Collective is a brilliant documentary in its own right, but in this time of pandemic, scandal and democratic upheaval it is also the year’s most important.

In the cyclical, ethereal narrative of this inventive, tender story of love and loss, one of the finest filmmakers of our time spins a spellbinding magical web.

The film’s final shot of Little Edie dancing alone on the filthy floorboards of her rotten hallway is as poignant an image as can be imagined. Simultaneously humorous, pathetic, and triumphant, it is the unconscious statement of a person railing against the world, lost in the maze of her own past and the uncertainty of her future, at once hopelessly deluded and consciously defiant.

Akin’s assured directing makes this a film that doesn’t put a foot wrong.

For all its postmodern smarts, La La Land has a heart as big as its Cinemascope screen. This is primarily down to the two leads, without their performances it would only be an empty, if impressive, exercise in dizzying technical skill and style.

Austere, emotionally taciturn and with shades of Bergman, Dreyer and Jan Troell’s The New Land about it, Godland is the Icelandic director’s most accomplished work to date.

It’s multi-layered and beautifully observed – as much about the creative process as it is about obsessive love. It’s a glorious affirmation of how experience feeds artistic endeavour.

A masterful dissection of social inequality and the psychology of money.

Endlessly thought-provoking, the disturbing nature of this quite incredible work cultivates a long-lasting sense of unease in the viewer and achieves what all good documentaries aim to do – it remains firmly lodged in you mind and refuses to loose its terrible grip.

Whereas Bait was a lament for a way of life swallowed up by mindless urbanite tourism, Enys Men is a hymn to sublime, endless time and the hauntedness of existence.

In politics and the media, opportunistic hate-mongers whip up bigotry against gender non-conformity, while everyone in contemporary cinema is beautiful but no one is horny. In this context, Please Baby Please is a vision inspired by the past, but is undoubtedly a document of the present.

If Beale Street Could Talk is a rich, tender and poetic film as much about love as it is about injustice.

As much a repudiation of auteur theory as a tribute to the imperfect process of creation, One Cut of the Dead is a thrilling reminder that of the beautiful, vital lie that is cinema.

Starless Dreams is a fascinating and humane view of the marginalised and forgotten. The girls' voices rise as a startlingly powerful chorus, questioning, challenging and demanding we listen.

The combination of Capra’s playful sensibility, inimitable 1930s line delivery, and a screwball wit really come together here to capture lightning in a bottle.

Subsumed by the bigger picture, the plot resurfaces at the end to utterly devastating effect. Only a film with the epic sweep of So Long, My Son could pull off such a narrative feat so beautifully.

Wells’ debut is a frankly astonishing work which will leave a lasting impression.

Östlund has created a full-throated, roaring comedy of hate against the upper-classes. It is cynical, nihilistic and has no issue about punching down.

Slaboshpitsky's The Tribe is gripping, tour de force cinema from its opening jab, and from there it continually forces you against the ropes before delivering a knockout punch with a gut-wrenching conclusion destined to leave audiences stunned.

Intolerance may not be perfect, but with such gargantuan spectacle and timeless mastery of form on show, it is nigh on impossible not to be swept up by this centruy-spanning extravanganza and its medium-shaping impact.

Gomes has created something truly unique and remarkable; a rally cry against the powers that have choked the fire out of his country and a love song to those he sees rekindling the flame. Its constituent parts may not be perfect, but what a stunning whole.

Remarkably, this is Cole's first time in front of the camera. He approaches Alex’s emotional journey as a teenager with a sure touch, switching effortlessly between innocence and a gradual hardening.

Arabian Nights may frustrate and enervate, but with hindsight these blemishes fade into a gleaming collage.

The individual tales meanings are obscured by wavering tone and formal gymnastics.

With The Passion of Joan of Arc, the world arguably saw the very best of both Dreyer and Joan – whilst also something approaching the very worst of humanity.

With its astonishing display of directorial control and rich thematic textures, Nashville is an undisputed masterpiece. Add to that the biting comedy and knockout musical sequences and it’s certainly tempting to make the claim for Altman’s all-star gem being the best American film of the 1970s.

This is the refined work of an artist at the peak of his powers, and, dare we say it, a masterpiece.

Playtime attacks the good taste of understanding by making you understand the importance of both absence and presence that coexists in a modern shared public space and a gradually disappearing private space.

His Girl Friday is satire of the highest order.

Cimino’s drama does far more than simply function; it’s an awkward, uneasy paean to a dying class that will soon be destroyed by the oncoming march of globalisation

McQueen and Newland’s assured script grips from the start and keeps us deeply involved in the characters’ fates.

Like delving into a cold cave of human emotion, Three Colours: Blue is the jewel in the crown of Kieślowski’s trilogy – a fascinating examination of freedom, sorrow and identity, and perhaps one of the most necessary films of contemporary French cinema.

Mon Roi is one of the best films of the year and an impressively realistic depiction of the highs and lows of love.

