The prestigious Sight and Sound poll turned 70 years old in November with its seventh edition ranking the best 100 films ever made. The ballot sample has increased with each passing decade, and in 1992, the BFI began to consult the expertise of select directors, a pool that has grown from 101 to 480 in just 30 years. With the world’s most discerning filmmaking brains involved in the list’s selection process, it’s irrefutably one of the most definitive ranking systems in the industry.

2022 has become a landmark year for the Sight and Sound vote, with not just a record-breaking number of filmmakers contributing, but also the very fact it has been the first time in its history that a film directed by a woman has claimed the top spot. Let’s take a look at the most notable adjustments made to the critic-curated 2022 list…

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels

Woman drinks milk.
Paradise Films

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s 1975 movie, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels, designed to read like a postal address, claimed Sight and Sound’s distinguished Best Film of All Time prize, jumping a staggering 35 places in the process. The movie follows the tale of a widowed single-mother, Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig), whose monotonous existence includes sex work with a client each afternoon.

Related: The Sight and Sound Poll Named This the Best Film of All Time, and Here’s Why

Jeanne’s peculiar yet mundane reality is abruptly disrupted when her quiet continuance sees her commit cold-blooded murder. This avant-garde, minimalist masterpiece is a meticulously composed piece of cinema that blends the everyday backing track to a housewife’s life, with an unnerving obsessiveness at its very core.

Mulholland Dr.

Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring in Mulholland Drive.
Universal Pictures

David Lynch’s amnesia-induced kaleidoscopic nightmare is a confusingly fervent film that masterfully investigates the nature of fantasy. Rita (Laura Harring), an amnesiac who, following a car crash, pieces together the remnants of who she is and how she got there with the help of Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), a young, aspiring Hollywood actress who has recently moved into her aunt’s apartment to follow her acting dreams. Mulholland Drive is consistently incoherent, a nonsensical fever dream that is all about illusion, disorientation, and love. Lynch’s 2001 film made its way into the poll’s esteemed top 10 movies of all time, sitting at a supremely respectable eighth.

Orson Welles Has Vertigo as Citizen Kane Drops to 3rd

Orson Welles as Kane in Citizen Kane
RKO Radio Pictures
 

Citizen Kane is a film that has become accustomed to sitting atop the celebrated pile of best films ever made, occupying the number one spot of BFI’s Sight and Sound for 60 years. The movie was knocked off its perch by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo in 2012, and now this year's edition of the pool means it has suffered consecutive relegations, now lingering in third place. Its former first-place rival, 1958’s Vertigo, arguably the flagship title of the Hitchcockian era, was also demoted to the second-best film of all time.

Related: Has Vertigo Overtaken Citizen Kane as 'The Best Film Ever Made?’

Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood for Love Makes Impressive In-roads

Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in In the Mood For Love
Block 2 Pictures

Director Wong Kar-wai’s Hong Kong romance has surged from critics’ 24th choice to fifth in the all-time rankings. The achingly beautiful film, set against the backdrop of the former British colony in 1962, In the Mood for Love concerns the lives of Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu), and Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk), who become friends while their respective partners are away on business. When it becomes apparent that their spouses are both being unfaithful, the pair attempt to resist the undeniable chemistry seemingly forcing them together.

Having created the exquisite Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, In the Mood for Love was Wong Kar-wai’s last truly great film, following several misfires including My Blueberry Nights and his 2013 action drama, The Grandmaster.

71 places en hausse pour Beau Travail de Claire Denis

Men in the sand in Beau Travail from Claire Denis
Pyramide Distribution

In a remarkable 71-place jump, Claire Denis’ 1998 film, Beau Travail, has flown up in the critics’ estimations from 78th to seventh. The French screen adaptation of Herman Melville’s LGBTQ+ drama Billy Budd, tells the story of Galoup (Denis Lavant), a foreign legion officer who recounts his time in the Gulf of Djibouti. The arrival of a new recruit, Gilles Sentain who is both talented in combat and in social situations, begins to spark suppressed feelings in Galoup.

Tokyo Story and 2001: A Space Odyssey

Keir Dullea as David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Due to Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels inclusion, Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story dropped to fourth, meaning that director Stanley Kubrick’s mother of all sci-fi movies, 2001: A Space Odyssey remains the only film in the updated top 10 to retain its 2012 spot, at sixth place.

Recent Movies Added

Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out
Universal Pictures

While no film released between 2010 and 2020 has managed to crack the top 20, Jordan Peele’s 2017 horror Get Out and Barry Jenkins’ Academy Award-winning, LGBTQ+ indie drama Moonlight have both infiltrated the 100 Greatest Films of All Time.