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The 7 Best New Movies Where Nature Is the Real Star

By Kevin Sintumuang

Oscar season is heating up—and while the Golden Globes have come and gone, the race to February’s Academy Awards is just beginning. Among this year’s most compelling contenders is Train Dreams, a meditative wilderness epic that earned four Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for our digital cover star Joel Edgerton. Though he didn’t take home the Globe, Edgerton’s performance as a grief-stricken laborer who retreats into the American West has captivated audiences craving that Terrence Malick-style communion between character and landscape. It’s the kind of film where nature isn’t backdrop—it’s co-star, antagonist, and ultimately, salvation.

For readers who live for that intersection of cinema and the elemental world, this slate of movies released in the last year offers riches: from volcanic alien ecosystems to flooded post-human futures, from silent Alpine villages to gothic Arctic nightmares. Here are the films where going outside isn’t just setting—it’s the whole point.