Three Colours: White brings Kieślowski back to his Polish roots and explores issues of equality through nationality and the fragile dynamic of marriage.

The Good Dinosaur is up there with Toy Story in terms of its technical achievement and for providing an equally heart-touching, emotional tale.

Three Colours: Red is the trilogy’s anti-romance, depicting an unconventional love story blossoming against the insurmountable obstacle of age – perhaps the most adventurous and personal of the trilogy,

Films such as the exquisite Funny Face, where all the ingredients came together in picture perfect composition, allows us to share, even if only briefly, in this land of fantasy and make-believe.

Mandy is not just hideous, hilarious and thrilling – although, it’s all of those and then some – it’s also a meditation on personal grief which loses no poignancy for all its blood-soaked insanity and eye-melting psychedelia.

Piece by piece, Assassination Nation lays out and deconstructs the misogynistic assumptions that underpin many of our reactions to the girls’ behaviour.

Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul is a visceral, astonishingly assured work, compelling, rarely predictable, and vital.

Petrov’s Flu finds its meaning through sensation, memory and aesthetics, depicting social and political decay in its purest form stripped of the comforting scaffolding of linear narrative.

Nathaniel Kahn’s The Price of Everything certainly doesn’t hold back in its skewering of a contemporary art world defined far more by financial gain and status seeking than a genuine love of beauty.

Truly one of the most emotionally devastating films to have ever graced the big screen, Au Hasard Balthazar is an exemplary example of Bresson’s art that transcends its symbolic reverie to Christianity to become an eloquent prayer for the potential power of cinema to truly move us.

Glazer’s Under the Skin is his otherworldly opus.

A hilariously louche and ramshackle psychedelic noir, Inherent Vice is an audacious stylistic leap for Anderson, but his risks pay off beautifully. It's an amazing work, capturing the heady vibe of Thomas Pynchon's novel while stumbling into in the great cinematic lineage of California noir.

Benefiting from the matter-of-fact, unerring defiance exhibited by the group, Heineman is unflinching in representing the brutality perpetrated by ISIS as well as their own very savvy use of the media as a tool for recruitment and influence.

The running time (like all Lanzmann's films) is not oppressive but allows for Murmelstein and his interlocutor to talk through, around and inside the context and reality of pragmatism, egoism, heroism and evil.

For fans of Mack’s juxtapositions of natural and synthetic imagery and of her fascination with repetition and patterns, The Grand Bizarre is surely the artist’s most accomplished work.

What shapes Breathless as such an influential and long lasting ‘classic’ of French cinema is Godard’s ferocious delivery of simplistic subject matter, his direction of iconic actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, and his all-out gallantry in creating the first of many films that broke all the rules, both in his homeland and overseas.

It’s the film’s humanity which is at the core of its genius.

Anomalisa might be bizarre, surreal and far out, but it always feels paradoxically real, grounded and deeply true.

It's triumph is its determined optimism, even if it admits that is probably a fantasy. It's a tale of the fallen who, like Moonee's favourite tree, keeps on growing regardless.

Heineman himself has said he feels an “enormous kinship” with Colvin’s commitment to revealing the human cost of conflict. And that, despite all her personal flaws, is what makes Colvin’s story so profoundly moving.

There is much that is inexplicable and remote about Sun Choke, but those should not be read as immediate negatives, but held up as virtues. Cinema too often gives the viewer everything on a plate and then spoon feds us with details until 'we get it'.

Szabolcs Hadju's It's Not the Time of My Life is an engrossing, poignant and often very funny study of marriage, family and child rearing.

Rendering the passage of time as a painful yet serene experience, Varda by Agnès comprehends what it means to be a human with a natural flair for creative output.

Network is an outstanding satire that has become more rather than less relevant with each passing year. It is bitingly funny, whip smart and as mad as hell.

It remains a marvel of a modern ethos, particularly in the behaviour of its principal characters: whether it’s the total lack of jealousy or its cinematic style that encompasses newsreel footage, photographic stills and freeze frames.

Girl is an extraordinarily moving film.

Bones and All, like the best horror movies, finds poetry in the frightening, in the transgressive, in the perverse. It mines light from darkness and transforms it before our eyes into something universal, shining and true, no matter how ephemeral.

Under the Shadow is not only perfectly paced, the storytelling and plotting is emotionally gripping. The director also uses setting and location, composition and framing like a master of horror.

Prayers for the Stolen is fundamentally an account of powerlessness, of the insidious ways that forces act invisibly, immeasurably, and often horrifically on those with the least ability to resist them.

As though North by Northwest boasts some of Hitchcock’s most ambitious and memorable set pieces it is also one his most terrifically funny, playful moving pictures, cutting just the right line between suspense and belly laughs.

Shines out as a rough diamond, a masterpiece of British cinema undeniably worthy of its classical title.

Not only is Fallout the best Mission: Impossible film by a considerable margin, it is also undoubtedly the best action film of the year.

