Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan has been the war-film benchmark since 1998, yet a run of recent releases has quietly moved past it. The strongest challengers, from All Quiet on the Western Front to Warfare and The Zone of Interest, earn their acclaim by abandoning the American-soldier template Spielberg perfected, and several of them never played a Hollywood multiplex at all.
That is the quiet shift inside the genre. The films most likely to be called better than Spielberg’s 1998 epic today tend to be foreign-language, streaming-born or arthouse-funded, and told from a vantage point his beach landing never used: the civilian, the perpetrator, the man who refuses to fire.
The Benchmark Spielberg Set in 1998
Start with the film everything else gets measured against. Director Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan opened in the summer of 1998 with a 24-minute Omaha Beach sequence that reset what screen combat could look like, all handheld chaos, drained color and battered sound.
The Academy rewarded it heavily. At the 71st ceremony the film took five Oscars, for directing, cinematography, editing, sound and sound-effects editing, while famously losing Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love. The full tally still sits in the Academy Awards ceremony records.
It was a commercial giant too, grossing $481.8 million worldwide and finishing as the second-highest earner of its year. That mix of critical authority and blockbuster scale is exactly why it became the reference point, and exactly the model the newer films have stopped copying.
Where the Genre’s Prestige Moved
Look at what has won and traveled since. The most decorated war film of the past few years is not American at all. German director Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front, released by Netflix in 2022, swept its category in a way a studio war picture used to monopolize. The All Quiet on the Western Front Oscar sweep ran to Best International Feature, score, production design and cinematography.
- 4 Academy Awards for All Quiet on the Western Front, the genre’s biggest recent winner.
- 2 Oscars for The Zone of Interest, including Best Sound.
- 93% on Rotten Tomatoes for Warfare, among A24’s best-received films.
The pattern repeats. Netflix also carried Narvik, a Norwegian account of the 1940 battles for an Arctic ore town, into homes worldwide. Warner Bros. and Universal still back the big swings, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Sam Mendes’s 1917 among them, but the prestige center has drifted toward foreign-language and independent producers. That same streaming-first habit is reshaping film catalogs across genres, from war epics to acclaimed directors’ films landing on Netflix.
| Film | Year | Director | Origin | Distributor | Oscar wins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Quiet on the Western Front | 2022 | Edward Berger | Germany | Netflix | 4 |
| The Zone of Interest | 2023 | Jonathan Glazer | UK / Germany | A24 | 2 |
| 1917 | 2019 | Sam Mendes | UK / US | Universal | 3 |
| Dunkirk | 2017 | Christopher Nolan | UK / US | Warner Bros. | 3 |
| Warfare | 2025 | Mendoza & Garland | US | A24 | 0 |
| Narvik | 2022 | Erik Skjoldbjaerg | Norway | Netflix | 0 |
The Perpetrator, the Objector, the Civilian
The bigger break is about whose eyes you watch through. Spielberg gave us the dutiful citizen-soldier doing a grim job well. The newer films keep handing the camera to people that template left out.
The View From the Auschwitz Wall
British director Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, adapted loosely from a Martin Amis novel, stays entirely on the domestic side of the wall around Auschwitz. It follows commandant Rudolf Hoss, played by Christian Friedel, and his wife Hedwig, played by Sandra Huller, as they tend a garden while the camp’s machinery runs just out of frame. The horror arrives only through sound, which is why its Best Sound Oscar is no footnote.
The Soldier Who Refused a Rifle
Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge, from 2016, tells the true story of Desmond Doss, the army medic played by Andrew Garfield who would not carry a weapon. A Seventh-day Adventist and conscientious objector, Doss became the first such objector to receive the Medal of Honor after saving an estimated 75 wounded men at the Battle of Okinawa. The film won two Oscars, for editing and sound mixing.
The Recruit Who Lost His Innocence
All Quiet on the Western Front returns to Erich Maria Remarque’s First World War novel through Paul Baumer, played by Felix Kammerer, a teenager who enlists in a fever of patriotism and is hollowed out by the trenches. Berger strips away every trace of heroism, and that is the point. The film exists to show the waste, not the valor.
