Top 100 Movies of All Time (2025 Edition): A Transparent Multi-Source Ranking Method
Every decade, Sight & Sound asks the world's leading film critics, historians and programmers to name their ten greatest films. The 2022 poll was the largest in its history, with 1,639 participants from across the globe. The ranking below is ordered by raw vote count from the published ballot data. Because individual ballots are unranked — each critic submits a list of ten without ordering them — the most transparent approach is a straightforward vote tally, with ties preserved exactly as they fall.
One number is worth a brief note. BFI reports 1,639 participating critics; the open ballot dataset used to compile this table contains 1,636 entries. That three-entry gap reflects a difference in source coverage rather than a counting error — the official total and the independently compiled dataset were assembled through different channels.
How this ranking works
Each ballot contributes one vote per selected title. The table is ordered by that vote count, with ties handled by standard competition ranking: two films on 70 votes both appear at the same position, and the next rank is skipped accordingly.
A composite index drawing on audience ratings, critics' aggregates and awards data could be constructed on top of this foundation, but that would be a separate exercise with its own weighting decisions. What follows is a canon-anchored ballot ranking, clearly labelled as such.
What the 2022 results reveal
The most striking feature of the 2022 results is not simply who came first, but how the shape of the canon has shifted. The top ten still includes fixtures that have anchored critical lists for generations — Vertigo, Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey — but the very summit is no longer the exclusive territory of Anglo-American classics from the mid-twentieth century. Akerman, Denis, Wong Kar Wai, Vertov and Ozu now hold positions as prominent as any of the traditional pillars.
The chronological picture tells a similar story. The 1950s and 1960s remain the deepest decades in the full top 100, with twenty films each, but the top ten includes two films from the period 1998 to 2001. The canon is still rooted in film history, yet no longer sealed off from the present: the twenty-first century has arrived not as a curiosity but as a legitimate presence at the centre of the list.
Read as a map rather than a verdict, this ranking shows where silent cinema continues to matter, why postwar Japanese cinema remains so central to international film culture, how the canon has gradually opened toward women directors, and which later films have already made the crossing from contemporary acclaim into durable all-time status.
Top 10 films
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
The first film by a woman to top the Sight & Sound poll. Akerman's three-and-a-quarter-hour portrait of a Brussels housewife distils domestic routine into something both rigorous and devastating. Its rise to the summit marks a genuine reorientation of the canon — not a correction of earlier lists, but a recognition that had long been overdue.
Vertigo
The previous poll's number one now sits a rank lower, which changes nothing about its stature. Vertigo remains one of cinema's most inexhaustible films — a thriller that discloses new layers with each generation of critics who return to it.
Citizen Kane
No longer first after half a century at the top, but solidly in the top three. Citizen Kane still anchors the canon through the weight of what it demonstrated about cinematic form in 1941 — and through the fact that what it demonstrated has never quite been exhausted.
Tokyo Story
Ozu's film about an elderly couple visiting their grown children in postwar Tokyo has appeared near the top of critics' polls for decades, drawing in viewers from radically different traditions. Its consistency here suggests something beyond critical fashion — a formal and emotional precision that holds across time and distance.
In the Mood for Love
The highest-placed film of the twenty-first century in this ranking. Wong's study of proximity and unspoken longing, set in 1962 Hong Kong, has accumulated canonical weight in just over two decades that most films never achieve in a lifetime of retrospective reassessment.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Science fiction's most stable presence in the all-time canon. Kubrick's film occupies a rare position: it is simultaneously a genre landmark and a work critics treat as entirely outside genre — a meditation on consciousness and time that happens to be set in space.
Beau travail
Denis's film about the French Foreign Legion in Djibouti is one of the clearest examples of a work that has moved, over two decades, from critical enthusiasm to canonical consensus. Its position in the top ten signals how significantly the list has opened toward formally adventurous cinema that earlier polls placed far down the table.
Mulholland Dr.
Lynch's labyrinthine portrait of Hollywood desire and self-delusion confirms what has become apparent over the past two decades: he is no longer a cult figure on the margins of the canon but one of its central presences.
Man with a Movie Camera
Vertov's portrait of Soviet urban life in pure montage keeps silent avant-garde cinema inside the elite tier — a reminder that film history begins well before sound and that the non-narrative tradition has always been integral to it, not an adjunct.
Singin' in the Rain
The highest-ranked musical in the list. Its enduring presence demonstrates that the critics' canon has never been entirely hostile to popular genre cinema when craft, historical influence and sheer pleasure align as convincingly as they do here.
