Introduction / Films 1,000-251 / Top 250 Films (alpha) / Top 250 Films (250-1) / Top 250 Films (1-250) / Top 250 Films (by year) / Top 1,000 Films (sortable table) / Top 1,000 Films (ranking history) / Alternative Titles / Critics / Top 100 Directors / Starting List (sortable table) / Ex-1000 / Resources & Links
Introduction to the 21st CENTURY'S MOST ACCLAIMED FILMS
Current Version: 2025 (18th edition)
Published on February 1, 2025
Current Version: 2025 (18th edition)
Published on February 1, 2025
Dear film and list lovers, welcome to the 18th version of the 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films, or as it perhaps should be titled, The Most Acclaimed Films from 2000 to 2024 (a little nod to those that are irked by films from the year 2000 being included in a 21st Century-specific list).
2024 has been another interesting year for cinema (much of which I am still catching up with), and its finest films (according to critics) have attached themselves to this project (21 into the top 1,000 and 448 overall).
This year's edition of the 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films now significantly includes a quarter of a century worth of films from 2000 to 2024. Begs the cinephile question, then. How do the last 25 years compare with the previous 25?
Make up your own mind (of course), but interestingly, a top-10 from 1975-1999 (sourced from the 1,000 Greatest Films) would impressively look like this:
1. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
2. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
3. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
4. Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
5. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
6. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
7. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
8. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
9. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
10. Beau travail (Claire Denis, 1999)
The Regular Spill…
The 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed Films is an annually updated amalgamation of critics' end-of-year, end-of-decade, all-time, and miscellaneous lists/ballots relating to films released from 2000 onwards. It contains, based on TSPDT's calculations, the 1,000 leading films (critically-speaking) from 2000 to 2024. It is compiled from the same lists/ballots that are also used for assembling the 1,000 Greatest Films. Additionally, 6,744 end-of-year ballots (an average of 270 per year) from 2000-2024 have also been factored in, from 1,876 critics/filmmakers.
In terms of notable movements this year, there were 49 changes (seven more than last year) to the top 1,000, with most of the incoming films hailing from 2024. There was one change within the top-10, with The Gleaners & I overtaking Moonlight. There were two changes to the top-100 (Let the Right One In and Margaret replaced Blue is the Warmest Colour and Code Unknown). There were only six changes again to the top-250, with Los Angeles Plays Itself, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, My Winnipeg, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Film socialisme, and A Ghost Story replacing The Irishman, Crimson Gold, Paddington 2, Fat Girl, Killers of the Flower Moon and Fallen Leaves.
The overall starting list now encompasses 12,504 films (up from 11,344), and can be viewed here.
The 10 Most Acclaimed Films of the 21st Century
1. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE Wong Kar-wai
2. MULHOLLAND DR. David Lynch
3. YI YI Edward Yang
4. SPIRITED AWAY Hayao Miyazaki
5. THERE WILL BE BLOOD Paul Thomas Anderson
6. TROPICAL MALADY Apichatpong Weerasethakul
7. PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE Céline Sciamma
8. THE TREE OF LIFE Terrence Malick
9. THE GLEANERS & I Agnès Varda
10. MOONLIGHT Barry Jenkins
Directors with the Most Films in the Top 1,000:
11 - Hong Sang-soo
9 - Jia Zhangke
8 - Claire Denis, Lav Diaz, Martin Scorsese
7 - Wes Anderson, Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
6 - Paul Thomas Anderson, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Clint Eastwood, Jean-Luc Godard, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Spike Lee, Kelly Reichardt, Tsai Ming-liang, Denis Villeneuve
5 - Pedro Almodóvar, Andrea Arnold, Olivier Assayas, Bong Joon-ho, Pedro Costa, David Cronenberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Terence Davies, James Gray, Michael Haneke, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abbas Kiarostami, Yorgos Lanthimos, Mike Leigh, Richard Linklater, Steve McQueen, Jafar Panahi, Park Chan-wook, Alexander Payne, Céline Sciamma, Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier, Andrey Zvyagintsev
