History of Movies
My Library

Cahiers du Cinéma's Annual Top 10, Ranked

The magazine that invented auteur criticism — Truffaut, Godard and the future New Wave wrote here first — has published a ten-best list for most of its run since 1951. Here is every film from Cahiers du Cinéma's annual top 10s in our library, re-ranked by our composite score across 20+ lists, awards and polls.

617 films from this list are in our library; the top 30 by composite score are shown — the ranking is ours, not the list's own order.

  1. 1
    Goodfellas1990 · Martin Scorsese · United States · biography, crime, thriller
    6.33

    BAFTA Best Film winner 1991 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #28 · Empire 500 (2008) #6

  2. 2
    All About Eve1950 · Joseph L. Mankiewicz · United States · drama, comedy
    5.87

    Oscar Best Picture winner 1950 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1951 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1951 #1

  3. 3
    Parasite2019 · Bong Joon-ho · South Korea · comedy, drama, thriller
    5.72

    Palme d'Or winner 2019 · Oscar Best Picture winner 2019 · Film Comment year-end poll 2019 #1

  4. 4
    Raging Bull1980 · Martin Scorsese · United States · biography, drama, action
    5.71

    AFI 100 (2007) #4 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #22 · Siskel's annual top 10 1980 #1

  5. 5
    12 Angry Men1957 · Sidney Lumet · United States · drama
    5.25

    Berlin Golden Bear winner 1957 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1959 #1 · Letterboxd Top 250 #3

  6. 6
    Vertigo1958 · Alfred Hitchcock · United States · mystery, thriller, drama
    5.16

    Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #6 · AFI 100 (2007) #9

  7. 7
    In the Mood for Love2000 · Wong Kar-wai · Hong Kong, China / France / Thailand · romance, drama
    5.13

    Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #5 · Rolling Stone 100 Best of the 21st Century #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #9

  8. 8
    Spirited Away2001 · Hayao Miyazaki · Japan · fantasy, animation, drama
    4.98

    Berlin Golden Bear winner 2002 · Japan Academy Prize winner 2002 · Kehr's annual top 10 2002 #1

  9. 9
    Unforgiven1992 · Clint Eastwood · United States · western, drama, crime
    4.96

    Oscar Best Picture winner 1992 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1992 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1993 #1

  10. 10
    Mulholland Drive2001 · David Lynch · United States · mystery, thriller, crime
    4.61

    Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2001 #1 · Film Comment year-end poll 2001 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #8

  11. 11
    8½1963 · Federico Fellini · Italy / France · comedy, drama, fantasy
    4.58

    Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #6 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1965 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #31

  12. 12
    Sunset Boulevard1950 · Billy Wilder · United States · drama, film-noir
    4.54

    Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1951 #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #62 · AFI 100 (2007) #16

  13. 13
    Do the Right Thing1989 · Spike Lee · United States · comedy, drama
    4.39

    Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1989 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #24 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #29

  14. 14
    Wild Strawberries1957 · Ingmar Bergman · Sweden · drama
    4.30

    Berlin Golden Bear winner 1958 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1962 #1 · Sarris's annual top 10 1959 #1

  15. 15
    Persona1966 · Ingmar Bergman · Sweden · drama
    4.29

    Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1967 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #9 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #18

  16. 16
    The Tree of Life2011 · Terrence Malick · United States · sci-fi, fantasy, drama
    4.26

    Palme d'Or winner 2011 · Film Comment year-end poll 2011 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2011 #2

  17. 17
    No Country for Old Men2007 · Ethan Coen, Joel Coen · United States · drama, thriller, western
    4.20

    Oscar Best Picture winner 2007 · Film Comment year-end poll 2007 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2008 #1

  18. 18
    Ordet1955 · Carl Theodor Dreyer · Denmark · drama
    4.06

    Venice Golden Lion winner 1955 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1955 #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #30

  19. 19
    The 400 Blows1959 · François Truffaut · France · drama, crime
    4.04

    Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #33 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #50 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1959 #5

