Kinema Junpo's Best Ten, Ranked
Kinema Junpo — publishing since 1919, one of the world's oldest film magazines — has run its Best Ten critics' poll since 1924: twin year-end lists of the best Japanese and foreign films. Here is every Best Ten film in our library, re-ranked by our composite score across 20+ lists, awards and polls.
1695 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.
- 1Lawrence of Arabia1962 · David Lean9.71
Oscar Best Picture winner 1962 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1963 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1963 #1
- 2Parasite2019 · Bong Joon-ho9.70
Palme d'Or winner 2019 · Oscar Best Picture winner 2019 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2020 #1
- 3Nomadland2020 · Chloé Zhao9.50
Oscar Best Picture winner 2020 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2021 · Venice Golden Lion winner 2020
- 4Citizen Kane1941 · Orson Welles9.16
AFI 100 (2007) #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #2 · AFI 100 (1998) #1
- 5The Pianist2002 · Roman Polanski8.65
Palme d'Or winner 2002 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2003 · Cesar Best Film winner 2003
- 6The Third Man1949 · Carol Reed8.46
Palme d'Or winner 1949 · BFI Top 100 British films #1 · Cannes Grand Prix winner 1949
- 78.37
Oscar Best Picture winner 1972 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #3 · AFI 100 (2007) #2
- 88.30
Oscar Best Picture winner 1950 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1951 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1951 #1
- 98.02
Palme d'Or winner 1953 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1955 · Berlin Golden Bear winner 1953
- 10Chariots of Fire1981 · Hugh Hudson7.57
Oscar Best Picture winner 1981 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1982 · Tiff Peoples Choice winner 1981
- 117.42
Oscar Best Picture winner 1993 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1994 · AFI 100 (2007) #8
- 12Taxi Driver1976 · Martin Scorsese7.30
Palme d'Or winner 1976 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1976 #1 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1976
- 137.15
Palme d'Or winner 1979 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1979 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #18
- 147.13
Oscar Best Picture winner 1957 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1958 · BFI Top 100 British films #11
- 157.13
Oscar Best Picture winner 1975 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1977 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1976 #2
- 16The King's Speech2010 · Tom Hooper7.00
Oscar Best Picture winner 2010 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2011 · Tiff Peoples Choice winner 2010
- 17Annie Hall1977 · Woody Allen6.89
Oscar Best Picture winner 1977 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1978 · AFI 100 (2007) #35
- 18American Beauty1999 · Sam Mendes6.86
Oscar Best Picture winner 1999 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2000 · Tiff Peoples Choice winner 1999
- 196.85
Oscar Best Picture winner 1969 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1970 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1969 #2
- 206.85
Oscar Best Picture winner 1946 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1948 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1948 #2
- 216.82
Oscar Best Picture winner 2008 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2009 · Tiff Peoples Choice winner 2008
- 22Anora2024 · Sean Baker6.79
Palme d'Or winner 2024 · Oscar Best Picture winner 2024 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2025 #2
- 23The Piano1993 · Jane Campion6.71
Palme d'Or winner 1993 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1994 #1 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1993
- 246.65
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #6 · BAFTA Best Film nominee 1969
- 256.63
Oscar Best Picture winner 2025 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2026 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2025 #1
- 26Marty1955 · Delbert Mann6.56
Palme d'Or winner 1955 · Oscar Best Picture winner 1955 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1955 #7
- 276.55
Oscar Best Picture winner 1987 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1989 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1988 #1
- 28The Lost Weekend1945 · Billy Wilder6.54
Palme d'Or winner 1946 · Oscar Best Picture winner 1945 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1948 #8
- 29Unforgiven1992 · Clint Eastwood6.51
Oscar Best Picture winner 1992 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1992 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1993 #1
- 30Amour2012 · Michael Haneke6.40
Palme d'Or winner 2012 · Cesar Best Film winner 2013 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2013 #1
The oldest poll in the movies
Before Sight & Sound, before the AFI, there was Kinema Junpo. Japan's oldest film magazine — begun in July 1919 by four students of the Tokyo Institute of Technology — started its Best Ten in 1924, which makes it the longest-running critics' poll our library tracks anywhere. It began with foreign films only; a parallel list for Japanese cinema arrived in 1926, and a readers' choice poll joined in 1972. The twin lists have run nearly unbroken for a century — in our library's record the foreign poll falls silent only for 1941–1945 and the Japanese poll for 1943–1945, the war years — and together they account for almost 1,700 films from 1924 to 2025.
Two lists, two histories
The foreign Best Ten is something no other institution can offer: a year-by-year record of what world cinema looked like from Tokyo. Its winners begin with A Woman of Paris (1923) and The Covered Wagon (1923) in the very first poll, and run through Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), Bicycle Thieves (1948) and La Strada (1954) to Parasite (2019), which topped the 2020 list. The delays are part of the charm: Japan met Citizen Kane (1941) only in 1966 — and ranked it second that year, behind Pather Panchali (1955). The Japanese list, meanwhile, is the spine of that national cinema's own canon, and its single most quoted verdict remains 1954: Twenty-Four Eyes (1954) at #1, Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) at #3, Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff (1954) at #9 — a year so deep that placing third in it now reads as a kind of victory.
How to read our ranking
The order above is ours: every Best Ten film in our library, both polls pooled, re-ranked by our composite score across 20+ lists, awards and polls. Because that score leans on award records and the Western canons, the top of the page is dominated by the foreign list — Parasite, Citizen Kane, The Godfather (1972). The Japanese Best Ten's own champions enter lower down: The Eel (1997) at #71 in our library, Shoplifters (2018) at #88, Hana-bi (1997) at #92, Tokyo Story (1953) at #104, Seven Samurai at #216. To my eye that says more about the blind spots of the aggregate canon than about the films; treat the deeper half of this list as the correction, and the magazine that kept score for a hundred years as the witness.