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Sight and Sound Greatest Films Poll Top 100

Meet the elite: hand-picked highlights from the 2022 Sight and Sound 100 Greatest Films of All Time Poll.

Once every ten years, Sight and Sound magazine asks the most respected names in the business for a census of cinema’s best. The 2022 poll brings shock and delight, as seen in this prime selection from the definitive list.

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Late SpringLate Spring

Drama1949108 minsDirector: Yasujirō Ozu

Yasujiro Ozu's influential masterpiece is a tender meditation on family politics, sacrifice and the status quo.

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Tokyo StoryTokyo Story

Drama1953136 minsDirector: Yasujirō Ozu

A constant fixture in critics' polls, Yasujirō Ozu's most enduring masterpiece is a beautifully nuanced exploration of filial duty, expectation and regret.

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Man With a Movie CameraMan With a Movie Camera

Documentary192967 minsSilentDirector: Dziga Vertov

Dazzling document of Soviet life, by Dziga Vertov, showing a living city and the people and machines that propel it.

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Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 BruxellesJeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Drama1975202 minsDirector: Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman's magnificent epic of experimental cinema offering a feminist perspective on recurrent events of everyday life.

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Citizen KaneCitizen Kane

Drama1941119 minsDirector: Orson Welles

Given extraordinary freedom by Hollywood studio RKO for his debut film, boy wonder Orson Welles created this notoriously brilliant portrait of a media giant.

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Cléo from 5 to 7Cléo from 5 to 7

Drama196291 minsDirector: Agnès Varda

Agnes Varda’s classic character study follows a successful pop singer as she wanders around Paris while awaiting the results of serious medical tests.

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PersonaPersona

Drama196684 minsDirector: Ingmar Bergman

A nurse and an actress who refuses to speak seem to fuse identities in Ingmar Bergman’s disturbing, formally experimental psychological drama.

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Seven SamuraiSeven Samurai

Drama1954207 minsDirector: Akira Kurosawa

Farmers hire a band of samurai to defend them against marauding bandits in Kurosawa’s influential epic, a touchstone for action movies ever since.

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The Passion of Joan of ArcThe Passion of Joan of Arc

Biopic192880 minsSilentDirector: Carl Th. Dreyer

An incontestable masterpiece of silent cinema, Carl Dreyer's deeply moving biopic features one of the most powerful performances ever captured on film.

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La Règle du jeuLa Règle du jeu

Drama1939102 minsDirector: Jean Renoir

Renoir's depiction of an intransigent society teetering towards disaster was derided upon release and only later acclaimed as one of cinema’s most vital films.

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Shoah (First Era)Shoah (First Era)

Documentary1985274 minsDirector: Claude Lanzmann

Claude Lanzmann's monumental chronicle of the Holocaust has been acclaimed by many as the greatest documentary ever made.

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Shoah (Second Era)Shoah (Second Era)

Documentary1985293 minsDirector: Claude Lanzmann

Claude Lanzmann's monumental chronicle of the Holocaust has been acclaimed by many as the greatest documentary ever made.

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DaisiesDaisies

Comedy196673 minsDirector: Věra Chytilová

Two self-confessed hedonists wreak wanton havoc in Věra Chytilová's visually spectacular neo-dadaist farce.

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Drama1963138 minsDirector: Federico Fellini

Fellini triumphantly conjured himself out of writer's block with this magnum opus about a film director experiencing his own creative crisis.

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MM

Crime1931111 minsDirector: Fritz Lang

Peter Lorre is unforgettable as the compulsive child murderer on the run from both police and criminals alike, in Fritz Lang’s seminal crime film.

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L'AtalanteL'Atalante

Drama193489 minsDirector: Jean Vigo

Newlyweds begin their life together on a working barge in this luminous romance, the only full-length feature film by director Jean Vigo.

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RashomonRashomon

Crime195088 minsDirector: Akira Kurosawa

Credited with bringing Japanese cinema to worldwide audiences, Akira Kurosawa’s breakthrough tells the story of a murder in the woods from four differing perspectives.

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The Battle of AlgiersThe Battle of Algiers

Drama1966121 minsDirector: Gillo Pontecorvo

Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece about the last years of French colonial rule in Algeria, seen from the perspective of both the revolutionaries and the French authorities.

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Ordet.Ordet.

Drama1955125 minsDirector: Carl Th. Dreyer

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s beautifully photographed tale explores the religious intolerance and familial tensions within a Danish farming family.

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Fear Eats the SoulFear Eats the Soul

Melodrama197493 minsDirector: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Fassbinder’s international breakthrough, this unconventional love story combines lucid social analysis with devastating emotional power.

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The 400 BlowsThe 400 Blows

Drama1959100 minsDirector: François Truffaut

François Truffaut’s French New Wave landmark is one of the greatest movies about adolescence.

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News From HomeNews From Home

Documentary197689 minsDirector: Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman reads letters sent to her from her mother in Belgium, against a tableau of shots of 1970s New York.

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Battleship PotemkinBattleship Potemkin

Historical drama192569 minsSilentDirector: Sergei M. Eisenstein

A fixture in the critical canon almost since its premiere, Eisenstein’s film about a 1905 naval mutiny was revolutionary in both form and content.

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Daughters of the DustDaughters of the Dust

Drama1991112 minsDirector: Julie Dash

Julie Dash’s groundbreaking Daughters of the Dust remains urgent and poetic and continues to resonate, inspiring Beyoncé’s iconic visual album Lemonade.

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Sherlock Jr.Sherlock Jr.

Comedy192445 minsDirector: Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton's superb, sophisticated silent comedy in which he dreams himself into the movie he's watching, in order to win back his girl.

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The Gleaners & IThe Gleaners & I

Documentary200079 minsDirector: Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda’s award-winning study of those living on the margins of French society at the turn of the millennium.

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MetropolisMetropolis

Science Fiction1927150 minsSilentDirector: Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang’s expressionist, dystopian vision is one of the first science fiction feature films, and is arguably the most influential.

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Journey to ItalyJourney to Italy

Drama195486 minsDirector: Roberto Rossellini

Roberto Rossellini's acerbic but finally very moving masterpiece about marital crisis boasts great performances from Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders

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L'avventuraL'avventura

Drama1960137 minsDirector: Michelangelo Antonioni

Antonioni’s masterpiece of modern alienation, with Monica Vitti as the young woman searching for her friend who's inexplicably disappeared.

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Sunrise A Song of Two HumansSunrise A Song of Two Humans

Drama192775 minsSilentDirector: F.W. Murnau

F.W. Murnau's enduring fable of love, loss and redemption; one of silent cinema's last and most luminous masterpieces. Presented here in its alternate Czech archive version.

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Sátántangó: Part OneSátántangó: Part One

Drama1994262 minsDirector: Béla Tarr

Part One of Béla Tarr’s epic adaptation of Laszlo Karsnahorkai’s novel about the disintegration of an isolated community.

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Sátántangó: Part TwoSátántangó: Part Two

Drama1994177 minsDirector: Béla Tarr

Part Two of Béla Tarr’s epic adaptation of Laszlo Karsnahorkai’s novel about the disintegration of an isolated community.

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Celine and Julie Go BoatingCeline and Julie Go Boating

Drama1974194 minsDirector: Jacques Rivette

Jacques Rivette’s biggest commercial hit is an exhilarating combination of theatricality, paranoia and ‘la vie parisienne’, around an entrancing examination of making and watching films.

Explore the Sight and Sound Poll Top 250 Greatest Films in our Rentals collection.

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