Akira Kurosawa's ‘Seven Samurai’ Named Greatest Foreign-Language Film Ever By New BBC Poll of Over 209 Film Critics

The BBC polled 209 film critics across 43 countries, and came up with the 100 greatest achievements in foreign-language film. Sitting at the top of the list was Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai.” Kurosawa has two movies in the top five, “Rashomon” being the other.

BBC.com, which organized the poll, has the full list of 100 movies. But here is their top 10, in order.

Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio de Sica, 1948)
Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959)
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)

Wong Kar-wai’s 2000 film “In the Mood for Love” managed to break into the top 20. The list included 13 films that were released in the 21st century:

In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000) [#9]
A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011) [#21]
Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006) [#22]
Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000) [#25]
Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003) [#29]
The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006) [#31]
Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001) [#37]
City of God (Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund, 2002) [#42]
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2007) [#47]
Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012) [#69]
Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) [#76]
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000) [#78]
Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) [#82]

My own list differs from theirs, but whose doesn't? You'd have to be a robot to agree with this list:

Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio de Sica, 1948)
The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993)

[BBC Top 100]

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