Full top 100
Tied positions are marked with an equals sign — =21 means two or more films received identical vote totals and share that rank, with the next rank skipped accordingly.
| Rank | Film | Year | Director | Votes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles | 1975 | Chantal Akerman | 215 |
| 2 | Vertigo | 1958 | Alfred Hitchcock | 208 |
| 3 | Citizen Kane | 1941 | Orson Welles | 164 |
| 4 | Tokyo Story | 1953 | Yasujirō Ozu | 145 |
| 5 | In the Mood for Love | 2000 | Wong Kar Wai | 141 |
| 6 | 2001: A Space Odyssey | 1968 | Stanley Kubrick | 130 |
| 7 | Beau travail | 1998 | Claire Denis | 106 |
| 8 | Mulholland Dr. | 2001 | David Lynch | 105 |
| 9 | Man with a Movie Camera | 1929 | Dziga Vertov | 100 |
| 10 | Singin' in the Rain | 1951 | Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen | 99 |
| 11 | Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans | 1927 | F.W. Murnau | 98 |
| 12 | The Godfather | 1972 | Francis Ford Coppola | 94 |
| 13 | La Règle du jeu | 1939 | Jean Renoir | 87 |
| 14 | Cléo from 5 to 7 | 1962 | Agnès Varda | 81 |
| 15 | The Searchers | 1956 | John Ford | 80 |
| 16 | Meshes of the Afternoon | 1943 | Maya Deren, Alexander Hackenschmied | 79 |
| 17 | Close-up | 1989 | Abbas Kiarostami | 78 |
| 18 | Persona | 1966 | Ingmar Bergman | 76 |
| 19 | Apocalypse Now | 1979 | Francis Ford Coppola | 72 |
| 20 | Seven Samurai | 1954 | Akira Kurosawa | 71 |
| =21 | Late Spring | 1949 | Yasujirō Ozu | 70 |
| =21 | The Passion of Joan of Arc | 1927 | Carl Th. Dreyer | 70 |
| 23 | Playtime | 1967 | Jacques Tati | 68 |
| 24 | Do the Right Thing | 1989 | Spike Lee | 67 |
| =25 | Au hasard Balthazar | 1966 | Robert Bresson | 66 |
| =25 | The Night of the Hunter | 1955 | Charles Laughton | 66 |
| 27 | Shoah | 1985 | Claude Lanzmann | 64 |
| 28 | Daisies | 1966 | Věra Chytilová | 63 |
| 29 | Taxi Driver | 1976 | Martin Scorsese | 62 |
| 30 | Portrait of a Lady on Fire | 2019 | Céline Sciamma | 60 |
| =31 | 8½ | 1963 | Federico Fellini | 59 |
| =31 | Mirror | 1975 | Andrei Tarkovsky | 59 |
| =31 | Psycho | 1960 | Alfred Hitchcock | 59 |
| 34 | L'Atalante | 1934 | Jean Vigo | 58 |
| 35 | Pather Panchali | 1955 | Satyajit Ray | 56 |
| =36 | City Lights | 1931 | Charles Chaplin | 55 |
| =36 | M | 1931 | Fritz Lang | 55 |
| =38 | À bout de souffle | 1960 | Jean-Luc Godard | 53 |
| =38 | Rear Window | 1954 | Alfred Hitchcock | 53 |
| =38 | Some Like It Hot | 1959 | Billy Wilder | 53 |
| =41 | Bicycle Thieves | 1948 | Vittorio De Sica | 52 |
| =41 | Rashomon | 1950 | Akira Kurosawa | 52 |
| =43 | Killer of Sheep | 1977 | Charles Burnett | 51 |
| =43 | Stalker | 1979 | Andrei Tarkovsky | 51 |
| =45 | Barry Lyndon | 1975 | Stanley Kubrick | 49 |
| =45 | North by Northwest | 1959 | Alfred Hitchcock | 49 |
| =45 | The Battle of Algiers | 1966 | Gillo Pontecorvo | 49 |
| =48 | Ordet | 1955 | Carl Th. Dreyer | 48 |
| =48 | Wanda | 1970 | Barbara Loden | 48 |
| =50 | The 400 Blows | 1959 | François Truffaut | 46 |
| =50 | The Piano | 1992 | Jane Campion | 46 |
| =52 | Fear Eats the Soul | 1974 | Rainer Werner Fassbinder | 45 |
| =52 | News from Home | 1976 | Chantal Akerman | 45 |
| =54 | Battleship Potemkin | 1925 | Sergei M. Eisenstein | 44 |
| =54 | Blade Runner | 1982 | Ridley Scott | 44 |
| =54 | Le Mépris | 1963 | Jean-Luc Godard | 44 |
| =54 | Sherlock Jr. | 1924 | Buster Keaton | 44 |
| =54 | The Apartment | 1960 | Billy Wilder | 44 |
| 59 | Sans Soleil | 1982 | Chris Marker | 43 |
| =60 | Daughters of the Dust | 1991 | Julie Dash | 42 |
| =60 | La dolce vita | 1960 | Federico Fellini | 42 |
| =60 | Moonlight | 2016 | Barry Jenkins | 42 |
| =63 | Casablanca | 1942 | Michael Curtiz | 40 |
| =63 | GoodFellas | 1990 | Martin Scorsese | 40 |
| =63 | The Third Man | 1949 | Carol Reed | 40 |
