333 Essential Films That Every Human Being Must Watch [Chronological Order, 1 Work Per Director]

I challenged myself by creating a list of what I consider are the most essential films in history, I hope this list encourages, particularly people who are beginners, to discover and enjoy the amazing world of cinema.

A shot from Orson Welles' masterpiece, "Citizen Kane".

---

01. A Trip To The Moon (Georges Méliès, 1902)

02. Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (D. W. Griffith, 1916)

03. The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)

04. Häxan (Benjamin Christensen, 1922)

05. Nanook Of The North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922)

06. Ballet Mécanique (Dudley Murphy & Fernand Léger, 1924)

07. Greed (Erich Von Stroheim, 1924)

08. Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

09. The General (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926)

10. Faust (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1926)

11. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) (2010 Restoration)

12. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)

13. The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)

14. Man With A Movie Camera (Dziga Vértov, 1929)

15. Frankenstein / Bride Of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931 - 1935)

16. Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)

17. A Night At The Opera (Sam Wood, 1935)

18. Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1936)

19. Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)

20. Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)

21. You Can't Take It With You (Frank Capra, 1938)

22. The Grapes Of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)

23. Fantasia (Various, 1940)

24. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

25. Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944)

26. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)

27. The Pearl (Emilio Fernández, 1947)

28. Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)

29. Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)

30. The Red Shoes (Emeric Pressburger & Michael Powell, 1948)

31. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)

32. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

33. Le Plaisir (Max Ophüls, 1952)

34. Tokyo Story (Yasujirô Ozu, 1953)

35. Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)

36. On The Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)

37. Night And Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)

38. The Apu Trilogy (Satyajit Ray, 1955 - 1959)

39. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)

40. The Bitter Stems (Fernando Ayala, 1956)

41. 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957)

42. Rosaura At 10 O'Clock (Mario Soffici, 1958)

43. The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)

44. North By Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)

45. Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959)

46. La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)

47. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

48. Eyes Without A Face (Georges Franju, 1960)

49. Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960)

50. Confessions of an Opium Eater (Albert Zugsmith, 1962)

51. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)

52. Cléo From 5 To 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)

53. Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)

54. Lawrence Of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)

55. The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963)

56. Black Sabbath (Mario Bava, 1963)

    
    

57. I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)

58. Blow-up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)

59. Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966

60. Tokyo Drifter (Seijun Suzuki, 1966)

61. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

62. Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966)

63. The Battle Of Algiers (Guillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

64. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)

65. The Face Of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966)

66. Belle De Jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967)

67. Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

68. Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)

69. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

70. Night Of The Living Dead (George Romero, 1968)

71. If... (Lindsay Anderson, 1968)

72. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)

73. Portrait Of Hell (Shirō Toyoda, 1969)

71. Invasión (Hugo Santiago, 1969)

72. The Color Of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1969)

73. Trash (Paul Morrissey, 1970)

74. Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, 1970)

75. The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)

76. The Lickerish Quartet (Radley Metzger, 1970)

77. The Butcher (Claude Chabrol, 1970)

78. Harold And Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)

79. Punishment Park (Peter Watkins, 1971)

80. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)

81. Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)

82. Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972)

83. The Godfather Trilogy (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972 - 1990)

84. The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973)

85. The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973)

86. The Wicker Man (Robuin Hardy, 1973)

87. Fantastic Planet (René Laloux, 1973)

88. The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

89. Belladonna Of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973)

90. Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)

91. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

92. Celine And Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974)

93. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)

94. Sweet Movie (Dušan Makavejev, 1974)

95. Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974)

96. Deep Red (Dario Argento, 1975)

97. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

98. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Miloš Forman, 1975)

99. Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)

100. The Battle Of Chile Trilogy (Patricio Guzmán, 1975 - 1979)

101. The Travelling Players (Theo Angelopoulos, 1975)

102. Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)

