Sight and Sound presents: The Greatest Films of All Time (Special Edition, 2022)

Sight & Sound is the BFI's international film magazine, offering unrivalled insight into film culture with in-depth reviews, interviews and features exploring contemporary and historical cinema in all its variety.

This special edition celebrates Sight & Sound's 2022 Greatest Films of All Time poll, as voted for by the world’s most influential filmmakers and critics

"Once a decade, Sight and Sound conducts the world’s biggest poll of filmmakers and critics to produce a list of the ‘Greatest Films of All Time’. The results, first published in 1952, are a bellwether for international film culture and pored over by cinephiles on every continent. 

When Chantal Akerman’s seminal 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was announced as our most recent number one, #sightandsoundpoll trended globally for days as the world’s media excitedly made sense of the story. The impact on film culture was huge, with cinemas, film societies, publishers and distributors responding with screenings, seasons, releases and events to explore this seismic shift in the canon. 

More than 1,600 critics, programmers, curators, academics and archivists voted for 3,800 different films in our critics’ poll. Almost 600 filmmakers voted for 1,700 different films in our directors’ poll. This is, without doubt, the most comprehensive and expertly curated list of great films ever compiled. 

In this special issue we reproduce the 2022 top 100 in full alongside introductions to every poll from 1952 to today, mapping the evolution of the poll and the critical position Sight and Sound holds at the centre of film discourse. 

Whether you’re coming to these lists for the first time or dipping back in for another hit, please enjoy them and most of all watch as many of the films as you can. Roll on 2032…"

— Mike Williams, Editor in chief, Sight and Sound

Published by BFI
Softcover
98 pages 
230 x 300 mm
ISBN 977263475102309