This brilliant, beautifully observed comedy is a joy to watch throughout. The Second Mother's narrative works on so many levels, reflected in the film's ambiguous title, and the characterisation is flawless.

Where The Wolfman is a a fairgound ghost train, entertaining but ultimately shallow, Cat People is a true journey into the power of fear and belief, at once frightening, disturbing and psychologically complex.

Jaws is still terrific and has lost none of its bite.

The greatest art not only shows us how to live, it comforts us in our darkest hours. This realisation will stand as Preston Sturges’ genius.

Eggers has created a film of disturbing horror, absurdist comedy and probing psychodrama which defies the generic boundaries as it breaks through them. The Lighthouse is a saltwater gothic masterpiece.

Dhont’s second film is a touching and empathetic treatment of male friendship, superbly acted and beautifully filmed.

Ultimately a small tale of the struggles of ordinary working-class people against the tourist trade, in a wider political context, the film exists in a deeply contemporary space. Through its filmmaking craft, this debut remarkably operates in a timeless space.

Not only emblematic of independent American cinema, but, released in 1969, is the definitive statement on the death of the 60s.

Son of Saul is not simply a good film, it feels like an urgent and important one, a warning from history.

Bright light and dazzling colour dominate, as befits the Santa Barbara setting, while every scene is packed with moments that are in turn engaging, amusing, poignant, awkward, heart-warming, heart-breaking and profound.

The film is a compelling, concerning artefact which shows demagoguery in action, without coming across as heavy-handed.

This could be seen as a smug, empty exercise in satirical excoriation – and as a smug, empty exercise in satirical excoriation, it’d be one of the best – but there is a genuine heart to the film, as well as intellect. Cheadle, Gerwig and Driver are all superb, while Sam Nivola and Raffey Cassidy give their smart-mouth, role reversal kids an impossible likeability.

The film is heartfelt and sincere in its concern to understand conflict and the plight of good men when they're forced to make impossible choices.

From five years-worth of footage, al-Kateab constructs a narrative of astonishing humanity, clarity and urgency, capturing a global outrage from the perspective of the human and individual.

It’s a picture so precariously balanced on the edge of poetry and sentiment, of defiance and self-pity.

William Faulkner once made the sage point that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Louis Malle’s Golden Lion winner Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) is a Second World War-set film very much guided in spirit by the US novelist’s musing on the febrile relationship between memory, time and individual and collective histories.

Taking a sledgehammer to institutionalised racism with the clarity of purpose and skill of a master craftsman, Steve McQueen is once again at the very top of his game, and indeed his profession, with Mangrove.

Its thematic textures run deep, but the picture retains real visceral force.

Combining the director’s key interests in dysfunctional family units, social stratification and the seething undercurrent of violence inherent in all positions of power, Coppola’s mafia sequel not only succeeded in dwarfing its still terrific predecessor in terms of drama and scope, but also brought together De Niro and Pacino on screen for the first (but thankfully not the last) time.

A galling, distressing but enthralling documentary.

Close’s performance here surely must finally provide her with the Oscar she has deserved for so many years; the suppressed resentment which slowly builds up on her face steadily throughout the film is a masterclass in screen acting.

Jackson and his entire production team have produced a film which is both a form of cultural monument and a monumental cinematic achievement.

Blurring traditional boundaries of documentary with rich, beautiful animation in many shades and colours, the Danish director has a great deal invested in telling this story.

Overshadowed at the time and since, Summer of Soul brings the Harlem Cultural Festival and a pivotal point in American history into the light.

If you’re an admirer of Malick’s poetic investigations into the mysteries of existence, faith and our tragic disconnection to the natural world, A Hidden Life will leave you enraptured and profoundly moved.

The Wild Pear Tree isn’t a showy or boldly radical work, this is still Ceylan’s brand of poetic landscapes and intimate dramas, but it does represent an intriguing artistic progression, so any claims of ‘more of the same’ are redundant.

Notorious is a phenomenally rich experience whether it is on the first or the hundredth viewing. Hitchcock’s most emotionally nuanced and most adult depiction of relationships feels as vital as ever.

The Hustler is one of the highlights of Paul Newman‘s career. The film is often ranked as one of the best films of its time, largely thanks to Newman’s excellent portrayal of the down beaten Felson.

Us is a true genre flick, polished to a fine degree, a pure distillation of the essence of horror cinema.

Its social reality – that of the emptying and decline of rural regions in Italy – is contemporary and vital, but there is something deeper and simpler at play here. In that simplicity, with its notes played purely, there is no need of distortion or abstraction to justify itself.

Fortunately, Boyhood concludes on a note of such unbridled optimism, Linklater is defying you to leave the auditorium without a grin on your face. Indeed, few will after experiencing this astonishing cinematic treasure.

It is hard to fully articulate how, but Gunda is as much a damning meditation on the human condition as it is a glowing, thought-provoking portrayal of a mother’s love for her children, a sow’s love for her piglets.

Ad Astra provides the genuine thematic depth and real-world grounding so often missing from films of its ilk.