Eleven Spanish-Language Movies We Recommend Watching

Updated August 2026. This article used to be called “The Ten+ Best Spanish Movies on Netflix”. Streaming catalogues made that title obsolete long before the films stopped being good.

So I have kept the useful part: Spanish-language films we watched and would still recommend. They come from Spain and Latin America, which also makes the list useful if you’re learning Spanish and want to hear different accents and registers.

I am not promising that each one is on Netflix in your country today. Check the streaming services you already use. Availability changes too quickly to be the organising principle of a durable film list.

Roma

If you watch one film from this list, Roma is still my first choice. Alfonso Cuarón’s black-and-white drama follows Cleo, a domestic worker for a middle-class family in Mexico City in the early 1970s, while her life and the family’s life both change around her.

The film is patient rather than plot-heavy. It gives ordinary domestic scenes enough time to become important. Most of the dialogue is Mexican Spanish, with Mixtec also spoken in parts of the film.

También la lluvia (Even the Rain)

A Spanish film crew goes to Bolivia to make a movie about Christopher Columbus and the exploitation of Indigenous people. They choose Bolivia partly because production is cheap. Then the 2000 Cochabamba Water War begins around them.

The obvious tension is the point: a crew making an anti-colonial film is also benefiting from local economic inequality. Gael García Bernal plays the director, while Juan Carlos Aduviri is excellent as Daniel, a local actor who is also involved in the protests.

El ciudadano ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen)

An Argentine novelist living in Europe wins the Nobel Prize and then, after refusing years of invitations, agrees to return to his small hometown to receive a local award. The welcome begins warmly and becomes increasingly uncomfortable.

I like the dry humour and the way the film plays with the writer’s dependence on the town he insists he has outgrown. The Argentine Spanish is also useful if you want to get used to voseo and Rioplatense pronunciation.

La noche de 12 años (A Twelve-Year Night)

This is a much harder watch. It dramatises the imprisonment of three Tupamaro political prisoners during Uruguay’s military dictatorship, including José “Pepe” Mujica, who later became president of Uruguay.

The men are moved between prisons, kept in extreme isolation and subjected to psychological abuse. The film is interested less in heroic speeches than in what prolonged confinement does to a person.

El fotógrafo de Mauthausen (The Photographer of Mauthausen)

This historical drama tells the story of Francesc Boix, a Spanish Republican prisoner at the Mauthausen concentration camp who helped preserve photographs documenting crimes committed there.

The subject matter is grim and the violence is not incidental. I would choose it because the historical story is remarkable, not because it makes comfortable language-learning background television.

Tarde para la ira (The Fury of a Patient Man)

A quiet man becomes involved with the partner of a recently released prisoner. It slowly becomes clear that he has his own connection to the violent robbery that put the prisoner away.

This is a compact Spanish revenge thriller with very little wasted dialogue. The everyday Madrid speech is much less polished than the Spanish you hear in learner material, which is part of why it is useful once your listening is reasonably strong.

El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth)

Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy is set in 1944, after the Spanish Civil War, during the early Franco dictatorship. Ofelia travels with her pregnant mother to live with Captain Vidal, a brutal officer fighting Republican guerrillas. She discovers a labyrinth and a faun who gives her a series of tasks.

The previous version of this article incorrectly described the setting as the Civil War itself and implied the dialogue moved between Spanish and English. The film is overwhelmingly in Spanish. Its fantasy and political violence sit beside each other because, for Ofelia, both worlds are dangerous and governed by arbitrary rules.

Palmeras en la nieve (Palm Trees in the Snow)

This sprawling romance moves between Spain and colonial Spanish Guinea. A young Spaniard travels to Fernando Pó in the 1950s to work on a cacao plantation and falls in love with a local woman, while a later generation uncovers the family history.

It is melodramatic and long, but the setting is unusual and the film at least gives viewers a reason to learn that Spain had an African colony that became Equatorial Guinea in 1968.

Temporada de caza (Hunting Season)

After his mother dies, a troubled teenager from Buenos Aires is sent to stay with his estranged biological father in Patagonia. The father works as a hunting guide, and much of the film’s tension comes from two people who do not know how to speak to each other trying to become family.

It is quieter than most films here and gives you plenty of Argentine Spanish without a frantic plot competing for attention.

Adú

Adú follows several connected stories around migration between Africa and Europe, including a Cameroonian child attempting to travel north after tragedy at home. Parts of his story are in French, while the Spanish characters’ stories are in Spanish.

It is emotionally direct and sometimes manipulative, but the child’s story stayed with me. I would not choose it if your only goal is maximum minutes of Spanish dialogue; choose it because the subject interests you.

El faro de las orcas (The Lighthouse of the Orcas)

A Spanish mother travels with her autistic son to Patagonia after seeing footage of an orca researcher whose relationship with the animals seems to reach her child. The film is loosely inspired by real people and events, then takes plenty of dramatic licence.

The scenery is a large part of the appeal, and the mix of Spanish and Argentine characters gives language learners another chance to hear different accents in the same story.

What should you watch first?

For a great film regardless of language study, start with Roma. For dry comedy, choose El ciudadano ilustre. For fantasy, Pan’s Labyrinth. If you want Argentine Spanish, start with The Distinguished Citizen or Hunting Season.

If you’re actively learning, watch for the story first and use Spanish subtitles when you can. Stopping every line to translate it is a reliable way to turn a good movie into homework.

For a practical viewing workflow, see our guide to learning a language with streaming video. If you want a broader study plan around the films, start with the Spanish learning resources we use.