| 66 | Touki Bouki | 1973 | Djibril Diop Mambéty | 39 |
| =67 | Andrei Rublev | 1966 | Andrei Tarkovsky | 38 |
| =67 | La Jetée | 1962 | Chris Marker | 38 |
| =67 | Metropolis | 1927 | Fritz Lang | 38 |
| =67 | The Gleaners and I | 2000 | Agnès Varda | 38 |
| =67 | The Red Shoes | 1948 | Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | 38 |
| =72 | Journey to Italy | 1954 | Roberto Rossellini | 37 |
| =72 | L'avventura | 1960 | Michelangelo Antonioni | 37 |
| =72 | My Neighbour Totoro | 1988 | Hayao Miyazaki | 37 |
| =75 | Imitation of Life | 1959 | Douglas Sirk | 36 |
| =75 | Sansho the Bailiff | 1954 | Kenji Mizoguchi | 36 |
| =75 | Spirited Away | 2001 | Hayao Miyazaki | 36 |
| =78 | A Brighter Summer Day | 1991 | Edward Yang | 35 |
| =78 | A Matter of Life and Death | 1946 | Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | 35 |
| =78 | Céline and Julie Go Boating | 1974 | Jacques Rivette | 35 |
| =78 | Histoire(s) du Cinéma | 1988 | Jean-Luc Godard | 35 |
| =78 | Modern Times | 1936 | Charles Chaplin | 35 |
| =78 | Sátántangó | 1994 | Béla Tarr | 35 |
| =78 | Sunset Blvd. | 1950 | Billy Wilder | 35 |
| =85 | Blue Velvet | 1986 | David Lynch | 34 |
| =85 | Pierrot le fou | 1965 | Jean-Luc Godard | 34 |
| =85 | The Spirit of the Beehive | 1973 | Víctor Erice | 34 |
| =88 | Chungking Express | 1994 | Wong Kar Wai | 33 |
| =88 | The Shining | 1980 | Stanley Kubrick | 33 |
| =90 | Madame de… | 1953 | Max Ophuls | 32 |
| =90 | Parasite | 2019 | Bong Joon-ho | 32 |
| =90 | The Leopard | 1963 | Luchino Visconti | 32 |
| =90 | Ugetsu Monogatari | 1953 | Kenji Mizoguchi | 32 |
| =90 | Yi Yi | 1999 | Edward Yang | 32 |
| =95 | A Man Escaped | 1956 | Robert Bresson | 31 |
| =95 | Black Girl | 1965 | Ousmane Sembène | 31 |
| =95 | Get Out | 2017 | Jordan Peele | 31 |
| =95 | Once upon a Time in the West | 1968 | Sergio Leone | 31 |
| =95 | The General | 1926 | Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman | 31 |
| =95 | Tropical Malady | 2004 | Apichatpong Weerasethakul | 31 |
Top 20 films by vote count
Films in the top 100 by decade
The 1950s and 1960s account for 20 films each. The 2010s have four entries — exactly what a slowly evolving canon produces.
Questions about the list
Is this a new poll conducted in 2025?
No. This is a 2025 presentation of the Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll results. The underlying vote data comes from that poll; the format and framing here are new.
Why do the participant counts differ — 1,639 versus 1,636?
BFI's official figure of 1,639 reflects the total number of critics who took part in the poll. The open ballot dataset used to compile this table contains 1,636 individual ballots. The three-entry gap is a coverage difference between two separate data sources, not an arithmetic error.
Does a critics' poll produce an objective ranking?
No, and it does not try to. What makes it valuable is not objectivity but transparency: the vote totals are known, the methodology is consistent across decades, and the results accumulate a kind of collective critical intelligence that no individual judgement could replicate.
What do the tied positions — =21, =95 — mean?
Multiple films received the same number of votes. Standard competition ranking applies: tied films share a position, and the next rank is skipped. Two films at =21 means there is no rank 22.
Why is Jeanne Dielman first rather than Citizen Kane or Vertigo?
Because that is the result this poll produced. It reflects a significant reorientation in how critics collectively assess film history — not a correction of earlier lists, but a different set of emphases brought by a larger and more diverse group of voters than any previous Sight & Sound poll had assembled.