Breakdown of the 1,000 Films by Year:
2000 = 56
2001 = 50
2002 = 59 (-5)
2003 = 52 (+1)
2004 = 67
2005 = 40
2006 = 55
2007 = 54 (+4)
2008 = 47 (-2)
2009 = 38
2010 = 46
2011 = 41 (-3)
2012 = 38 (-3)
2013 = 34 (-2)
2014 = 44
2015 = 36 (-1)
2016 = 37 (-1)
2017 = 34 (-2)
2018 = 27 (-3)
2019 = 35 (-3)
2020 = 21
2021 = 22 (-1)
2022 = 20 (-5)
2023 = 26 (+5)
2024 = 21 (+21)
Breakdown of the 1,000 Films by Decade:
2000s = 518 (-2)
2010s = 372 (-18)
2020s = 110 (+20)
Breakdown of the 1,000 Flms by Country:
369 - USA
123 - France
109 - UK
33 - South Korea
28 - Japan
23 - China
22 - Germany
21 - Italy
18 - Canada
16 - Spain
15 - Argentina
14 - Portugal, Iran
13 - Russia
11 - Romania
10 - Ireland, Australia
9 - Austria, Denmark, Mexico, Sweden, Taiwan
8 - Philippines, Brazil
7 - Hong Kong, India, Thailand, New Zealand
6 - Belgium, Finland, Turkey
4 - Hungary
3 - Colombia, Greece, Indonesia, Poland, Switzerland
2 - Cambodia, Netherlands, Norway, Chile
1 - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chad, Ethiopia, Georgia, Ghana, Iraq, Israel, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Ukraine, Uruguay
Top Climbers Within the 1,000
I Am Love (2009), 891 to 602 (+289)
Lady Chatterley (2006), 860 to 619 (+241)
The Hunt (2012), 557 to 357 (+200)
I Lost My Body (2019), 977 to 810 (+167)
About Elly (2009), 678 to 538 (+140)
Highest Entrants Into the 1,000
Anora (2024), ranked 261
La Chimera (2023), ranked 276
All We Imagine as Light (2024), ranked 289
Evil Does Not Exist (2023), ranked 371
Dahomey (2024), ranked 393
Biggest Sliders Within the 1,000
Passages (2023), 585 to 988 (-403)
Asteroid City (2023), 546 to 921 (-375)
Afire (2023), 533 to 785 (-252)
Past Lives (2023), 382 to 616 (-234)
Oppenheimer (2023), 389 to 573 (-184)
Biggest Sliders from the 1,000
The Boy and the Heron (2023), formerly ranked 805
Our Body (2023), formerly ranked 865
The Eternal Daughter (2023), formerly ranked 874
Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros (2023), formerly ranked 878
Cow (2021), formerly ranked 918
TSPDT's 51 Most Critically-Acclaimed Films of 2024 (Based only on 2024 end-of-year ballots)
1. ANORA Sean Baker
2. ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT Payal Kapadia
3. DAHOMEY Mati Diop
4. LA CHIMERA Alice Rohrwacher
5. DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD Radu Jude
6. NO OTHER LAND Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal & Rachel Szor
7. EVIL DOES NOT EXIST Ryusuke Hamaguchi
8. NICKEL BOYS RaMell Ross
9. THE SUBSTANCE Coralie Fargeat
10. HARD TRUTHS Mike Leigh
——————————————
11. I SAW THE TV GLOW Jane Schoenbrun
12. CHALLENGERS Luca Guadagnino
13. CAUGHT BY THE TIDES Jia Zhangke
14. GRAND TOUR Miguel Gomes
15. THE BEAST Bertrand Bonello
15. MISÉRICORDE Alain Guiraudie
17. THE BRUTALIST Brady Corbet
17. JANET PLANET Annie Baker
19. AFTERNOONS OF SOLITUDE Albert Serra
20. JUROR #2 Clint Eastwood
20. MEGALOPOLIS Francis Ford Coppola
22. LAST SUMMER Catherine Breillat
23. LOVE LIES BLEEDING Rose Glass
24. SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D'ETAT Johan Grimonprez
25. A DIFFERENT MAN Aaron Schimberg
25. THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG Mohammad Rasoulof
27. CLOSE YOUR EYES Víctor Erice
27. EMILIA PÉREZ Jacques Audiard
29. FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA George Miller
29. A TRAVELER'S NEEDS Hong Sang-soo
31. THE ROOM NEXT DOOR Pedro Almodóvar
32. HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT Alexander Horwath
33. THE ZONE OF INTEREST Jonathan Glazer
34. CONCLAVE Edward Berger
34. A FIDAI FILM Kamal Aljafari
36. IT'S NOT ME Leos Carax
37. BY THE STREAM Hong Sang-soo
38. THE HUMAN SURGE 3 Eduardo Williams
38. UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE Matthew Rankin
40. PERFECT DAYS Wim Wenders
41. CIVIL WAR Alex Garland
41. DUNE: PART TWO Denis Villeneuve
43. FLOW Gints Zilbalodis
43. HERE Bas Devos
45. PEPE Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias
46. HIT MAN Richard Linklater
46. THE OTHER WAY AROUND Jonás Trueba
46. SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED Hernán Rosselli
49. ABOUT DRY GRASSES Nuri Bilge Ceylan
49. GREEN BORDER Agnieszka Holland
49. QUEER Luca Guadagnino
A Personal Digression…
I don't make any concerted effort to keep up with new releases. This is reflected in the below selections.
