The 25 greatest movies ever: Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll results

Every 10 years, the British film magazine Sight & Sound invites critics to submit lists of their top 10 movies of all time. These are the results of their poll for 2022.

25. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955) [tie]

Sight & Sound wrote: "Actor Charles Laughton's only film as director, starring Robert Mitchum as an implacable child-hunting preacher, still leaves an indelible mark."

25. Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) [tie]

Sight & Sound wrote: "Robert Bresson gave us a typically stark vision of humanity as experienced by a put-upon, maltreated beast of burden that passes from owner to owner."

24. Do The Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Racial tensions reach boiling point in Spike Lee's incandescent portrait of a Brooklyn neighbourhood on the hottest day of the year."

23. PlayTime (Jacques Tati, 1967)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Jacques Tati's most painstaking accomplishment blends deft slapstick, endless visual ingenuity and sonic comedy in a stupendous modern satire."

21. Late Spring (Ozu Yasujirō, 1949) [tie]

Sight & Sound wrote: "The first of Yasujirō Ozu's great cycle of dramas that place the joys and sadnesses of family life in the context of a Japan disrupted by modernity."

21. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) [tie]

Sight & Sound wrote: "Carl Theodor Dreyer's rapturous silent masterpiece, with soulful close-ups of Renée Jeanne 'Maria' Falconetti's tremulous martyr, transcending tyranny and temporality."

20. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa Akira, 1954)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Akira Kurosawa's monumental, scintillating tale of hired samurai protecting a peasant village: period thriller and moral/political fable in one."

19. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War blowout, a hell-trip through the smoke and dazzle of imperial America's most grandstanding rogue show."

18. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Any sense of a conventional psychodrama is constantly disrupted by the experimental, improvisatory filmmaking."

17. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)

Sight & Sound wrote: "The more 'information' we're offered about the case, the more we come to realise that there are no easy answers to any of the questions being raised."

16. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Had Californian sunlight ever looked as suggestive or sinister before the sharply etched dreamworld of Meshes of the Afternoon?"

15. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)

Sight & Sound wrote: "This poll's last western standing, John Ford's sweeping, stirring rescue-or-revenge quest remains a film of magnificent mystery and poetry."

14. Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)

Sight & Sound wrote: "In real time, Cléo becomes more real, more subject than object. She discards her whipped-cream wig and polka dots for a simple black shift. She performs less and feels more."

13. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Huge-spirited and sharp-eyed, Jean Renoir's French-society fresco gathers high classes and low for a weekend of country-house fallout."

12. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

Sight & Sound wrote: "The first of Francis Ford Coppola's epic trilogy about the Corleone crime family is the disturbing story of a son drawn inexorably into his father's Mafia affairs."

11. "Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans" (F.W. Murnau, 1927)

Sight & Sound wrote: "The first American film by one of German expressionism's leading exponents, this lush, atmospheric silent drama is replete with groundbreaking cinematography."

10. Singin' In The Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Hollywood's troubled transition from silent to talking pictures at the end of the 1920s provided the inspiration for perhaps the greatest of movie musicals."

9. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Bottomless invention and frenetic, dizzying montage make this city symphony one of cinema's sharpest, most exciting experiences nearly a century after its release."

8. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Hollywood is dark and dangerous, yet alluring, in David Lynch's acclaimed thriller."

7. Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Claire Denis's great gift is to evoke emotion with gesture and juxtaposition. In the desert, water shimmers and ripples, naked shoulders perspire, black mosquito nets recall sheer lingerie."

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Stanley Kubrick's grand vision of mankind's journey from its hominid beginnings to its star-child evolution is a towering achievement of science-fiction cinema.

5. In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Wong Kar Wai's masterpiece is a heartbreaking story of illicit love that pulses with the ache of repressed desire."

4. Tokyo Story (Ozu Yasujirō, 1953)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Told in Yasujirō Ozu's simple and elegant style, this story of intergenerational discord is heartbreaking and deeply human."

3. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

Sight & Sound wrote: "Famously sitting at the top of the Sight and Sound poll from 1962 to 2002, Orson Welles's masterful debut, about newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane, remains an enduring classic."

2. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Sight & Sound wrote: "A former detective with a fear of heights is hired to follow a woman apparently possessed by the past, in Alfred Hitchcock's timeless thriller about obsession."

1. Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

Sight & Sound wrote: "A magnificent epic of experimental cinema offering a feminist perspective on recurrent events of everyday life."