My 100 Favorite Films From 100 Favorite Directors

Spanning across the last 100 years.

May 26, 2026

I want to do something different today. I’m sharing 100 of my favorite films— but here’s the catch: I’m only picking one film per director.

Curating this list was torture. I had to leave out several favorites simply because they were made by the filmmaker, and even after that, I had to make some reluctant cuts to fit it in a list of hundred1.

Unintentionally, I also discovered gaping holes in my cinematic education— I’ve yet to watch the works of distinguished directors such as:

Erich von Stroheim. Josef von Sternberg. Béla Tarr. Jacques Demy. Alain Resnais. Bernardo Bertolucci. Edward Yang. Jacques Rivette. Alice Guy-Blaché. Douglas Sirk. D.W. Griffith2. King Vidor. Roberto Rossellini. Sergei Eisenstein. Chantal Akerman. Bob Fosse. Apichatpong Weerasethakul…

… and many more.

So in a way, I’ve found something to work on in improving my film education.

That’s why lists are self-defeating. There’s too many wonderful films to include and never enough space to put them all into one list.

What are your favorite films and your favorite directors? If you have any films not included here, please share them in the comments.

The General – Keaton, 1926.
City Lights – Chaplin, 1931.
M – Lang, 1931.
His Girl Friday – Hawks, 1940.
Citizen Kane – Welles, 1941.
The Lady Eve – Sturges, 1941.
To Be Or Not To Be – Lubitsch, 1942.
Casablanca – Curtiz, 1942.
The Red Shoes – Powell and Pressburger, 1948.
Bicycle Thieves – Sica, 1948.
The Third Man – Reed, 1949.
The Earrings of Madame De… – Ophuls, 1953.
Tokyo Story – Ozu, 1953.
Seven Samurai – Kurosawa, 1954.
Rear Window – Hitchcock, 1954.
Sansho the Bailiff – Mizoguchi, 1954.
The Searchers – Ford, 1956.
Jules et Jim – Truffaut, 1959.
The World of Apu – Ray, 1959.
The Apartment – Wilder, 1960.
La Dolce Vita – Fellini, 1961.
Lawrence of Arabia – Lean, 1962.
The Leopard – Visconti, 1963.
The Haunting – Wise, 1963.
A Shot In The Dark – Edwards, 1964.
Le Samouraï – Melville, 1967.
Two for the Road – Donan, 1967.
Nashville – Altman, 1971.
The Godfather – Coppola, 1972.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – Bunuel, 1972.
Aguirre The Wrath of God – Herzog, 1972.
Young Frankenstein – Brooks, 1974.
Chinatown – Polanski, 1974.
Barry Lyndon – Kubrick, 1975.
Network – Lumet, 1976.
One Sings, The Other Doesn’t – Varda, 1977.
Star Wars: A New Hope – Lucas, 1977.
Annie Hall – Allen, 1977.
Dawn of the Dead – Romero, 1978.
Halloween – Carpenter, 1978.
Alien – Scott, 1979.
Fanny and Alexander – Bergman, 1982.
The Karate Kid – Avildsen, 1984.
Once Upon a Time in America – Leone, 1984.
Paris, Texas – Wenders, 1984.
Broadcast News – Brooks, 1987.
The Princess Bride – Reiner, 1987.
Do The Right Thing – Lee, 1989.
Goodfellas – Scorsese, 1990.
Only Yesterday – Takahata, 1991.
The Silence of the Lambs – Demme, 1991.
Groundhog Day – Ramis, 1993.
Schindler’s List – Spielberg, 1993.
Three Colors: Red – Kieślowski, 1994.
Pulp Fiction – Tarantino, 1994.
Strange Days – Bigelow, 1995.
Secrets and Lies – Leigh, 1996.
Fargo – The Coens, 1996.
Scream – Craven, 1996.
Princess Mononoke – Miyazaki, 1997.
Titanic – Cameron, 1997.
Boogie Nights – (P.T.) Anderson, 1997.
Flowers of Shanghai – Hsiao-hsien, 1998.
The Truman Show – Weir, 1998.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Jackson, 2001.
City of God – Meirelles and Lund, 2002.
Adaptation. – Jonze, 2002.
Sideways – Payne, 2004.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Gondry, 2004.
Brokeback Mountain – Lee, 2005.
Children of Men – Cuarón, 2006.
Pan’s Labyrinth – del Toro, 2006.
Casino Royale – Campbell, 2006.
Ratatouille – Bird, 2007.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – Mungiu, 2007.
Hot Fuzz – Wright, 2007.
Juno – Reitman, 2007.
The Dark Knight – Nolan, 2008.
In Bruges – McDonagh, 2008.
The Social Network – Fincher, 2010.
A Separation – Farhadi, 2011.
Whiplash – Chazelle, 2014.
Before Midnight – Linklater, 2014.
The Grand Budapest Hotel – (Wes) Anderson, 2014.
Mad Max: Fury Road – Miller, 2015.
Creed – Coogler, 2015.
Moonlight – Jenkins, 2016.
Manchester By The Sea – Lonergan, 2016.
The Handmaiden – Chan-wook, 2016.
Get Out – Peele, 2017.
Annihilation – Garland, 2018.
Hereditary – Aster, 2018.
Mission Impossible: Fallout – McQuarrie, 2018.
Shoplifters – Kore-eda, 2018.
The Favorite – Lanthimos, 2018.
Parasite – Joon-ho, 2019.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire – Sciamma, 2019.
Little Women – Gerwig, 2019.
First Cow – Reichardt, 2020.
Aftersun – Wells, 2022.

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Long live the movies!

D.L. Holmes

Some directors who did not make the cut: Jean-Luc Godard, Charles Laughton, Jean Renoir, Nicholas Ray, John Cassavetes, Nicholas Roeg, Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Eggers, Jane Campion, F.W. Murnau, William Wyler, and I dare not think how many more.

I have mixed feelings about D.W. Griffith. On the one hand, he’s a racist piece of shit. On the other, he helped invent the language of film editing and pushed the possibilities of narrative film, even if I loathe that the medium owes him such a huge debt.