In December 2018 we began polling for our annual greatest films of all-time list. We asked our site administrators and other contributors to name their 100 best films and these ballots were combined with results from many of the external critics, industry and user polls and ranking systems shown on the Greatest Films list section. This year, for the first time, we have published the films that placed 1001-2000. The countdown of the results began on the 11th February 2019 and can be viewed below.
The purpose of this poll is not to produce the most definitive of film lists, (an impossible aim given that the ranking of films in these ways is an entirely subjective exercise), but to get fans of the moving image debating what constitutes great cinema. Hopefully, if nothing else, the resulting lists may give viewers a guide to what films might be worth watching.
Below are listed the directors with 2 or more films in the top 1000 –
14 ~ Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman
13 ~ Luis Bunuel, Martin Scorsese
12 ~ Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg
11 ~ Stanley Kubrick
10 ~ Yasujiro Ozu
9 ~ Hayao Miyazaki, Jean-Luc Godard, Joel & Ethan Coen, Woody Allen
8 ~ Charles Chaplin, Christopher Nolan, Federico Fellini
7 ~ Andrei Tarkovsky, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, John Huston, Luchino Visconti, Quentin Tarantino, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Roberto Rossellini, Wes Anderson
6 ~ Billy Wilder, Francois Truffaut, Jean Renoir, Kar Wai Wong, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Masaki Kobayashi, Michael Powell, Michelangelo Antonioni, Orson Welles, Robert Bresson, Roman Polanski, Werner Herzog
5 ~ Abbas Kiarostami, Carl Th. Dreyer, David Lean, David Lynch, Ernst Lubitsch, F. W. Murnau, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Jean-Pierre Melville, John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Louis Malle, Michael Mann, Ridley Scott, Robert Altman, Satyajit Ray, Sergio Leone, Terrence Malick, Yimou Zhang
4 ~ Alain Resnais, Alfonso Cuaron, Brian De Palma, Buster Keaton, Darren Aronofsky, David Cronenberg, David Fincher, Elia Kazan, Emeric Pressburger, George Cukor, Jim Jarmusch, John Boorman, Josef Von Sternberg, Michael Curtiz, Nicolas Roeg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Peter Jackson, Peter Weir, Richard Linklater, Sergei M. Eisenstein, Spike Jonze, Vittorio De Sica, William Wyler, Wim Wenders
3 ~ Alejandro González Iñárritu, Andrzej Wajda, Bela Tarr, Bernardo Bertolucci, Brad Bird, Carol Reed, Clint Eastwood, D.W.Griffith, Damien Chazelle, Danny Boyle, Eric Rohmer, Frank Capra, George Miller, George Stevens, Hal Ashby, Hsiao-hsien Hou, Jacques Demy, Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, John Cassavetes, Leo McCarey, Mel Gibson, Michael Haneke, Milos Forman, Nicholas Ray, Oliver Stone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Preston Sturges, Robert Wise, Robert Zemeckis, Sam Mendes, Shohei Imamura, Sidney Lumet, Steve McQueen, Terry Gilliam
2 ~ Agnes Hranitzky, Agnes Varda, Alan Parker, Alexander Mackendrick, Andrew Stanton, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Andrzej Żuławski, Ang Lee, Anthony Minghella, Bob Fosse, Chris Marker, Claude Berri, Dardenne brothers, David Hand, Denis Villeneuve, Douglas Sirk, Edward Yang, Emir Kusturica, Erich Von Stroheim, Ermanno Olmi, Frank Darabont, Franklin J. Schaffner, Fred Zinnemann, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, George A. Romero, George Lucas, George Roy Hill, Glauber Rocha, Guiseppe Tornatore, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Isao Takahata, Jacques Becker, Jacques Rivette, James Ivory, James Whale, Jean Cocteau, Jean Vigo, John Carpenter, John Lasseter, Jonathan Demme, Jules Dassin, Kon Ichikawa, Lindsay Anderson, Marc Caro, Mario Monicelli, Max Ophuls, Michael Cimino, Mijail Kalatozov, Mike Leigh, Mike Nichols, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Otto Preminger, Pedro Almodovar, Pete Doctor, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Watkins, Philip Kaufman, Raoul Walsh, Rob Reiner, Robert Aldrich, Roland Joffe, Sam Raimi, Sergei Parajanov, Shekhar Kapur, Terry Jones, The Wachowski Brothers, Theodoros Angelopoulos, Tim Burton, Todd Haynes, Tomas Alfredson, Victor Erice, Victor Fleming, Victor Sjostrom, Vincente Minnelli, William A. Wellman, William Friedkin, Wojciech Has, Yuriy Norshteyn.