These are the films that I could in no way exclude from the list of my favourites; in case of doubt, I left the film out. The 112 form a bit more than 20% of all the motion pictures I have seen in my life (yes, I do keep an account). The majority of them are included because of the narrative structure or style, which I generally find more appealing than the "message" or the content of the story. Where I could not decide which film of a director I should include —and considered two to be too much—, I gave both alternatives. And, of course, if I had compiled it yesterday (or next Sunday, or on my 25th birthday), the list would have been different.
- The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (Auguste & Louis Lumière, 1896)
- Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922)
- Ballet mécanique (Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy, 1924)
- The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
- Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
- The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
- City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
- M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
- L'atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
- Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
- Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
- Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
- Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, 1943)
- Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943)
- Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
- Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)
- Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
- Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
- Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
- Ugetsu monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
- Tokyo monogatari (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
- Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
- Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
- The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
- The Unvanquished (Satyajit Ray, 1956)
- The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
- Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
- Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
- Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959)
- Night Train (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1959)
- La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
- L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
- Last Year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
- Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)
- The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)
- Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman, 1962)
- The House Is Black (Forough Farrokhzad, 1962)
- 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
- Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
- The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
- Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov, 1964)
- Red Desert (Michelangelo Antionioni, 1964)
- The Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
- Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
- The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has, 1965)
- Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
- Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)
- Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
- Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
- Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol & Paul Morrissey, 1966)
- Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967)
- Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)
- The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)
- Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968)
- Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
- Satyricon (Federico Fellini, 1969)
- My Night at Maud's (Éric Rohmer, 1969)
- The Damned (Luchino Visconti, 1969)
- Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
- Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971)
- The Emigrants (Jan Troell, 1971) or The New Land (1972)
- McCabe & Mrs Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
- Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
- Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
- Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
- Ciao Manhattan (John Palmer & David Weisman, 1972)
- The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
- Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973) or Days of Heaven (1978)
- Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
- The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog, 1974)
- The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974)
- A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)
- Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)
- The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
- Grey Gardens (Albert & David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffy Meyer, 1975)
- Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
- Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1975)
- Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
- Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)
- Sebastiane (Derek Jarman & Paul Humfress, 1976)
- The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi, 1978)
- The Meetings of Anna (Chantal Akerman, 1978)
- Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
- Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
- Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
- Siberiade (Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, 1979)
- Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980)
- Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
- Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
- Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
- Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
- The Decalogue (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1989)
- Three Colours: Blue (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993)
- Sátántángo (Béla Tarr, 1994)
- Vanya on 42nd Street (Louis Malle, 1994)
- Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami, 1994) or Ten (2002)
- Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994)
- Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
- Ulysses' Gaze (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1995)
- Underground (Emir Kusturica, 1995)
- Eternity and a Day (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1998)
- Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000)
- In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
- Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hrantizky, 2000)
- Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
- The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002)
- Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
- Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002)
- Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (Kim Ki-duk, 2003)
- Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2003)
- Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
- The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005)
- The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