103. In The Realm Of The Senses (Nagisa Ōshima, 1976)

104. Assault On Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)

105. The Man Who Fell To Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)

Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)

107. Midnight Express (Alan Parker, 1978)

108. The Tree Of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi, 1978)

109. Stalker (Andréi Tarkovsky, 1979)

Monty Python's Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979)

Mad Max (George Miller, 1979)

Thief (Michael Mann, 1981)

Francisca (Manoel De Oliveira, 1981)

American Pop (Ralph Bakshi, 1981)

Christiane F. (Uli Edel, 1981)

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)

City Of Pirates (Raúl Ruiz, 1983)

Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)

Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)

The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985)

Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)

Come And See (Elem Klímov, 1985)

The Name Of The Rose (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986)

Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch, 1986)

Man Facing Southeast (Eliseo Subiela, 1986)

The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986)

The Green Ray (Éric Rohmer, 1986)

The Lost Boys (Joel Schumacher, 1987)

Brightness (Souleymane Cissé, 1987)

Akira (Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 1988)

Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988)

On The Silver Globe (Andrzej Zulawski, 1988)

Anguish (Bigas Luna, 1988)

Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988)

The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)

Grave Of The Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988)

Alice (Jan Švankmajer, 1988)

Do The Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)

My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989)

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway, 1989)

Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)

The Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismäki, 1990)

The King Of New York (Abel Ferrara, 1990)

Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990)

Raise The Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991)

The Silence Of The Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)

The Double Life Of Véronique (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1991)

Boyz N The Hood (John Singleton, 1991)

Delicatessen (Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, 1991)

The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)

Hard Boiled (John Woo, 1992)

A Place In The World (Adolfo Aristarain, 1992)

Baraka (Ron Fricke, 1992)

The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)

Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993)

Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano, 1993)

The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1993)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993)

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

Satantango (Béla Tarr, 1994)

Léon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994)

The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994)

Kids (Larry Clark, 1995)

Land And Freedom (Ken Loach, 1995)

Underground (Emir Kusturica, 1995)

Ghost In The Shell / Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence (Mamoru Oshii, 1995 - 2004)

La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)

Before Trilogy (Richard Linklater, 1995 - 2013)

Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996)

Fargo (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, 1996)

Contact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997)

Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)

Taste Of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)

Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1997)

Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)

Open Your Eyes (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997)

Cube (Vincenzo Natali, 1997)

Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998)

Buffalo '66 (Vincent Gallo, 1998)

After Life (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1998)

Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1998)

The Dinner Game (Francis Veber, 1998)

Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998)

The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998)

Peppermint Candy (Lee-Chang Dong, 1999)

Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)

The Color Of Paradise (Majid Majidi, 1999)

American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999)

All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)

The Iron Giant (Brad Bird, 1999)

Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999)

Matrix (Wachowski Sisters, 1999)

Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)

The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Miguel Sánchez-Quiros & Daniel Myrick, 1999)

The Thirteenth Floor (Josef Rusnak, 1999)

In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)

Dancer In The Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000)

In Vanda's Room (Pedro Costa, 2000)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)

Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000)

Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000)

Requiem For A Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)

Nine Queens (Fabián Bielinsky, 2000)

Platform (Jia Zhangke, 2000)

Snatch (Guy Ritchie, 2000)

Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)

The Devil's Backbone (Guillermo Del Toro, 2001)

What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2001)

The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003) [Extended Edition 2011]

Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)

Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001)

Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)

Adaptation. (Spike Jonze, 2002)

Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokúrov, 2002)

City Of God (Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund, 2002)

Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)

One Hour Photo (Mark Romanek, 2002)

Bowling For Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)

Spun (Jonas Åkerlund, 2002)

Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003)

Oldboy (Chan-Wook Park, 2003)

American Splendor (Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, 2003)

Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi, 2003)

Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont, 2003)

After You... (Pierre Salvadori, 2003)

A Tale Of Two Sisters (Kim Ji-Woon, 2003)