  20. 20
    Taste of Cherry1997 · Abbas Kiarostami · Iran · drama
    4.03

    Palme d'Or winner 1997 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #93 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #243

  21. 21
    Psycho1960 · Alfred Hitchcock · United States · thriller, horror, mystery
    4.01

    Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #31 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #46 · AFI 100 (2007) #14

  22. 22
    Breathless1960 · Jean-Luc Godard · France · drama, crime
    3.95

    Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #14 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #38 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1960 #3

  23. 23
    The Hurt Locker2008 · Kathryn Bigelow · United States · action, thriller, war
    3.95

    Oscar Best Picture winner 2009 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2010 · Film Comment year-end poll 2009 #1

  24. 24
    The Last Emperor1987 · Bernardo Bertolucci · China / France / United Kingdom · drama, biography
    3.94

    Oscar Best Picture winner 1987 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1989 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1988 #1

  25. 25
    Paris, Texas1984 · Wim Wenders · France / Germany · drama
    3.89

    Palme d'Or winner 1984 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #185 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1985 #6

  26. 26
    Titanic1997 · James Cameron · United States · drama, romance
    3.72

    Oscar Best Picture winner 1997 · Kehr's annual top 10 1997 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1998 #4

  27. 27
    Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives2010 · Apichatpong Weerasethakul · Thailand / France · comedy, drama, fantasy
    3.69

    Palme d'Or winner 2010 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2010 #1 · Film Comment year-end poll 2011 #2

  28. 28
    Viridiana1961 · Luis Buñuel · Mexico / Spain · comedy, drama
    3.59

    Palme d'Or winner 1961 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #52 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1962 #4

  29. 29
    The Seventh Seal1957 · Ingmar Bergman · Sweden · fantasy, drama
    3.58

    Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1958 #2 · Sarris's annual top 10 1958 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #72

  30. 30
    Yi Yi2000 · Edward Yang · Taiwan, China / Japan · drama
    3.56

    Film Comment year-end poll 2000 #3 · Sarris's annual top 10 2000 #1 · Rolling Stone 100 Best of the 21st Century #8

The list kept by the magazine that invented the auteur

No publication has a better claim to having changed what film criticism is for. Founded in April 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca, Cahiers du Cinéma hired a bench of young critics — Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette — who first argued the politique des auteurs into existence (Truffaut's 1954 assault on France's "Tradition of Quality" was its manifesto) and then, by the end of the decade, put down their pens and became the French New Wave. The year-end top 10 has run alongside all of it since 1951, with telling silences: no lists from 1952 to 1953, none from 1969 to 1980 — a hiatus that reads, from here, as the era when ranking movies felt beside the point — and none in 2003. Our library holds 609 films from the lists' whole run, 1951 to 2025.

A canon that argues with everyone, including itself

Read across seventy years, the lists are a sustained polemic. This is the magazine that put Clint Eastwood at #1 two years running — Unforgiven (1992), then A Perfect World (1993) — that crowned Do the Right Thing (1989) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), and that gave the top spot to Straub–Huillet's austere The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) in the same era mainstream critics were elsewhere. House loyalty is real: Godard tops the list in 1962, 1965 and again in 1985, long after he had traded the masthead for the camera. And the famous perversity is real too — this is a canon with room for Titanic (1997) alongside Pialat's Under the Sun of Satan (1987). Whether that eclecticism is rigor or contrarianism is the argument the list exists to start; to my eye it is the most consistent auteurism on record, applied without regard for respectability in either direction.

How to read our ranking

The order above is ours, not theirs: every film that has ever appeared on a Cahiers annual top 10 and is in our library, re-ranked by composite score across 20+ lists, awards and polls. That lens shows which Cahiers verdicts the wider canon has ratified — Goodfellas (1990) leads, with All About Eve (1950), Parasite (2019) and 12 Angry Men (1957) close behind — and which remain house positions: Under the Sun of Satan, a Cahiers #1, sits at #217 in our library. That gap between their list and everyone else's is not an error to correct. It is the magazine's entire point.