The best films, released in the last three years, that I saw during 2024: Enys Men (Mark Jenkin), Moonage Daydream (Brett Morgen), The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg), No Bears (Jafar Panahi), All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras), TÁR (Todd Field), About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan), Pictures of Ghosts (Kleber Mendonça Filho), Have You Got it Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd (Roddy Bogowa & Storm Thoorgerson), Reality (Tina Satter), Orlando, My Political Biography (Paul B. Preciado), Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude), The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer), Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki), Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet), Ripley (Steven Zaillian) and Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (David Hinton).
The best other films I saw for the first time (or re-watched after a long period): Mother (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1926), So This is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch, 1926), The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde, 1927), Whirlpool (Edmond T. Gréville, 1935), Strange Victory (Leo Hurwitz, 1948), The Eternal Breasts (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1955), Kaagaz Ke Phool (Guru Dutt, 1959), The Coward (Satyajit Ray, 1965), L'Amour fou (Jacques Rivette, 1969), Winter Soldier (Winterfilm Collective, 1972), The Clockmaker of St. Paul (Bertrand Tavernier, 1974), Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1979), The Man Who Planted Trees (Frédéric Back, 1987), Christine (Alan Clarke, 1987), The Addiction (Abel Ferrara, 1995), The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira, 2010), Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-soo, 2016), The Meaning of Hitler (Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker, 2020) and Marx Can Wait (Marco Bellocchio, 2021).
Please Note-: There is no intended correlation between the 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films and the 1,000 Greatest Films. You will note that the rankings for 21st Century films within the 1,000 Greatest Films do not align* with the rankings within this listing. The core difference is that this listing, as mentioned above, incorporates end-of-year critics' ballots, whereas the 1,000 Greatest Films does not.
*It should be noted, despite this, that the 16 highest-ranked 21st Century films from both lists do in fact align.
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the compilation of this edition (and previous editions for that matter) and to everyone who has contacted me with their ongoing support. Please email your feedback (good, bad, or ugly) to bill@theyshootpictures.com.
Begin browsing the 2025 edition of The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films.
2024 has been another interesting year for cinema (much of which I am still catching up with), and its finest films (according to critics) have attached themselves to this project (21 into the top 1,000 and 448 overall).
This year's edition of the 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films now significantly includes a quarter of a century worth of films from 2000 to 2024. Begs the cinephile question, then. How do the last 25 years compare with the previous 25?
Make up your own mind (of course), but interestingly, a top-10 from 1975-1999 (sourced from the 1,000 Greatest Films) would impressively look like this:
1. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
2. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
3. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
4. Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
5. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
6. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
7. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
8. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
9. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
10. Beau travail (Claire Denis, 1999)
The Regular Spill…
The 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed Films is an annually updated amalgamation of critics' end-of-year, end-of-decade, all-time, and miscellaneous lists/ballots relating to films released from 2000 onwards. It contains, based on TSPDT's calculations, the 1,000 leading films (critically-speaking) from 2000 to 2024. It is compiled from the same lists/ballots that are also used for assembling the 1,000 Greatest Films. Additionally, 6,744 end-of-year ballots (an average of 270 per year) from 2000-2024 have also been factored in, from 1,876 critics/filmmakers.
In terms of notable movements this year, there were 49 changes (seven more than last year) to the top 1,000, with most of the incoming films hailing from 2024. There was one change within the top-10, with The Gleaners & I overtaking Moonlight. There were two changes to the top-100 (Let the Right One In and Margaret replaced Blue is the Warmest Colour and Code Unknown). There were only six changes again to the top-250, with Los Angeles Plays Itself, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, My Winnipeg, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Film socialisme, and A Ghost Story replacing The Irishman, Crimson Gold, Paddington 2, Fat Girl, Killers of the Flower Moon and Fallen Leaves.
The overall starting list now encompasses 12,504 films (up from 11,344), and can be viewed here.
