In another first, the list also includes two animated films, both directed by the Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki: “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988) is tied at No. 72 and “Spirited Away” (2001) is tied at 75. Four films in the Top 100 were released in the last decade, including “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight” (2016), tied at No. 60, Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” (2019), tied at No. 90, and Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” (2017), tied at No. 95.
The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards Season
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In 2012, no film released in the previous 10 years made the cut.
As is the case every decade, the new arrivals mean some notable demotions. This time, a handful of long-heralded landmarks, including David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” (1969) and Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” (1974) dropped out.
“Momentum moves in both directions,” Williams said. “Certain directors perhaps are less in vogue now than they were in the past.”
To create the list, five Sight and Sound editors and associates asked respondents to select what they considered to be the 10 greatest films of all time, with the definition of “greatness” left to the respondent’s discretion. The lists were unranked — each of the 10 films received one vote. The editors then used software to rank all submitted films by the total number of votes.
Akerman’s triumph continues decades of growing recognition for the director, who died in 2015 at 65. “Jeanne Dielman,” the first of several of her films exploring the interior lives of women, meticulously tracks the daily routine of a middle-aged widow, slowly building to a dramatic climax. A second Akerman film, “News From Home” (1976), inspired by her move to New York City, also made the Sight and Sound list, tied at No. 52.
Speaking to The Times for Akerman’s obituary, Nicola Mazzanti, the director of the Royal Belgian Film Archive at the time, said “Jeanne Dielman” “created, overnight, a new way of making films, a new way of telling stories, a new way of telling time.
