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Sight and Sound Greatest Films Poll 101 - 250
Meet the elite: hand-picked highlights from the 2022 Sight and Sound 250 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 selection from the definitive list.
L'ArgentL'Argent
Crime198384 minsDirector: Robert Bresson
Bresson’s superb final film and Cannes winner is a Tolstoy adaptation relating how a prank with a forged bank note leads to tragedy.
The Colour of PomegranatesThe Colour of Pomegranates
Animation & Artists Moving Image196880 minsDirector: Sergei Paradjanov
The film that Martin Scorsese compared to ‘opening a door and walking into another dimension, where time has stopped and beauty has been unleashed’.
Wings of DesireWings of Desire
Fantasy1987128 minsDirector: Wim Wenders
In director Wim Wenders' (Paris, Texas) most metaphysical work, a guardian angel desires nothing more than to be human. Presented in a stunning new restoration.
A Touch of ZenA Touch of Zen
Action and Adventure1971179 minsDirector: King Hu
King Hu's epic swordplay saga combines ghost story, martial arts mastery and Buddhist mythology to stunning, hypnotic effect.
Wild StrawberriesWild Strawberries
Drama195788 minsDirector: Ingmar Bergman
Victor Sjöström is magnificent as the crabby professor taking a nostalgic road trip with his daughter-in-law, in Ingmar Bergman's elegiac masterpiece.
The Seventh SealThe Seventh Seal
Fantasy195796 minsDirector: Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman’s best-known film is a brilliant allegorical drama starring Max von Sydow as a knight trying to elude his own death.
PickpocketPickpocket
Drama195976 minsDirector: Robert Bresson
Bresson’s hugely influential study of a petty thief in late 50s Paris is one of his most widely acclaimed films.
Un Chien AndalouUn Chien Andalou
Animation & Artists Moving Image192816 minsSilentDirector: Luis Buñuel
A scabrous study of desire, the subconscious and anti-clericalism - Buñuel and Dalí’s provocative first film is a classic of Surrealist cinema.
Aguirre, Wrath of GodAguirre, Wrath of God
Historical drama197294 minsDirector: Werner Herzog
This early masterpiece from Werner Herzog stars Klaus Kinski as a power-crazed explorer in sixteenth-century South America who leads a band of conquistadors through the Amazon in search of El Dorado.
Paris, TexasParis, Texas
Drama1984145 minsDirector: Wim Wenders
The late, great Harry Dean Stanton's finest role came as the near-mute Travis, on a journey across America to reunite his family, in Wim Wenders' moving tale of loss and redemption.
Les Enfants du paradisLes Enfants du paradis
Drama1945190 minsDirector: Marcel Carné
Marcel Carné's masterpiece of French cinema portrays the theatrical milieu of Paris' 'Boulevard du Crime'.
An Autumn AfternoonAn Autumn Afternoon
Drama1962113 minsDirector: Yasujirō Ozu
Yasujiro Ozu's elegiac final film charts the inevitable eclipse of older generations by irreverent youth.
NosferatuNosferatu
Horror192289 minsSilentDirector: F.W. Murnau
This influential Dracula adaptation contains some of the most famous images of expressionist film, and remains shocking and stylish after 100 years.
SuspiriaSuspiria
Horror1977101 minsDirector: Dario Argento
Dario Argento’s phantasmagoric gothic nightmare blends operatic violence, disorienting dream logic and hyper-real visuals to create a horror classic.
Distant Voices, Still LivesDistant Voices, Still Lives
Biopic198884 minsDirector: Terence Davies
Terence Davies' debut feature is a remarkable evocation of working-class family life in the 40s and 50s and a visionary exploration of memory.
PaisàPaisà
War1946126 minsDirector: Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini’s ambitious and enormously moving follow-up to his breakthrough Rome, Open City.
CrashCrash
Drama1996100 minsDirector: David Cronenberg
Technology and sexuality meet in head-on collision in David Cronenberg’s controversial adaptation of writer J.G. Ballard’s hugely transgressive 1973 novel, starring James Spader and Holly Hunter.
The Green RayThe Green Ray
Drama198699 minsDirector: Eric Rohmer
Eric Rohmer's masterpiece about a woman chasing romance and adventure during a long, hot summer.
Cries and WhispersCries and Whispers
Drama197291 minsDirector: Ingmar Bergman
A dying woman (Harriet Andersson) is attended to in her rural mansion by her sisters, in Ingmar Bergman's vivid examination of the human soul.
Fanny and AlexanderFanny and Alexander
Drama1982311 minsDirector: Ingmar Bergman
Bergman’s magisterial and sumptuous portrait of a 20th-century Swedish family, presented in its full-length TV version.
IkiruIkiru
Drama1952143 minsDirector: Akira Kurosawa
A bureaucrat’s life finds new meaning in Kurosawa’s classic original, the source for Bill Nighy’s brilliant drama, Living.
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