelty are incredibly rudimentary. “Kinetta” is a sign of great things to come, but it isn’t necessarily a great thing in and of itself.

8. “Kinds of Kindness” (2024)

Image Credit: Atsushi Nishijima

Anthology films are hard to get right. Sure, three films in one is an intriguing structural challenge in theory, but in practice, they frequently wind up feeling indisputably minor and fleeting. Lanthimos doesn’t quite avoid this pitfall with “Kinds of Kindness,” his meaner, crueler follow-up to “Poor Things,” but if nothing else, it’s refreshing to see the director back in the off-putting mode that defined his early career. Writing the script with Efthimis Filippou — his screenwriting partner who helped shape “Dogtooth,” “Alps,” “The Lobster,” and “The Killing of the Sacred Deer” — Lanthimos seems determined to sharpen his hostile edge in this triptych of twisted dom-sub relationship stories; “Poor Things” and “The Favourite” feel quaintly accessible in comparison. The provocation doesn’t add up to that much, though: the three stories are all too similar in their obsessive look at control and self-determination to reveal much new when placed alongside each other, and the nearly three-hour runtime results in a film that bores more than it shocks. “Kinds of Kindness” ultimately works most effectively as an unusually vicious acting showcase, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and especially standout Jesse Plemons are so readily capable of finding unique and bitter notes to hit across the multiple roles they take on.

7. “Alps” (2011)

Image Credit: ©Kino International/Courtesy Everett Collection

Created in between his breakout film “Dogtooth” and his English debut “The Lobster,” “Alps” shares obvious DNA with the former — although this chilly, detached look at human relationships might be a little too oblique for its own good. That said, it has a killer premise, following the titular secret company Alps, which offers grieving people a way to come to terms with the loss of a loved one by impersonating the recently deceased. It’s a film that thrives off ambiguity, both in terms of the boundaries between authenticity and recreation as well as the meanings behind the interactions of the odd, eclectic ensemble at its heart.

6. “Poor Things” (2023)

Image Credit: ©Searchlight Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

For all of its nudity and reanimated corpses, “Poor Things” is by a wide mile the most approachable film Lanthimos has ever put out. Whereas the director tends to veer toward the bleak and the bitter, his adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel is an outright empowerment fantasy, tracking the sexual and personal awakening of its young protagonist Bella Baxter across a madcap tour of Europe. It’s not a surprise that the film became Lanthimos’ most successful when it feels primed to be included in #goodforher memes. And there are many pleasures to be had, from the decadently garish production design to the committed comedic performances from the ensemble cast. On a whole, it often threatens to ring a bit hollow, particularly in its ending, which lands for uplift and triumph and lands with a rather underwhelming thud. Keeping the ship from ever crashing is Emma Stone’s central performance, which makes Bella’s mental transformation from child to fully-formed adult a wonder to behold.

5. “The Favourite” (2018)

Image Credit: Fox Searchlight / Everett Collection

“The Favourite” saw Lanthimos trade dull modernity for ornate historical fiction without losing his signature psychological thrills. Set in the high-stakes world of 18th-century English court politics, the film retains all the jagged humor and character study of Lanthimos’ earlier works dripped in a vision of royalty that’s more revolting than romantic. Anchored by a fantastic central trio of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz — all of whom turn in career-best performances — the film focuses on the twisted love triangle of sorts between the ailing, immature Queen Anne (Colman), her court favourite and lover Sarah (Rachel Weisz), and Sarah’s social-climbing cousin Abigail (Stone), as they subtly compete for the Queen’s loyalty and favoritism. It’s a masterful dissection of social politics that hides its icy cold blackness behind its luxurious wigs and gowns.

4. “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (2017)

Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection

Lanthimos makes uncomfortable, audacious movies about people going against accepted norms, for better or worse. “Worse” definitely applies to the actions taken in “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” which (mostly) drops the black comedy present in earlier Lanthimos films in favor of pure horror. In a genuinely terrifying performance, Barry Keoghan is young teenager Martin who befriends the heart surgeon Steven, (Colin Farrell) who once treated his now-deceased father. What seems like a perfectly innocent relationship grows increasingly unstable, as Martin inserts himself into Steven’s family life and begins to enact his revenge in increasingly twisted ways. What makes “Killing of a Sacred Deer” so scary is how aggressively the ugliness of the characters is hidden by a stilted, polite veneer that fails to conceal the rot in their heart. You’d never think someone eating spaghetti could be one of the most tense scenes in a thriller, but you’d be wrong.* *

3. “Bugonia” (2025)

Image Credit: ©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

Across his career, Lanthimos has often made a point of depicting humanity at its worst, following selfish, sadistic individuals willing to inflect violence, pain, and misery on each other. “Bugonia” puts this misanthropic streak to the forefront for a deeply dark story about whether our species is doomed — and if it’s worthy of saving. Based on the South Korean film “Save the Green Planet,” the pitch dark comedy sees Emma Stone in her iciest mode yet as pharmaceutical CEO Michelle, who may or may not be an alien spy sent to destroy Earth. That’s what conspiracy theorist Teddy (Jesse Plemons) believes anyway, prompting him to kidnap and torture her in hopes of learning the truth, although he has personal reasons for hating Michelle and her company specifically. There’s a lot of humor mined from this unusual hostage thriller, as the rigidly corporate Michelle attempts to reason with the dogmatic Teddy, but Will Tracy’s script is more serious than its comedic premise sounds, interrogating current issues of online radicalization and isolation and the crushing economic factors that have driven humans to hate each other. It’s a bleak work that’s nonetheless nimble and alive thanks to Lanthimos’ sharp direction and the incredible performances of the central duo, and while Stone has the showier role as the captive who takes on new personas to free herself, it’s Plemons’ wounded and devastating turn that sticks with you.

2. “Dogtooth” (2009)

Image Credit: ©Kino International/Courtesy Everett Collection

Most of Lanthimos’ movies are pitch-black comedies in some way — even the ones that don’t usually have a funny streak. But the director never made a movie funnier than “Dogtooth,” the director’s shocking, disturbing, and hilarious American breakthrough. In a large, fenced-in compound, a husband and wife live with their three adult children, who have never left their home and have no knowledge of the outside world. The couple, whose motives for their unusual parenting go entirely unexplained beyond a pure desire for control, feeds them lies about an older brother murdered by a vicious housecat, promising them that they can only leave the compound once they lose their dogteeth. Lanthimos stilted, signature style has never felt more appropriate than it is for this uncomfortable premise, transporting the audience to a miniature pocket society that feels completely alien to our own. But puncturing this twisted look at how parents mold and break their children is a vicious sense of humor and irony that makes “Dogtooth” one of the funniest comedies of its decade. —WC

1. “The Lobster” (2015)

Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection

At once a beautiful love story and a strange satire on humanity’s obsession with pairing each other up, “The Lobster” is the film that most successfully matches Lanthimos’ detached look at human norms with real emotion and longing. Colin Farrell, in one of the best performances of his career, plays sad sack David, who lives in a world where all single people have 45 days to find a romantic partner or they’ll be transformed into an animal. With his wife leaving him for a new man, David is forced to spend time at a bizarrely totalitarian hotel looking for a new companion or be turned into the eponymous shellfish. His attempt to break out of this rigid world by joining the anti-love “loner” colony in the woods doen’t work out for him either, when he falls in real love with one of the agents (Rachel Weisz). It’s a gloriously weird premise that makes for great comedy and satire, exploring the strange world of heterosexual mateship from an offbeat path, while retaining its human core thanks to Farrell’s soulful turn.