What do Martin Scorsese, Bong Joon-ho, and other great directors think are the best films of all time?

Earlier this week, the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound magazine released its once-per-decade list of The Best Films Of All Time, a 100-film ranking, curated from the opinions of hundreds of critics, of the greatest movies in movie-making history. In addition to the critics list, though, Sight & Sound also released another list—this one only polling directors, each submitting a ballot of 10 movies that they feel embody the best of film.

The director’s list itself is available online, offering up some interesting contrasts to the original list. (Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, for instance, did not take the number one spot here, which instead went to 2001: A Space Odyssey; Jeanne Dielman had to settle for a fourth-place tie with 1953's Tokyo Story.)

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More interesting than the aggregate list, though—at least to our eyes—are the individual ballots from a number of high-profile directors, which Sight & Sound has been releasing over the last few days, both in the pages of the actual magazine, and on its social media accounts. A lot of very famous movie-makers participated in the list, and this is one of the purest ways to find out, for instance, what Martin Scorsese ranks as the greatest films of all time. (Some Hitchcock, some Kubrick, some Welles, several non-Western filmmakers—and nothing newer than 1968.)

Contrast that with Bong Joon-ho, whose Parasite made both the critics’ and the directors’ list, and whose ballot is a mixture of older classics (including Scorsese’s own Raging Bull) and newer films, including David Fincher’s Zodiac and George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road.

Then there’s Daughters Of The Dust’s Julie Dash, who highlights the works of Jane Campion and Wong Kar Wai (Chungking Express, not In The Mood For Love) and Paul Schrader, who outright states his refusal to vote for any movie that hasn’t been out for at least 25 years.

One of the most interesting ballots, meanwhile, came from S. S. Rajamouli, whose crossover sensation RRR was an international box office hit in 2022. We’re reasonably sure this is the only ballot submitted that included Kung Fu Panda as one of the 10 greatest films of all time, alongside two Mel Gibson flicks (Braveheart and Apocalypto) and Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump.

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in even more ballots—including those from Edgar Wright, Ti West, George Miller—who returned the favor and voted for Parasite—John Carpenter, and several more, we’ll direct you to the Twitter account of Sleazoids podcast host Josh Lewis, who’s been cataloguing a vast number of the polls listed in the actual magazine. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the minds of the people who make our favorite films.

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