Form as the New Frontier
Technique is the other place these films pull ahead. Spielberg’s realism was about texture; the newer wave experiments with the shape of the telling itself.
Sam Mendes built 1917, his 2019 First World War chase, to feel like one continuous take, the camera trailing two runners across no-man’s-land without an obvious cut. Mendes drew the story from tales his grandfather told him, and the conceit won three Oscars of its own.
Warfare goes the opposite direction with time. Co-directed by Iraq veteran Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, A24’s 2025 release unfolds in real time, rebuilding a single Navy SEAL (Sea, Air and Land) operation in Ramadi minute by minute from the memories of the men who were there.
Warfare doesn’t just show you the horrors of war; it forces you to taste the dust and the choking panic.
That came from Wendy Ide, film critic at The Guardian, in a five-star review. A24’s own production notes for Warfare lay out how the reconstruction was assembled with the surviving SEALs on set.
The Older Titles That Still Outrank the Blockbuster
The shift did not begin in the streaming era. Several films made decades before 1998 already proved the genre’s biggest ideas never needed an American hero at the center, and they remain fixtures on any serious roster, the sort that surfaces when a filmmaker shares a personal favorite-films list.
- Apocalypse Now (1979): Francis Ford Coppola turns a Vietnam and Cambodia river journey into a descent into the human psyche, loosely adapting Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
- Ran (1985): Akira Kurosawa rebuilds Shakespeare’s King Lear as a medieval Japanese warlord’s tragedy of sons, betrayal and regret.
- The Battle of Algiers (1966): Gillo Pontecorvo shoots the Algerian War in stark documentary-style black and white, much of it with non-professional actors who lived the events.
- The Winter War (1989): Pekka Parikka follows Finnish reservists holding the Karelian Isthmus against the 1939 Soviet invasion.
None of these were sold on spectacle. They endure because each found a frame, the mad colonel, the failing king, the colonized city, that a beach landing cannot reach.
How to Stream the Eleven
Most of this list is a couple of clicks away. Netflix carries both All Quiet on the Western Front and Narvik, since the service produced and released them.
The Zone of Interest streams on Amazon Prime Video, while Warfare moved to HBO Max after its theatrical run, topping the daily film chart when it arrived. Apocalypse Now, 1917, Dunkirk and Hacksaw Ridge rotate across rental and subscription platforms, and the older classics turn up on specialist services and physical media.
Availability shifts by region and over time, so check current listings before you settle in. Spielberg’s beach landing changed what war on screen could be, and the films above are the proof the genre kept moving after him.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which War Film Has Won the Most Oscars Recently?
All Quiet on the Western Front leads the recent field with four Academy Awards from the 95th ceremony in 2023, including Best International Feature, plus score, production design and cinematography. No other war film of the past decade has matched that haul.
Did Saving Private Ryan Win Best Picture?
No. Saving Private Ryan won five Oscars, including Best Director for Steven Spielberg, but lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love at the 71st Academy Awards, one of the most debated upsets in Oscar history.
Are These War Films Based on True Stories?
Many are. Warfare reconstructs Ray Mendoza’s own Iraq deployment, Hacksaw Ridge follows real medic Desmond Doss, Narvik dramatizes the 1940 battles in northern Norway, and The Battle of Algiers restages events from the Algerian War with people who lived them.
Where Can I Watch All Quiet on the Western Front?
It streams on Netflix, which produced and released the 2022 film. Availability can vary by country, so the title may sit in different sections depending on your region.
Is Warfare Available to Stream?
Yes. After its April 2025 theatrical run through A24, Warfare moved to HBO Max, where it reached the top of the daily movies chart on arrival following a 93 percent Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score.
What Makes The Zone of Interest Different From Other Holocaust Films?
It never shows the camp. Director Jonathan Glazer keeps the camera on commandant Rudolf Hoss’s family home and conveys Auschwitz almost entirely through sound, an approach that won the film its Best Sound Oscar.
