“What are Costa Gavras Best Movies?” We looked at all of Gavras’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!

We took all of the movies directed by Costa Gavras and looked at their Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 4 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.

The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.

Happy Viewing!

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The Top Film’s Of Costa Gavras

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20 ) Family Council (1986)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
• IMDB User Review Score: 20
• Letterboxd User Score: 18

We don’t have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

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19 ) À propos de Nice, la suite (1995)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
• IMDB User Review Score: 17
• Letterboxd User Score: 18

Anthology of short films about the French city of Nice, by various directors. A homage to Jean Vigo and his “À propos de Nice” from 1930.

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18 ) Mad City (1997)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 9
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 12
• IMDB User Review Score: 19
• Letterboxd User Score: 17

A misguided museum guard who loses his job and then tries to get it back at gunpoint is thrown into the fierce world of ratings-driven TV gone mad.

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17 ) Betrayed (1988)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
• IMDB User Review Score: 17
• Letterboxd User Score: 16

An FBI agent (Debra Winger) falls in love with a white supremacist (Tom Berenger) whose group she infiltrates.

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16 ) Capital (2012)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
• IMDB User Review Score: 15
• Letterboxd User Score: 15

The head of a giant European investment bank desperately clings to power when an American hedge fund company tries to buy them out.

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15 ) Lest We Forget (1991)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
• IMDB User Review Score: 11
• Letterboxd User Score: 18

Contre l’Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville’s film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.

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14 ) Womanlight (1979)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
• IMDB User Review Score: 14
• Letterboxd User Score: 12

Having both suffered extreme losses, a man (Yves Montand) and a woman (Romy Scheider) try to form a relationship.

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13 ) Hanna K. (1983)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
• IMDB User Review Score: 15
• Letterboxd User Score: 14

A female American Israeli lawyer is defending a Palestinian charged by an Israeli court. It’s a tough case because of strong political background. Meanwhile she finds out she’s pregnant and thinks about abortion.

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12 ) Eden Is West (2009)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 5
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
• IMDB User Review Score: 13
• Letterboxd User Score: 12

Elias (Riccardo Scamarcio) is an immigrant in his twenties who tries to get to Europe by a boat along with other illegal immigrants. When the boat is near the Greek shores and they hope they will soon disembark, a marine patrol approaches and Elias jumps into the sea in order to avoid arrest. So do the other people in the boat. He wakes up next morning in a shore with nudists, which is not so bad after all, since he has lost some of his clothes while he was swimming for quite a few hours. He pretends to be a nudist himself, steals some clothes and he pretends he is an employee of the hotel “Eden Club-Paradise”.

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11 ) Shock Troops (1967)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
• IMDB User Review Score: 10
• Letterboxd User Score: 5

A French resistance group liberates some German prisoners. Turns out one of them is a spy.

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10 ) The Sleeping Car Murder (1965)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 13
• IMDB User Review Score: 6
• Letterboxd User Score: 5

Six people travel by train overnight from Marseilles to Paris. When the train arrives at its destination, one of the passengers, a girl, is found dead in a sleeping berth. The police led by Inspector Grazzi investigate the other five passengers, suspecting that one of them was responsible. However, as the investigation is stepped up, the other passengers start turning up dead. It is then up to the last remaining two to solve the case, before they become the next victims.

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9 ) Music Box (1989)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 8
• IMDB User Review Score: 8
• Letterboxd User Score: 9

A lawyer defends her father accused of war crimes, but there is more to the case than she suspects.

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8 ) Amen. (2002)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 8
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
• IMDB User Review Score: 8
• Letterboxd User Score: 9

Kurt Gerstein—a member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS—is horrified by what he sees in the death camps. he is then shocked to learn that the process he used to purify water for his troops by using Zyklon-B, is now used to kill people in gas chambers.

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6 ) Lumière and Company (1995)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
• IMDB User Review Score: 11
• Letterboxd User Score: 9

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes. The results run the gamut from Zhang Yimou’s convention-thwarting joke to David Lynch’s bizarre miniature epic.

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6 ) The Ax (2005)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 7
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
• IMDB User Review Score: 6
• Letterboxd User Score: 5

A chemist loses his job to outsourcing. Two years later and still jobless, he hits on a solution: to genuinely eliminate his competition.

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5 ) Special Section (1975)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
• IMDB User Review Score: 4
• Letterboxd User Score: 5

In occupied France during the WWII, a German officer is murdered. The collaborationist Vichy government decides to pin the murder on six petty criminals. Loyal judges are called in to convict them as quickly as possible.

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4 ) State of Siege (1972)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
• IMDB User Review Score: 3
• Letterboxd User Score: 2

Like most of Costa-Gavras’ political thrillers, the French State of Siege is based on a true story. The incident dramatized herein is the kidnapping of a U.S. official somewhere in Latin America. The director’s sympathies clearly lie with the kidnappers, especially since the official (played by Yves Montand), ostensibly an expert in traffic control, has been assigned as special advisor to the government’s secret police, training these worthies in the art of the torturing of political prisoners. Uruguay was the country where this story actually took place; though no names are given, there’s little doubting the identity of Costa-Gavras’ fictional locale. Despite its up-to-date radicalism, State of Siege adheres to time-honored Hollywood formula, with ugly, vulgar bad guys vs. handsome, articulate good guys.

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3 ) Missing (1982)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 3
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 3
• IMDB User Review Score: 4
• Letterboxd User Score: 4

Based on the real-life experiences of Ed Horman. A conservative American businessman travels to a South American country to investigate the sudden disappearance of his son after a right-wing military takeover. Accompanied by his son’s wife he uncovers a trail of cover-ups that implicate the US State department which supports the right-wing dictatorship.

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2 ) The Confession (1970)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 3
• IMDB User Review Score: 2
• Letterboxd User Score: 2

The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he’s being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement by his blackmailers.

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1 ) Z (1969)

Review Website Ranks:

• Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 4
• Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
• IMDB User Review Score: 1
• Letterboxd User Score: 1

Repression is the rule of the day in this film that skewers Greek governance of the 1960s. Z, a leftist rabble rouser, is killed in what appears to be a traffic accident. But given the political climate, the death of such a prominent activist raises troubling questions. Though it’s too late to save Z’s life, a postmortem examination suggests that the ruling party was behind his death. As the facts leak out, those who tell the truth pay the price for their honesty.

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Costa Gavras’s Best Movies

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Costa Gavras Review Website Filmography Rankings

Film	RT Critic	RT User	IMDB	Letterboxd	Overal Rank
Z (1969)	4	1	1	1	1
The Confession (1970)	1	3	2	2	2
Missing (1982)	3	3	4	4	3
State of Siege (1972)	10	2	3	2	4
Special Section (1975)	10	5	4	5	5
Lumière and Company (1995)	1	7	11	9	6
The Ax (2005)	7	10	6	5	6
Amen. (2002)	8	5	8	9	8
Music Box (1989)	6	8	8	9	9
The Sleeping Car Murder (1965)	10	13	6	5	10
Shock Troops (1967)	10	13	10	5	11
Eden Is West (2009)	5	11	13	12	12
Hanna K. (1983)	10	9	15	14	13
Womanlight (1979)	10	13	14	12	14
Lest We Forget (1991)	10	13	11	18	15
Capital (2012)	10	13	15	15	16
Betrayed (1988)	10	13	17	16	17
Mad City (1997)	9	12	19	17	18
À propos de Nice, la suite (1995)	10	13	17	18	19
Family Council (1986)	10	13	20	18	20