The 2012 Sight & Sound Directors’ Top Ten

British Film Institute
August 2, 2012

The 10 Greatest Films of All Time, as chosen by 358 directors including Woody Allen, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Quentin Tarantino, the Dardenne brothers, Terence Davies, Guillermo del Toro, Martin Scorsese, Olivier Assayas, Michael Mann, Guy Maddin, Francis Ford Coppola, Mike Leigh, Aki Kaurismäki...

1. Tokyo Story

Ozu Yasujirô, 1953 (48 votes; pictured above)

Subtle and sensitive, Tokyo Story lets the viewer experience the tensions and demands that modern life makes on people – here family members—Adoor Gopalakrishnan


2. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick, 1968 (42 votes)

This is the film I’ve seen more than any other in my life. 40 times or more. My life altered when I discovered it when I was about 7 in Buenos Aires. It was my first hallucinogenic experience, my great artistic turning-point and also the moment when my mother finally explained what a foetus was and how I came into the world. Without this film I would never have become a director—Gaspar Noé


2. Citizen Kane

Orson Welles, 1941 (42 votes)

Welles’s feat of imagination in Citizen Kane remains dazzling and inspiring. Cinema aspiring to great art, political import – and delivered with unabashed showmanship. The fervour of the work is as excited and electric as ever. The thriller plot never disappoints—Kenneth Branagh

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