Lost In Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring (Kim Ki-duk, 2003)

Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, 2003)

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)

Mind Game (Masaaki Yuasa, 2004)

Shaun Of The Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)

Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004)

Ferpect Crime (Álex De La Iglesia, 2004)

Turtles Can Fly (Bahman Ghobadi, 2004)

Machuca (Andrés Wood, 2004)

Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005)

The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005)

March Of The Penguins (Luc Jacquet, 2005)

Election (Johnnie To, 2005)

The Child (Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2005)

Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005)

Tekkonkinkreet (Michael Arias, 2006)

Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan (Larry Charles, 2006)

The Lives Of The Others (Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck, 2006)

This Is England (Shane Meadows, 2006)

Paprika (Satoshi Kon, 2006)

After The Wedding (Susanne Bier, 2006)

Taxidermia (György Pálfi, 2006)

Idiocracy (Mike Judge, 2006)

Strawberry Shortcakes (Hitoshi Yazaki, 2006)

Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)

99 Francs (Jan Kounen, 2007)

Control (Anton Corbijn, 2007)

[•REC] (Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza, 2007)

Departures (Yōjirō Takita, 2008)

Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008)

Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008)

Love Exposure (Sion Sono, 2008)

WALL·E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)

Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008)

A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, 2008)

About Elly (Asghar Farhadi, 2008)

Eden Lake (James Watkins, 2008)

Mulan: Rise Of A Warrior (Jingle Ma, 2009)

The Milk Of Sorrow (Claudia Llosa, 2009)

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009)

A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, 2009)

The Shock Doctrine (Mat Whitecross, Michael Winterbottom, 2009)

Enter The Void (Gaspar Noé, 2009)

Sea (Na Hong-Jin, 2010)

Beyond The Black Rainbow (Panos Cosmatos, 2010)

Poetry (Lee Chang-dong, 2010)

Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell, 2010)

Beginners (Mike Mills, 2010)

Confessions (Tetsuya Nakashima, 2010)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011)

Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)

The Tree Of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011)

Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)

Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012)

Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)

The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012)

Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland, 2012)

Hope (Lee Joon-ik, 2013)

Hard To Be A God (Aleksei Yuryevich German, 2013)

The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)

Norte, The End Of History (Lav Diaz, 2013)

Blue Is The Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)

Whiplash (Damien Chazelle, 2014)

Leviathan (Andréi Zviáguintsev, 2014)

Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

Phoenix (Christian Petzold, 2014)

Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014)

A Most Violent Year (J. C. Chandor, 2014)

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2014)

Manchester By The Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)

The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015)

Victoria (Sebastian Schipper, 2015)

Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes, 2015)

Embrace Of The Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015)

The Club (Pablo Larraín, 2015)

The Wailing (Na Hong-jin, 2016)

Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)

Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016)

Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford, 2016)

Train To Busan (Yeon Sang-ho, 2016)

Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)

And Suddenly The Dawn (Silvio Caiozzi, 2017)

Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017)

Mundbound (Dee Rees, 2017)

An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

Happy As Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher, 2018)

The Wolf House (Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña, 2018)

Cold War (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2018)

The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

Parasite (Bong Joon-Ho, 2019)

Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

Uncut Gems (Safdie Brothers, 2019)

Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019)

Possessor (Brandon Cronenberg, 2020)

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Turner Ross & Bill Ross IV, 2020)

Nomadland (Chloé Zhao, 2020)

City Hall (Frederick Wiseman, 2020)

Soul (Pete Docter, 2020)

The Swamp (Lucrecia Martel, 2020)

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin, 2020)

Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021)

The Worst Person In The World (Joachim Trier, 2021)

Don't Look Up (Adam McKay, 2021)

Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022)

You Won't Be Alone (Goran Stolevski, 2022)

Close (Lukas Dhont, 2022)

Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Scheinert & Dan Kwan, 2022)

The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023)