The Highest-Grossing Non-English Films

When you look at Hollywood’s box office charts these days, you can usually guess what you’ll see there: superheroes, live-action remakes of animated classics, and big blue aliens.

Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025); image credit: 20th Century Studios

In the English-speaking world, our media is often so insular that it’s easy to forget there is a whole planet of moviegoers out there buying tickets to titles we never even see in our theaters. If you’ve ever been interested in what the rest of the world is watching at their local cinemas, stay tuned, because today we’re looking at the highest-grossing non-English films.

*Earnings as of March 2026

Chinese and Mandarin Films Dominate

Out of the entire list, nearly three-quarters of the titles hail from China. Mandarin-language films occupy the majority of the top spots, in no small part due to their sheer domestic power. China’s theatrical market is enormous, enthusiastic about domestic media, and growing larger by the day. Movies like The Battle at Lake Changjin, Wolf Warrior 2, Hi, Mom, Detective Chinatown 3, Full River Red, Operation Red Sea, and The Mermaid together earned billions of dollars with very limited or even no release in the U.S.

Wolf Warrior 2 (2017); image credit: Deng Feng International Media, China Film Group, Bona Films, Beijing Culture

It’s clear that the Chinese film industry is building up some serious blockbuster power, and hopefully, we’ll start to see more of them released in the U.S. as we have with films from Korea and Japan.

Ne Zha and Ne Zha 2

It would be impossible to talk about big foreign-language film box-office numbers without mentioning Ne Zha, and specifically Ne Zha 2, released in 2025. Both movies appear on the list, but the second installment has become a global sensation with barely any help from the U.S. market.

Ne Zha 2 (2025); image credit: Beijing Enlight Pictures

The 2019 animated film Ne Zha was already a huge success, ranking sixth with over $742 million in revenue. Then, Ne Zha 2 smashed its way into theaters and earned over $2.21 billion, catapulting it to the number one spot on the list. In fact, this single movie accounts for nearly 9% of the total revenue of every film on this entire chart combined! While the film series hasn’t seen much buzz in America yet, both installments clearly tapped into something special, so they’re certainly worth a watch.

Anime

Japanese films frequently appear on the list, and they hold down the fort entirely with their animation. Of course, we have to mention the Studio Ghibli classic, Spirited Away. Released in 2001, it earned nearly $396 million and remains a benchmark for quality animation. It is the oldest film on this list, standing tall against modern CGI behemoths. A more recent Studio Ghibli film, The Boy and the Heron, also appears at number 44.

The Demon Slayer film series has proven to be an absolute juggernaut, too. Demon Slayer: Mugen Train from 2020 brought in over $512 million, and the 2025 follow-up, Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, is sitting up in the top five with $795 million.

Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle (2025); image credit: Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment

The list also features Makoto Shinkai’s masterpieces Your Name ($405 million) and Suzume ($324 million), which, along with Studio Ghibli’s movies, have found large audiences worldwide, including in English-speaking markets. Unlike most of the Chinese films on the list, Japan definitely has a massive cultural impact in the U.S. market.

The Solo Acts: U.S., France, and India

Despite China’s and Japan’s dominance, a few other countries managed to steal a spot.

Interestingly, the U.S. made the list thanks to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, which features dialogue entirely in Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew. Similarly, France, whose film industry has historically been famous for producing great works of art, makes a lone appearance on the list with The Intouchables from 2011.

The Passion of the Christ (2004); image credit: Icon Productions

Although Bollywood produces more movies than almost anyone else, only two have managed to crack this specific high-grossing tier. Dangal, the 2016 wrestling drama, grappled its way to $306 million, in part due to its incredible performance in China, while the epic Baahubali 2: The Conclusion earned $278 million.

The Recency Bias

While you may have heard that the film industry is struggling worldwide, it’s worth noting that most of the movies on this list were released in the last decade or so.

Much of this can be attributed to the explosion of China’s movie market. Over the last ten years, thousands of new cinemas have opened across the country, giving rural populations better access to films upon their release. In addition to higher ticket prices, this has allowed newer Chinese films to hit numbers that would have been impossible years ago.

Additionally, anime is now more popular among American audiences than ever before, which has helped many Japanese animated films reach the top of the list. While movies like Spirited Away and The Intouchables were once standout hits, we can confidently say we are seeing a budding golden age of non-English-language blockbusters.

The Intouchables (2011); image credit: Gaumont

For a long time, the film industry treated non-English-language movies as a separate, smaller category, but it’s now clear that filmmakers no longer need Hollywood to make a billion dollars. When a movie like Ne Zha 2 can comfortably sit atop billions in revenue, it signals a massive shift in what we can expect from the global film industry going forward. As these markets continue to grow and the box office becomes more and more global, let’s hope we start seeing more non-English-language movies in our theaters. The era of the “foreign film” as a niche category may finally be coming to an end, and with any luck, the language barrier is finally starting to crumble.

If you’re a fan of movies (regardless of language), you’re in the right place. PixlParade has tons of lists, breakdowns, and box office deep cuts that celebrate films from every corner of the globe.

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• The 10 Highest-Grossing Japanese Anime Films of All Time
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• The Top 50 Highest-Grossing Superhero Movies of All Time

Source: Wikipedia