The following films have been voted the best in national and international surveys of critics and the public.
Some surveys focus on all films, while others focus on a particular genre or country. Voting systems differ, and some surveys suffer from biases such as self-selection or skewed demographics, while others may be susceptible to forms of interference such as vote stacking.
Krzysztof Kieślowski (Polish: [ˈkʂɨʂtɔf kʲɛɕˈlɔfskʲi] , 27 June 1941 – 14 March 1996) was a Polish film director and screenwriter. He is known internationally for Dekalog (1989), The Double Life of Veronique (1991), and the Three Colours trilogy (1993–1994).
Kieślowski received numerous awards during his career, including the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize (1988), FIPRESCI Prize (1988, 1991), and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (1991), the Venice Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize (1989), Golden Lion (1993), and OCIC Award (1993), and the Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear (1994). In 1995, he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. In 2002, Kieślowski was listed at number two on the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound list of the top ten film directors of modern times. In 2007, Total Film magazine ranked him at No. 47 on its "100 Greatest Film Directors Ever" list.
Daniel Francis Boyle (born 20 October 1956) is an English director and producer, active in film, television, and theatre. He has been described by the British Film Institute as "one of the liveliest and most unpredictable of British directors, adept at shifting genres and bringing a personal quality to whatever he tackles."
His debut film Shallow Grave (1994) won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film. The British Film Institute ranked Trainspotting (1996) the 10th greatest British film of the 20th century. Boyle's 2008 crime drama film Slumdog Millionaire (2008), the most successful British film of the decade, was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won eight, including the Academy Award for Best Director. He won the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Director. Boyle received two more Academy Award nominations for writing and producing the survival drama 127 Hours (2010).
Sir Carol Reed (30 December 1906 – 25 April 1976) was an English film director and producer, best known for Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), The Third Man (1949), and Oliver! (1968), for which he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director.
Odd Man Out was the first recipient of the BAFTA Award for Best British Film. The Fallen Idol won the second BAFTA Award for Best British Film. The British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of the 20th century.
Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. In the BFI listing of the 100 most important British films of the 20th century, he was the single most noted actor, represented across nine films—six in starring roles and three in supporting roles—including five directed by David Lean and four from Ealing Studios. He won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe a Tony Award and a Volpi Cup. In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980 and the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 1989.
Guinness began his stage career in 1934. Two years later, at the age of 22, he played the role of Osric in Hamlet in the West End and joined the Old Vic. He continued to play Shakespearean roles throughout his career. He served in the Royal Naval Reserve during the Second World War and commanded a landing craft during the invasion of Sicily and Elba. Along with Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, he was one of the great British theatre actors who made the transition to films after the war, making his name in six Ealing comedies, starting in 1949 with both A Run for Your Money and Kind Hearts and Coronets (in which he played eight different characters). He went on to lead roles in 1951 with The Man in the White Suit and The Lavender Hill Mob (for which he received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor), then in 1955 with The Ladykillers, and culminating in 1957 with Barnacle Bill.
The British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) is an organisation that celebrates, supports, and promotes British independent cinema and film-making talent in the United Kingdom. Nominations for the annual awards ceremony are announced in early November, with the ceremony itself taking place in early December.
Since 2015, BIFA has also hosted UK-wide talent development and film screening programmes, with the support of Creative Skillset and the British Film Institute.
Jean Renoir (French: [ʁənwaʁ]; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French filmmaker, actor, producer and author. His La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. In 2002, he was ranked fourth on the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of the greatest directors. Among numerous honours accrued during his lifetime, he received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975. Renoir was the son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the uncle of the cinematographer Claude Renoir. With Claude, he made The River (1951), the first color film shot in India. A lifelong lover of theater, Renoir turned to the stage for The Golden Coach (1952) and French Cancan (1955). He was one of the first filmmakers to be known as an auteur; the critic Penelope Gilliatt said a Renoir shot could be identified "in a thousand miles of film."
Pauline Kael wrote that "At his greatest, Jean Renoir expresses the beauty in our common humanity—the desires and hopes, the absurdities and follies, that we all, to one degree or another, share." Per The New York Times: "The style that ran through Mr. Renoir's films — a mixture of tenderness, irony and Gallic insouciance‐was caught in a famous line from his 1939 masterpiece, The Rules of the Game. It was spoken by Octave, played by the director himself: 'You see, in this world, there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons.'”
Blackmail is a 1929 British crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anny Ondra, John Longden, and Cyril Ritchard. Based on the 1928 play of the same name by Charles Bennett, the film is about a London woman who is blackmailed after killing a man who tries to rape her.
After starting production as a silent film, British International Pictures decided to adapt Blackmail into a separate sound film. It became the first successful European talkie; a silent version was released for cinemas not equipped for sound (at 6,740 feet), with the sound version (7,136 feet) released at the same time. Both versions are held in the British Film Institute collection.
In 1999, the British Film Institute surveyed 1,000 people from the world of British film and television to produce a list of the greatest British films of the 20th century. Voters were asked to choose up to 100 films that were "culturally British".