The 10 Most Acclaimed Films of the 21st Century
1. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE Wong Kar-wai
2. MULHOLLAND DR. David Lynch
3. YI YI Edward Yang
4. SPIRITED AWAY Hayao Miyazaki
5. THERE WILL BE BLOOD Paul Thomas Anderson
6. TROPICAL MALADY Apichatpong Weerasethakul
7. PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE Céline Sciamma
8. THE TREE OF LIFE Terrence Malick
9. THE GLEANERS & I Agnès Varda
10. MOONLIGHT Barry Jenkins
Directors with the Most Films in the Top 1,000:
11 - Hong Sang-soo
9 - Jia Zhangke
8 - Claire Denis, Lav Diaz, Martin Scorsese
7 - Wes Anderson, Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
6 - Paul Thomas Anderson, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Clint Eastwood, Jean-Luc Godard, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Spike Lee, Kelly Reichardt, Tsai Ming-liang, Denis Villeneuve
5 - Pedro Almodóvar, Andrea Arnold, Olivier Assayas, Bong Joon-ho, Pedro Costa, David Cronenberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Terence Davies, James Gray, Michael Haneke, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abbas Kiarostami, Yorgos Lanthimos, Mike Leigh, Richard Linklater, Steve McQueen, Jafar Panahi, Park Chan-wook, Alexander Payne, Céline Sciamma, Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier, Andrey Zvyagintsev
Breakdown of the 1,000 Films by Year:
2000 = 56
2001 = 50
2002 = 59 (-5)
2003 = 52 (+1)
2004 = 67
2005 = 40
2006 = 55
2007 = 54 (+4)
2008 = 47 (-2)
2009 = 38
2010 = 46
2011 = 41 (-3)
2012 = 38 (-3)
2013 = 34 (-2)
2014 = 44
2015 = 36 (-1)
2016 = 37 (-1)
2017 = 34 (-2)
2018 = 27 (-3)
2019 = 35 (-3)
2020 = 21
2021 = 22 (-1)
2022 = 20 (-5)
2023 = 26 (+5)
2024 = 21 (+21)
Breakdown of the 1,000 Films by Decade:
2000s = 518 (-2)
2010s = 372 (-18)
2020s = 110 (+20)
Breakdown of the 1,000 Flms by Country:
369 - USA
123 - France
109 - UK
33 - South Korea
28 - Japan
23 - China
22 - Germany
21 - Italy
18 - Canada
16 - Spain
15 - Argentina
14 - Portugal, Iran
13 - Russia
11 - Romania
10 - Ireland, Australia
9 - Austria, Denmark, Mexico, Sweden, Taiwan
8 - Philippines, Brazil
7 - Hong Kong, India, Thailand, New Zealand
6 - Belgium, Finland, Turkey
4 - Hungary
3 - Colombia, Greece, Indonesia, Poland, Switzerland
2 - Cambodia, Netherlands, Norway, Chile
1 - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chad, Ethiopia, Georgia, Ghana, Iraq, Israel, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Ukraine, Uruguay
Top Climbers Within the 1,000
I Am Love (2009), 891 to 602 (+289)
Lady Chatterley (2006), 860 to 619 (+241)
The Hunt (2012), 557 to 357 (+200)
I Lost My Body (2019), 977 to 810 (+167)
About Elly (2009), 678 to 538 (+140)
Highest Entrants Into the 1,000
Anora (2024), ranked 261
La Chimera (2023), ranked 276
All We Imagine as Light (2024), ranked 289
Evil Does Not Exist (2023), ranked 371
Dahomey (2024), ranked 393
Biggest Sliders Within the 1,000
Passages (2023), 585 to 988 (-403)
Asteroid City (2023), 546 to 921 (-375)
Afire (2023), 533 to 785 (-252)
Past Lives (2023), 382 to 616 (-234)
Oppenheimer (2023), 389 to 573 (-184)
Biggest Sliders from the 1,000
The Boy and the Heron (2023), formerly ranked 805
Our Body (2023), formerly ranked 865
The Eternal Daughter (2023), formerly ranked 874
Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros (2023), formerly ranked 878
Cow (2021), formerly ranked 918
TSPDT's 51 Most Critically-Acclaimed Films of 2024 (Based only on 2024 end-of-year ballots)
1. ANORA Sean Baker
2. ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT Payal Kapadia
3. DAHOMEY Mati Diop
4. LA CHIMERA Alice Rohrwacher
5. DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD Radu Jude
6. NO OTHER LAND Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal & Rachel Szor
7. EVIL DOES NOT EXIST Ryusuke Hamaguchi
8. NICKEL BOYS RaMell Ross
9. THE SUBSTANCE Coralie Fargeat
10. HARD TRUTHS Mike Leigh
——————————————
11. I SAW THE TV GLOW Jane Schoenbrun
12. CHALLENGERS Luca Guadagnino
13. CAUGHT BY THE TIDES Jia Zhangke
14. GRAND TOUR Miguel Gomes
15. THE BEAST Bertrand Bonello
15. MISÉRICORDE Alain Guiraudie
17. THE BRUTALIST Brady Corbet
17. JANET PLANET Annie Baker
19. AFTERNOONS OF SOLITUDE Albert Serra
20. JUROR #2 Clint Eastwood
20. MEGALOPOLIS Francis Ford Coppola
22. LAST SUMMER Catherine Breillat
23. LOVE LIES BLEEDING Rose Glass
24. SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D'ETAT Johan Grimonprez
25. A DIFFERENT MAN Aaron Schimberg
25. THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG Mohammad Rasoulof
27. CLOSE YOUR EYES Víctor Erice
27. EMILIA PÉREZ Jacques Audiard
29. FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA George Miller
29. A TRAVELER'S NEEDS Hong Sang-soo
31. THE ROOM NEXT DOOR Pedro Almodóvar
32. HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT Alexander Horwath
33. THE ZONE OF INTEREST Jonathan Glazer
34. CONCLAVE Edward Berger
34. A FIDAI FILM Kamal Aljafari
36. IT'S NOT ME Leos Carax
37. BY THE STREAM Hong Sang-soo
38. THE HUMAN SURGE 3 Eduardo Williams
38. UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE Matthew Rankin
40. PERFECT DAYS Wim Wenders
41. CIVIL WAR Alex Garland
41. DUNE: PART TWO Denis Villeneuve
43. FLOW Gints Zilbalodis
43. HERE Bas Devos
45. PEPE Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias
46. HIT MAN Richard Linklater
46. THE OTHER WAY AROUND Jonás Trueba
46. SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED Hernán Rosselli
49. ABOUT DRY GRASSES Nuri Bilge Ceylan
49. GREEN BORDER Agnieszka Holland
49. QUEER Luca Guadagnino
A Personal Digression…
I don't make any concerted effort to keep up with new releases. This is reflected in the below selections.
The best films, released in the last three years, that I saw during 2024: Enys Men (Mark Jenkin), Moonage Daydream (Brett Morgen), The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg), No Bears (Jafar Panahi), All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras), TÁR (Todd Field), About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan), Pictures of Ghosts (Kleber Mendonça Filho), Have You Got it Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd (Roddy Bogowa & Storm Thoorgerson), Reality (Tina Satter), Orlando, My Political Biography (Paul B. Preciado), Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude), The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer), Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki), Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet), Ripley (Steven Zaillian) and Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (David Hinton).
The best other films I saw for the first time (or re-watched after a long period): Mother (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1926), So This is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch, 1926), The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde, 1927), Whirlpool (Edmond T. Gréville, 1935), Strange Victory (Leo Hurwitz, 1948), The Eternal Breasts (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1955), Kaagaz Ke Phool (Guru Dutt, 1959), The Coward (Satyajit Ray, 1965), L'Amour fou (Jacques Rivette, 1969), Winter Soldier (Winterfilm Collective, 1972), The Clockmaker of St. Paul (Bertrand Tavernier, 1974), Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1979), The Man Who Planted Trees (Frédéric Back, 1987), Christine (Alan Clarke, 1987), The Addiction (Abel Ferrara, 1995), The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira, 2010), Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-soo, 2016), The Meaning of Hitler (Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker, 2020) and Marx Can Wait (Marco Bellocchio, 2021).
Please Note-: There is no intended correlation between the 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films and the 1,000 Greatest Films. You will note that the rankings for 21st Century films within the 1,000 Greatest Films do not align* with the rankings within this listing. The core difference is that this listing, as mentioned above, incorporates end-of-year critics' ballots, whereas the 1,000 Greatest Films does not.
*It should be noted, despite this, that the 16 highest-ranked 21st Century films from both lists do in fact align.
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the compilation of this edition (and previous editions for that matter) and to everyone who has contacted me with their ongoing support. Please email your feedback (good, bad, or ugly) to bill@theyshootpictures.com.
Begin browsing the 2025 edition of The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films.
Introduction / Films 1,000-251 / Top 250 Films (alpha) / Top 250 Films (250-1) / Top 250 Films (1-250) / Top 250 Films (by year) / Top 1,000 Films (sortable table) / Top 1,000 Films (ranking history) / Alternative Titles / Critics / Top 100 Directors / Starting List (sortable table) / Ex-1000 / Resources & Links